LIVE Remembrance Day | Hundreds of people are already on Dam Square for national commemoration News

It becomes increasingly busy on Dam Squarewhere the National Commemoration will take place again tonight.

Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema drew attention to this on May 4 the role of women in times of war. “In a war, women are never on the sidelines. They are at the front, at the front,” she said in a speech prior to a silent procession from Museumplein to Dam Square. “As a soldier, as a doctor, as a journalist, as a mother, as defenders of freedom in the broadest sense of the word. And in the Netherlands, women were often the linchpin of the resistance.”

According to Halsema, women’s bodies, women’s sexuality and the ability to have children are discussed has been treated as a battleground for centuries. “Systematic rape and humiliation, forced sterilizations and abortion: they took place during the Holocaust and in countless conflicts before and after,” she said at the so-called Gypsy Monument on Museum Square, which commemorates all Sinti and Roma who died in the Second World War.

On Dam Square in Amsterdam Hundreds of people have already gathered for the National Remembrance Day around 6 p.m. It starts there just before 8 p.m. Last year, according to the National Committee, around 16,000 people attended the ceremony on May 4 and 5.

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima are there again as tradition and lay a wreath at the National Monument. This is followed by two minutes of silence.

Before the commemoration on Dam Square, the 4 May lecture pronounced. This will be done this year by journalist and AT5 editor-in-chief Judith Zilversmit.

From Amsterdam’s Museumplein sets off on a silent journey with mayor Femke Halsema. It ends at the commemoration on Dam Square.

At1 is the only Amsterdam party that clearly deviates of the broad political condemnation of the defacement of the National Monument on Dam Square. In a message on social media, Tofik Dibi’s party writes that the word ‘genocide’ is ‘not vandalism’, but ‘a harsh mirror for our society’.

The party thus puts down the action as a political statement, and not as vandalism. According to Bij1, the commemoration of May 4 is accompanied by ‘big words about yesterday’s suffering’, while ‘structurally people look the other way at today’s genocides’.

Other parties are responding correctly sharply dismissive. CDA councilor Rogier Havelaar emphasizes that the monument symbolizes national unity. “You stay away from that and deal with it respectfully,” he says.

D66 party leader Rob Hofland calls the graffiti ‘cowardly and ugly’ and announces that he will ask Mayor Halsema questions on Thursday. The VVD also wants clarification. Party chairman Daan Wijnants calls the graffiti ‘shocking’ and wonders why there was no surveillance or live monitoring of camera images. “It should have been there this year and should certainly be there next year.”

It is striking that the largest party in the city, Pro Amsterdam, is on social media has not yet expressed.

In the podcast Join the discussion with AD we discuss an issue every day. Today: we must make more effort to remember the importance of commemoration to be brought to widespread attention.

“Maybe you should just commemorate it again on May 4 stick only to the Second World War and the Holocaust. Then it is clear to everyone,” says AD columnist Angela de Jong.

Koos van den Bosch (17) is a promising Feyenoord talent. But he arrives during the Rotterdam Razzia in 1944 ended up in De Kuip as a forced laborer. His father comes up with a plan to save him, but everything goes terribly wrong in Wezep. This is his moving story.

During the National Remembrance Day celebration tonight, this applies in Dutch airspace also a period of silence. Between 7:50 PM and 8:03 PM at all airports in the Netherlands no starting statement given, and aircraft are not allowed to land between 8:00 PM and 8:03 PM. Airplanes approaching Schiphol or another airport postpone their landing in a ‘holding’ at a height of 2 kilometers.

There are also restrictions on air traffic at specific locations during the memorial services. For example, this is not allowed between 6:55 PM and 9:30 PM below a certain altitude are flown above Dam Square in Amsterdam and the airspace above Westerbork is temporarily closed from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.

The National Monument on Dam Square is cleaned in time for Remembrance Day. The job was completed around 1:30 p.m. less than nine hours after the monument was defaced with red paint and the slogan ‘genocide’. How did a small team do that so quickly?

Professor at the University of Groningen Alette Smeulers now calls the state of the world ‘worrying’ in her speech at the commemoration of the victims of Camp Amersfoort. She points out, among other things, the rise of extremist ideas and calls for learning from the lessons of the past and never giving up on humanity and empathy.

