Two men who made an anti-Semitic mural of Ajax footballer Steven Berghuis in Rotterdam, have to visit the Holocaust Names Monument in Amsterdam. That has the judge decided on Tuesday† In addition to the mandatory visit to the Holocaust memorial, both men were given a 60-hour suspended community service order with two years’ probation. The Public Prosecution Service had demanded an unconditional community service of 60 hours.
Both men must report on their visit to the monument, accompanied by a representative of the Israel Information and Documentation Center (CIDI) or of the Liberal Jewish Community, who had filed a complaint against the makers. According to the judge, messages exchanged by the creators “show an utter lack of any capacity for displacement in what the Holocaust has done and is still doing to the Jewish community in general and survivors and their relatives in particular.” According to one of the makers, it was “satire” and a “cartoon”. It is more common that anti-Semitic expressions are punished with educational activities, such as for example a visit to the Anne Frank House†
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Footballer Steven Berghuis made a transfer from Feyenoord to arch-rival Ajax in the summer of 2021. After his transfer, the mural appeared in the Rotterdam district of Crooswijk, depicting Berghuis in Feyenoord shirt with a yarmulke, Star of David and large nose. Next to it was the text “Jews Always Run Away.” According to the judge, the mural places Jews in an unfavorable light, refers to the Holocaust through the concentration camp suit and the Star of David and is therefore punishable as group insult.