Israel’s Herzog attends Amsterdam Holocaust museum opening
Israeli President Isaac Herzog attended the opening of the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam on Sunday.
The museum tells the tales of a number of the 102,000 Jews who have been deported from the Netherlands and murdered in Nazi camps throughout the Holocaust in World War II.
Three-quarters of Dutch Jews have been among the many six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.
Among the displays are a outstanding photograph of a boy strolling previous our bodies on the Bergen-Belsen focus camp after it was liberated, gown buttons excavated from the grounds of the Sobibor extermination camp, and partitions coated with the texts of a whole lot of legal guidelines discriminating in opposition to Jews enacted by the German occupiers of the Netherlands.
The museum is housed in a former instructor coaching school that was used as a covert escape route for a whole lot of Jewish youngsters.
“Hatred and antisemitism are flourishing worldwide, and we must fight it together,” Herzog mentioned on the occasion, which was held on the close by Portuguese Synagogue.
The museum was inaugurated by Dutch King Willem-Alexander.
Aside from Herzog, a variety of different dignitaries additionally attended, together with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen and Manuela Schwesig, president of Germany’s higher home of parliament, the Bundesrat.
However, the invitation for Herzog to attend the opening has attracted controversy amid Israel’s navy marketing campaign in Gaza in response to the October 7 Hamas terror assaults.
Protesters criticize Herzog’s attendance
Thousands of individuals gathered at Waterloo Square in central Amsterdam to protest Herzog’s presence on the museum opening as a result of Israeli navy offensive in Gaza.
The protest was organized by pro-Palestinian teams in addition to anti-Zionist Jewish organizations.
Attendees chanted slogans together with “Ceasefire now” and “Stop bombing children.” Others held posters that learn “Jews against genocide.”
Dutch pro-Palestinian group The Rights Forum known as Herzog’s attendance “a slap in the face of the Palestinians who can only helplessly watch how Israel murders their loved ones and destroys their land.”
More than 30,000 Palestinians have died within the conflict, in accordance with the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
Amnesty International put up detour indicators across the museum to direct Herzog to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) within the close by metropolis of The Hague, the place South Africa filed a case in opposition to Israel accusing it of genocide. Israel denies the allegations.
A smaller pro-Israel group additionally gathered close by with flags and pictures of the hostages that have been kidnapped by Hamas militants.
Police officers have been current to deescalate tensions between the 2 demonstrations.
In an announcement issued forward of Sunday’s opening, the Jewish Cultural Quarter that runs the museum mentioned it was “profoundly concerned by the war and the consequences this conflict has had, first and foremost for the citizens of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.”
It mentioned that it’s “all the more troubling that the National Holocaust Museum is opening while war continues to rage. It makes our mission all the more urgent.”
The museum mentioned it had invited Herzog earlier than the October 7 terror assault by Hamas, which resulted within the deaths of round 1,200 individuals in southern Israel.
Hamas is taken into account a terrorist group by the US, the EU and Israel, amongst others.
zc/mm (Reuters, AP, dpa)
