Dutch king unveils Holocaust name statue in Amsterdam

New memorial in nation’s Jewish Quarter honours victims of the tragedy

AMSTERDAM — King Willem-Alexander officially unveiled a new memorial in the heart of Amsterdam’s historic Jewish Quarter on Sunday honouring more than 102,000 Dutch victims of the Holocaust, and the Dutch prime minister vowed that it would remind citizens today to be vigilant against antisemitism.

Designed by Polish-Jewish architect Daniel Libeskind, the memorial is made up of walls shaped to form four Hebrew letters spelling out a word that translates as “In Memory Of.”

The walls are built using bricks, each of which is inscribed with the name, date of birth and age when they died of one of the more than 102,000 Jews, Roma and Sinti who were murdered in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War or who died on their way to the camps.

Jacques Grishaver, chair of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee, officially opened the monument with the king in the presence of dignitaries and Holocaust survivors. After walking through the gates, each picked up a white stone and placed it in front of a commemorative wall, a Jewish tradition when visiting graves.

The king helped Grishaver to pick up and put down his stone. After the ceremony, he spoke to three survivors of the Holocaust.

Dutch caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the monument also should force people to confront the question of whether the Netherlands did enough to protect Jews during the war and what he called “the cold reception for the small group who returned from hell after the war.”

He called the era “a black page in the history of our country” and said the monument also has an important contemporary message “in our time when antisemitism is never far away. The monument says — no, it screams — be vigilant.”

The memorial is built close to a former concert hall where Jews rounded up by Amsterdam’s wartime Nazi occupiers were held before being sent to the camps.