Next Monday is National Remembrance Day. A day on which we commemorate war, are silent and reflect. But how exactly does that work when the world around you is on fire? And how big is the role of the Second World War anyway? “For God’s sake, turn around!”
“When I hear the term ‘never again’ I get goosebumps through my sweater,” says Pavle Trkulja (36). He was born in Bosnia, where his father worked as a journalist. “That is also the reason we had to flee to the Netherlands.” Press freedom was under severe pressure.
Pavle was 3 when he came to live in Rosmalen. He heard the conversations about Yugoslavia during his childhood. The beautiful things, the horrors. “Especially when I was in Bosnia. Then I came home with a head full of stories.”
Genocide was committed during the war in the former Yugoslavia. What should never have happened again, did happen. Because Dutch UN soldiers were involved in the mission in the Srebrenica enclave, the horror also changed the image of the Dutch commemoration. ‘Never again Auschwitz’ became ‘Never again racial hatred’.
“I think our commemoration has slowly become fossilized.”
“I think our commemoration has slowly become fossilized,” says Pavle. “While we were standing on the dam, the Srebrenica genocide was taking place. Now it is happening again, in Lebanon and Gaza.” He thinks it is misplaced to pretend that war and racial hatred are something of the past.
“I sometimes wonder what the victims of the Holocaust would think if they saw us on May 4. Wouldn’t they say: look around you, look at now, look ahead! For God’s sake, turn around!”
They also hear these sounds and discussions at the committee of May 4 and 5 and National Monument Camp Vught. It is sometimes a challenge for them to translate history into the present. “We always have one foot in the past, because we have a camp with watchtowers and barbed wire in the backyard. But ‘die Gedanken sind frei’, they already sang here. Your thoughts are free, you can think about whatever you want,” says director Jeroen van den Eijnde of National Monument Camp Vught.
“Who you think about is completely up to you.”
This is no different at the National Committee 4 and 5 May. “We have no rules for what you think about,” says head of Remembrance Nienke Majoor. “Who you think about is completely up to you. And that’s fine too. For me, it’s a success if you have experienced a sense of solidarity.”
She likes that the common thread of the commemoration is still intertwined with the Second World War. That’s where it all started. That is the starting point of the commemoration and the reason that we walk around freely in the Netherlands. “That is our anchor. And as long as there are people alive who experienced the Second World War, that will have to remain central.”
Are you curious about the entire video about how we commemorate 2026 and what challenges that entails? You can see it in the entire video on our YouTube channel.
