In the mid -sixties, the Dutch cabinet considered abolishing the National Commemoration on 4 May. Was it still necessary to commemorate? The elements of the commemoration – the two -minute silence, the tattoo, and the silent trips – were conceived in 1946 by resistanceman Jan Drop. He saw it as his assignment that the fallen would not be forgotten, and only received ‘an hour’ on 5 May.
But the interest decreased, eyewitnesses from then would rather forget the war and silent it. Interest has been increasing since the 1980s, with every decade his own discussion about who and what may be commemorated. The official memorandum – the text that is read at the monument on the Dam – also changed a number of times.
Now that is: “During the National Remembrance, we all commemorate – civilians and soldiers – who died or killed in the Kingdom of the Netherlands or wherever in the world; both during the Second World War and the Colonial War in Indonesia, as well as in war situations and in peace operations afterwards.”
ANP / Nederlands Fotomuseum
A temporary monument
Immediately after the liberation, the park on the east side of the Dam in Amsterdam was seen by many as the ideal location for a national monument to commemorate the war victims. In June 1945 a scaffold was founded with flags of the Allies and the text ‘We have lost for years. We have to win for a century ‘.
In the foreground a picture of the Phoenix, emblem of the rising Amsterdam. This scaffold stood for a temporary, brick mausoleum. With the official initiation, the liberation parties started from 26 to 28 June 1945.
In 1956 the current National Monument on Dam Square was unveiled. Here too, the urns with earth of fusillade and honorary cemeteries from the provinces and of 22 honorary fields from the former Dutch East Indies were placed in Nissen.
Photo National Archives/Savings Nest Collection/ANP
In the Second World War, more than 250 people were executed on the Waalsdorpervlakte between The Hague and Wassenaar, especially resistance fighters who were in the nearby Oranjehotel – as the prison on Scheveningen was called by them. The commemoration arose spontaneously in 1946, now it is one of the official memorial places.
The memorandum, the official text about who is being commemorated, changed a number of times. At the request of veterans, all Dutch war victims have been commemorated since 1961 that have been killed – wherever in the world – since the outbreak of the Second World War.
At the Remembrance Day of 1970, some members of the young people want to lay a wreath of homosexuality without permission, in memory of the war continued and died homosexuals. Between 5,000 and 15,000 – especially German – gays ended up in a concentration camp. The campaigners are brought away harshly. In 1987 the gay monument would be unveiled on the Westermarkt in Amsterdam.
With a loud scream, a 40-year-old man in 2010 disturbed the National Remembrance Day on Dam Square. In the panic that followed – many people still had Queen’s Day in their head a year earlier, when a car drove into the procession – 63 people suffered injuries. The ‘Damschreeuwer’ was ultimately sentenced to sixteen months in prison, of which eight conditional for disruption of public order and causing physical injury.
2020: Coronacrisis, an empty dam through the lockdown. It should have become a grand memorial, 75 years after the liberation. It was the most sober ever, because the Lockdown rules forbid people masses.
King Willem-Alexander spoke about looking away in a very personal speech, about collective debt and about responsibility also in the present ‘not’ normal ‘ [te] Making what is not normal “.” Sobibor started in the Vondelpark, “he warned.
Only King Willem-Alexander, Queen Máxima, chairman of the National Committee 4 and 5 May Gerdi Verbeet, Prime Minister Rutte, mayor of Amsterdam Femke Halsema, and the Adjudant General of the King, Ludger Brummelaar, were present on Dam Square.
In 2024, Amsterdam mayor Halsema will take extra security measures, due to the chance of unannounced Pro-Palestinian protest. An emergency ordinance always applies around the dam. That year fewer people are admitted and they are searched to prevent them from taking flags or protest signs. During the opening of the National Holocaust Museum, loud protests against the presence of Israeli President Isaac Herzog sounded during the opening of the National Holocaust Museum. Afterwards, Halsema was reproached that demonstrators were insufficiently placed remotely.
