Cortissos had during the opening a role in the blessing of the museum. King Willem-Alexander presented him with a mezuzah (a small scroll containing a text from the Torah), which he then attached to the doorpost.
During that ceremony, Cortissos and his great-granddaughter were verbally abused by a number of demonstrators standing near the entrance. “I let them know how horrible and unjust I find that,” Halsema said on Instagram.
“Mr. Cortissos is resilient, but also affected,” the mayor continues. “I told him how sorry I was and that there is never, ever an excuse for anti-Semitism.”
Demonstration
During the opening, demonstrations took place outside the building against the arrival of Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog. Several anti-Semitic slogans were chanted. The demonstrators stood dozens of meters from the entrance of the Portuguese Synagogue, so that all invited guests could hear what was being shouted.
The question is whether those demonstrators were too close yesterday has been a source of discussion for days, including within national politics. “Everyone is free to demonstrate upon the arrival of a head of state from another country,” said State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Justice and Security) this afternoon in the plenary hall of the House of Representatives, “but how do words like ‘Juden raus ‘ and ‘cancer Jew’ fit, I would like to doubt.”
