Netherlands opens Holocaust museum; Presence of Israeli president causes concern

In addition to detailing the history of systematic persecution of Jews under German rule of World War II prior to the deportations, the museum in Amsterdam also chronicles the tales of some of the 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands and killed in Nazi camps.

Of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis, the majority came from the Netherlands-more than any other nation in Europe.

Herzog and Dutch King Willem-Alexander will inaugurate the museum and visit a synagogue in the midst of Israel’s destructive assaults on Gaza, which come after Hamas’s murderous incursions in southern Israel on October 7. Outside the festivities, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrations are scheduled.

Herzog was one of the Israeli officials mentioned in a January ruling by the highest court of the United Nations directing Israel to take all necessary precautions to avoid killing, destroying, or instigating genocide in Gaza. He claimed that his remarks were misrepresented by the International Court of Justice in the decision. In the court case, South Africa made accusations that Israel’s military assault in Gaza violates the Genocide Convention, which Israel vehemently denied.

“I was disgusted by the way they twisted my words, using very, very partial and fragmented quotes, with the intention of supporting an unfounded legal contention,” Herzog said, days after the ruling.

A pro-Palestinian Dutch organization, The Rights Forum, called Herzog’s presence “a slap in the face of the Palestinians who can only helplessly watch how Israel murders their loved ones and destroys their land.”

In a statement issued ahead of Sunday’s opening, the Jewish Cultural Quarter that runs the museum said it is “profoundly concerned by the war and the consequences this conflict has had, first and foremost for the citizens of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.”

It said that it is “all the more troubling that the National Holocaust Museum is opening while war continues to rage. It makes our mission all the more urgent.”

The museum is housed in a former teacher training college that was used as a covert escape route to help some 600 Jewish children to escape from the clutches of the Nazis.

Exhibits include a prominent photo of a boy walking past bodies in Bergen-Belsen after the liberation of the concentration camp, and mementos of lives lost: a doll, an orange dress made from parachute material and a collection of 10 buttons excavated from the grounds of the Sobibor camp.

The walls of one room are covered with the texts of hundreds of laws discriminating against Jews enacted by the German occupiers of the Netherlands, to show how the Nazi regime, assisted by Dutch civil servants, dehumanized Jews ahead of operations to round them up.