“As painful as such stories are, we must continue to tell them.” In his speech tonight during the Remembrance Day at Camp Westerbork, National Coordinator for Combating Anti-Semitism Eddo Verdoner referred to the anti-Semitism that he believes is rearing its head again.
In his speech he told the story of Wesel and Max Kannewasser and how they eventually had to be transported.
“About the people of that time and about what was done to them. About their vain hopes and about their despair.” With those two sentences he hopes to counterbalance the conspiracy theories and the fueling of hatred and exclusion. “Conspiracy theories are not just stories, but insinuations. With this, the Nazis tried to dehumanize Jews and instill suspicion.”
He calls on people to keep telling the stories in order to ‘keep razor sharp who were human and who were inhuman’.
Bertien Minco, director of Memorial Center Camp Westerbork, invited Eddo Verdoner as a speaker during the Remembrance Day. “We think his message is important. He says that education has an important role in this and of course we agree very much. We are also an important national partner for him in this.”
“The people who come here are generally very committed and very impressed. That is always very nice to notice. Also children who ask questions and are full of them. But we do see that there are many people who thinking: gee, wasn’t that too long ago and does that still have to be done? Did it actually all happen? We just see it and hear around us that there is an increase and that worries us on the one hand. : work to be done. Let’s go, hoppakee.”
Can the Memorial Center do more about this? “I think we always do something about that. We exist for that. We receive 30,000 students a year here. If you look at the camp site today, you will see school classes full. I think the best answer is: make sure there is a a lot of children hear the stories of what happened here in a high-quality way.”
Why do we still have to remember? “Because never in the history of all of humanity have so many people been murdered in such a factory, industrial way. That happened right here, before our very eyes in our society from this place. So you have to think about that.”
In addition to the theme of anti-Semitism, the subject of Sobibor is also central. It is exactly eighty years ago that the first transport left. “34,000 Dutch Jews and refugees were deported and murdered in Sobibor. That is so enormous. So it is actually strange that it has not ended up in the national memory. That is exactly the reason that we are paying more attention to it with this project. to ask.”
Watch the remembrance broadcast here, with Eddo Verdoner’s speech: