‘The memory of the Holocaust is deeply embedded in our culture‘
On the eve of the national Holocaust commemoration on Sunday 28 January, a conversation with former Niod director and professor emeritus Frank van Vree about his new book ‘The Netherlands and the Memory of the Persecution of Jews 1945-2024.’ Are we in danger of forgetting the persecution of the Jews? ‘The memory of the Holocaust is becoming more and more history.’
With the apologies in 2020 from both the government and the royal family for their role in the Holocaust, the creation of the Namenmonument in 2021 and the imminent establishment of a new Holocaust museum, former NIOD director Van Vree says the Netherlands is remembering more than ever. Perhaps the most important point of his book: the Netherlands has long been at the forefront of Holocaust remembrance.
So do you disagree that, as the founder of the Namenmonument Jacques Grishaver felt, the Netherlands has for eighty years ‘pushed away everything that was done to the Jews’?
‘Absolutely. After being somewhat hushed up in the first post-war years, the persecution of the Jews became central to the image of the war early in the 1960s and 1970s. Much earlier than in countries like France and Belgium. The Westerbork National Monument, at the former Westerbork concentration camp, for instance, was unveiled by Queen Juliana in 1970. And Jacques Presser’s 1965 two-volume work Ondergang (Downfall) on the persecution of the Jews went on sale more than 140,000 times. In my book, I describe how his writing marked a turning point in memory.’
‘For the first time, an author completely chose the perspective of Jewish victims. To this end, he also uses poetry in his study, even his own poems. Abram de Swaan - sociologist and Jewish himself - told me last week that when he read the book as a young scholar, he had to cry incessantly for the first time in his life. ‘That’s what that book did to people.’
Abram de Swaan was critical of your frequent use of the term ‘civic religion’ as a description of Holocaust remembrance, saying the term ‘faith’ would imply that the facts are not established. Over time, has Holocaust remembrance become a kind of religion after all?
‘I use the term ‘‘civic religion’‘ mainly because it can help understand the coherence in the culture of remembrance around the Holocaust - with its literature, films and rituals: from the Monument of Names in Amsterdam to the uttering of ‘‘Never again Auschwitz’‘ during official commemorations by government leaders, including Putin and Orbán. This does occasionally remind me of the medieval kings who obediently went to church, but then slaughtered innocent civilians.’
‘In recent decades, anyway, a transnational culture of remembrance with a universal message increasingly emerged among world leaders, as well as citizens. The Nazi mass murder then acts as a negative myth and as a source for a universal politics of human rights, the international rule of law and the fight against racism.’
When remembering other war scares, is it difficult that the Holocaust is sometimes remembered, for example in Israel, as an ‘exceptional’ genocide in history?
‘You see that way of thinking mostly among people who don’t want to talk about other problems. For example now also in discussions about the war in Gaza. For some, ‘‘Never again Auschwitz’’ means never again a form of human rights violation. For others, however, ‘‘Never again Auschwitz’’ means first and foremost never again that specific form of genocide and thus unconditional support for Israel.’
On Sunday morning 28 February from 11.00, a silent march will walk from the Stadhuis in Amsterdam to the Wertheimpark in the Plantage neighbourhood. From 11.30, the commemoration will start at Jan Wolkers' National Holocaust Monument in the Wertheimpark. Speakers there will include Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Mayor Femke Halsema, Chairman of the Auschwitz Committee Jacques Grishaver and VU student Rebecca van der Hoeven. The Zigeneur orchestra Brandt will perform music.
‘I had just finished my epilogue when the war between Hamas and Israel broke out. I devoted a few lines at the end to the recent war. But the opposing views on the lessons of the Holocaust, which I describe in earlier chapters, have of course existed for much longer there. Consider Israeli lawyers and activists who, invoking "No more Auschwitz", support Palestinians. It is tragic that, after October 7, that support seems to come from an increasingly small minority.’
How important is media coverage within the memory of a genocide like the Holocaust?
‘In the Israeli trial of Nazi leader Eichmann in 1961, for example, media coverage was essential. Eichmann had said, ‘‘It was wonderful the way the wheels (of the deportation trains) rolled in the Netherlands at the beginning.’‘ By this he was referring to the cooperation of Dutch organisations and agencies in the persecution of Jews. An uncomfortable truth to which De Telegraaf and De Volkskrant, among others, did not devote a word.
But at the same time, the rest of the trial was intensively reported by a newspaper like the Algemeen Handelsblad (now NRC, ed.), making the Holocaust a significant part of the Dutch memory of the war. In this way, media determine how and to what extent memories of genocides are formed.’
At the same time, should we fear that a new generation is in danger of forgetting the Holocaust?
‘Memories inevitably change. They are naturally strongest when you know them first-hand: from yourself, from your father, from your grandmother. For example, my son remembers the story of his grandfather who was in a German labour camp. That process of ‘‘social memory’’ is weakening, because of the generation that still made the war, very few are left. With that, this past is increasingly becoming truly ‘‘history’’. At the same time, the Holocaust remains deeply embedded in Dutch culture. That will not change overnight.’
However, the UvA has only one small plaque in the Oudemanhuispoort that recalls the persecution of the Jews. As the university most affected by the persecutions, should the UvA do more?
‘That seems obvious to me.’
