With two minutes of silence, the Netherlands Monday at the stroke of 20:00 war victims remembered who died since the beginning of World War II. On the Dam in Amsterdam attended King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima national commemoration at
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The royal couple traveled before the two-minute silence a wreath at the monument. Princess Beatrix was not present at the commemoration. After the moment of silence came the first stanza of the national anthem.
The fourteen-year-old Isa Hamerlinck this year read a poem. She was the winner of the annual poetry contest for young people closer to May 4th. Then Prime Minister Mark Rutte spoke up.
He recalled his father, who lived in the Dutch East Indies when the war began. In May 1940 his father received a card from his parents from Rotterdam. Rutte: “‘We have seen hell,” it literally. I got that card yet. And I cherish it as a keepsake that was passed. “
That kind of memories according to the premiere valuable because they provide comfort, but also because they are” a powerful weapon “in the fight against unfreedom and injustice who “always and everywhere to be implemented. In the here and now. Also in the Netherlands. Because behind every manifestation of anti-Semitism, behind every form of extremism that denies our freedom, behind every act of violence that affects the foundation of our law, threatening still those words then. “We have seen hell.”
Photo: Ronald Bakker 
Photo: Ronald Baker 
Photo: Reuters
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