Amsterdam mayor apologizes for the city’s role in the Holocaust

Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema attends a ceremony at the Portuguese Synagogue marking the opening of the new National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Sunday, March 10, 2024. (Bart Maat/Pool Photo via AP, File)

AMSTERDAM — The mayor of Amsterdam apologized on Thursday for the role the Dutch capital played in the persecution of its Jewish citizens during the Second World War, saying the government at the time “let its Jewish residents down terribly.”

Speaking at an event marking Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Mayor Femke Halsema said that civil servants in Amsterdam played an active role in the murder of some thousands of Jewish citizens of the city.

Of the estimated 80,000 Jews who lived in Amsterdam at the outbreak of the Second World War, only some 20,000 survived. Among those deported was teenage diarist Anne Frank and her family. Only her father, Otto, survived.

“The Amsterdam government, when it came down to it, was not heroic, not determined and not merciful. And it let its Jewish residents down terribly,” Halsema said.

“On behalf of the city government, I offer my apologies for this,” she added. Halsema spoke at Hollandsche Schouwburg, a theatre that operated as a collection point for Jews who were deported to extermination camps.

She recalled how the municipality helped with the registration of Jewish citizens and the drawing up of cards where Jews lived.

“Services were prepared to help enact one after the other anti-Jewish measure,” she said. “Step by step, the municipal machine became part of the machinery of evil.”

Halsema’s apology — ahead of the 80th anniversary of the Netherlands’ liberation from the Nazis — was not the first from the Netherlands.

Five years ago, on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, then-prime minister Mark Rutte apologized for the failure of the Dutch government during the war.

Some Dutch organizations have also issued apologies for their own roles in the historic tragedy. The Dutch national railway company apologized in 2005 for its role in transporting Jews to camps and announced it would pay reparations.

In 2020, the Dutch Protestant Church made a far-reaching recognition of guilt for its failure to do more to help Jews during and after the Second World War.

Halsema’s apology comes six months after what she described as “an eruption of antisemitism” in which Israeli fans were assaulted after a soccer game in the Netherlands. The attacks garnered headlines worldwide and more than 60 suspects were arrested.

Four years ago, she apologized for Amsterdam’s role in another dark moment in history, the global slave trade.

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Associated Press writer Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.

Article written by Molly Quell, The Associated Press