In the concentration camp about 47,000 people imprisoned during the Second World War. These included political prisoners. Hundreds of people were executed or died as a result of the hardships they were subjected to.

In her speech at the Leusderheide, Smeulers reflected on the perpetrators, who, according to her, made choices for which they can be held responsible. For example, they chose something because it felt safer, because someone they knew also did it or because they were afraid and powerless. The professor recently wrote one book about the perpetrators of war crimes, genocide and terrorism and what drives them to this.

Former NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer calls today’s world ‘a wild world‘. “Our habituation to stability and security is being severely tested,” he said at the annual commemoration at the Loenen National Cemetery.

In his speech, De Hoop Scheffer wondered how safe the world will be for his five grandchildren. “Will they and their children continue to grow up in a stable and – note the N – valuable environment without fear of war and violence? The choices we make now are decisive for the answer to this question.”

In his speech, the former NATO boss mentioned, among other things, the war in Ukraine. “The American interest in Ukraine has decreased sharply and we Europeans must not fail this test.”

There are almost 50,000 graves at the cemetery in Loenen, Gelderland 4000 Dutch war victims buried. The commemoration included music and a minute’s silence. Then those present sang the first verse of the Wilhelmus and laid wreaths.

Upside down, in the dark, half mast. The Dutch flag is regularly displayed. But what are the rules on May 4 and 5? And what about that pennant?

The National Monument on Dam Square is clean again after it was defaced early Monday morning. The monument in memory of the Second World War was erected with a large amount of red substanceprobably paint, smeared. ‘Genocide’ was also written on it.

Het Parool has obtained images on which the action is recorded. The Amsterdam newspaper says it received it from the action group Palestine Action Amsterdam, but it is not known whether they also claimed the action. The group could not yet be reached for a response.

are in the images see three people. The monument is said to have been defaced around 4:30 am, about fourteen hours before the Second World War is commemorated there. A cleaning crew had been cleaning the monument since early in the morning. Police are looking for at least three suspects who were wearing rain gear and one carrying white shopping bag had.

The KNMI announced on Monday afternoon code yellow in five provinces. This concerns Overijssel, Gelderland, Utrecht, North Brabant and Limburg. “There will be no warnings in effect for the next few hours. Later this afternoon and evening there will be falls in the south, center and east of the country showers, with local thunder and lots of rain,” said the KNMI.

Outdoor activities such as Remembrance Day and road traffic are possible here experience inconvenience. According to the KNMI, intensive showers will occur from 4 p.m., with locally 20 to 30 millimeters of rain possible. Local thunderstorms are also possible. In the second half of the evening the showers decrease in number and intensity.

May 4 is celebrated in several places in the Netherlands on Monday at 12 noon the air raid siren sounded. Including in the This was the case in the Rijnmond region. According to the government, the alarm may never be tested on May 4.

The Rotterdam-Rijnmond Safety Region has announced that this is the case a human error went. A spokesperson reports that testing the alarm is the responsibility of the individual safety regions. She suspects that various security regions “missed the memo”.

Report on X residents of Den Bosch too the sounding of the air raid siren. A spokesperson for the Brabant-Noord Safety Region confirms this. According to her, this is also a human error.

Politicians have reacted angrily on the graffiti on the National Monument on Dam Square in Amsterdam. Prime Minister Rob Jetten speaks of an ‘idiotic and completely unacceptable action’. And ‘disgusting’, writes State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Home Affairs, VVD).

Prime Minister Jetten hopes that today can be united and together with respect will stand still. ‘Defacing the National Monument on Dam Square is an idiotic and completely unacceptable action. Especially today, on May 4,” he writes.

Cleaning crews are busy Monday morning to remove graffiti from the National Monument on Dam Square in Amsterdam. The monument is marred with a red substance. The word ‘genocide’, among other things, has been spray-painted on it.

A scaffolding has been placed against the column of the monument. Get cleaners from an art maintenance company with a high-pressure sprayer the red graffiti on the monument. They also use brushes to remove the substance, which looks like paint, from the monument.

The red stuff has been applied to both the column and the wall behind it. In some places the substance appears red being thrown against the stone. By 8 a.m., the word genocide had largely disappeared from the monument. A fence has been placed around the monument. The police could not yet say when and by whom the graffiti was applied. That is being investigated.