What does NRC think | Commemorating is not only meant to look back, but also to learn from the past

Remembering is not without obligation. Those two minutes of silence on 4 May have a goal: whoever commemorates, who thinks about and about the victims of war – specifically the Second World War – can celebrate freedom in which we now live in the Netherlands. He realizes what it is worth to say what you want, when you want and to whom you want it. Realizes that it is not always obvious to be who you are, to believe in which you believe and share your life with who you want to be together. That it is worthwhile to come into resistance if the rule of law is in danger.

Remembering is not without obligation. Not in a country where the traumas of the war can still be felt eighty years later. The direct pain and mourning may fade away now that the last eyewitnesses are still dying, children still when the Netherlands was occupied. But their children learned to live with the silence of older generations, sometimes only later found out what had happened, and based their ideals on it.

Their children again, learned to ask questions and received answers that showed that war neither freedom are black and white. Good was not always good, and not always wrong. And never again war turned out to be a myth.

For their children, the Second World War is a war that may feel far away. But it remains important to be open to the stories of the time, especially this year, now the last veterans who can tell. It is important to become aware and to be aware of the influence that the occupation had and has on the Netherlands.

Just like realizing that commemorating is not only meant to think, but also to learn from history. In Her 5 May lecture in 2021 referred the then German Chancellor Angela Merkel explicitly to that. She said, « We will never forget that we cannot undo the past. We can and must learn the right lessons. »

The inconvenience that some feel this year is about that. After all, how meaningful is a commemoration of the past if in the present, including in Gaza, people die daily from war violence? How can you rhyme that one of the lessons of the Second World War is that we should not look away, while that is happening now.

The painfulness of this became explicit last week. The World Food Program and UN Kinderfonds UNICEF reported that soup kitchens in Gaza received their last stocks, after a two-month border blockade by Israel in which no food or other emergency aid is passed through.

The Netherlands commemorated Operation Manna at the same time, in which British, Poland, Australians and Americans with food droppings helped the many hundreds of thousands of the West Netherlands food, after a months-long German blockade. The agreement between the Allies and occupier would be the run -up to the capitulation talks.

It is good to argue whether this can be compared. For some people that will be an affront, as they will find it reprehensible that there is an alternative commemoration on Sunday in which the attention is drawn to Gaza. They believe that the commemoration of the dead should be about the victims of the Nazis – and in particular the intentional persecution of and murder of around six million Jews.

In the last eighty years, there has been more (noisy) debated about who is commemorated. Or should be commemorated.

The commemoration of the dead never existed. In the first years after the Second World War, resistance fighters commemorated their killed comrades, only in the 1960s the attention for the victims of the Holocaust came up, most recently also the victims who fell during the Colonial War in Indonesia. In the 1980s, the emphasis was on the connection with contemporary racism and warning for foreigners hatred. In the nineties, the mayor of Amsterdam made the link with the war in Yugoslavia, two years ago with the war in Ukraine.

The great thing about those two minutes is that they are quiet. Not every resident of this country will think of the same thing, and that is not mandatory. As long as nobody has to be afraid that they will not remain silent for two minutes.

Moreover, twice sixty seconds a year is only a moment in a life. It is ultimately everyone’s commitment in the rest of the time.

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