Herzog inaugurates new Amsterdam Holocaust museum as protesters demand his arrest
Alongside Dutch king, Israeli president opens Netherlands’s National Holocaust Museum with call to remember ‘the horrors born of hatred’ as activists accuse him of genocide in Gaza
The Netherlands’s National Holocaust Museum opened its doors on Sunday in a ceremony presided over by the Dutch king as well as President Isaac Herzog, whose presence prompted protests led by a local Jewish anti-Zionist group calling for his arrest on war crimes charges due to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
“This museum shows us what devastating consequences antisemitism can have,” said Dutch King Willem-Alexander at a solemn gathering at city’s famous nearby Portuguese Synagogue, attended also by Dutch Holocaust survivors as well as Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
Herzog said the museum sent “a clear and powerful statement: remember, remember the horrors born of hatred, antisemitism and racism and never again allow them to flourish.”
“Unfortunately never again is now, right now. Because right now, hatred and antisemitism are flourishing worldwide and we must fight it together,” added Herzog. He called for the “immediate and safe return” of hostages taken by Hamas in the October 7 attacks and urged the congregation to “pray for peace.”
A local anti-Zionist group calling itself Erev Rav said in a post on X a day before the opening ceremony that it had reported Herzog to the International Criminal Court and Dutch police “for the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes against the Palestinian people.”
It added, “The fact that the Israeli president instrumentalizes the history of the Shoah to legitimize himself and the genocide currently being committed is detestable.”
Hundreds gathered on Sunday waving Palestinian flags and banners and shouting “Never Again Is Now,” a reference to their belief Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. They booed and shouted slogans as the dignitaries arrived at the museum.
Protesters had hung signs on lampposts reading: “Detour to International Criminal Court” along the route.
Another pro-Palestinian Dutch organization, The Rights Forum, called Herzog’s presence “a slap in the face of the Palestinians who can only helplessly watch how Israel murders their loved ones and destroys their land.”
The Jewish Cultural Quarter, which runs the museum, said in a statement ahead of the opening that Herzog represents the country that became home to Dutch Holocaust survivors who emigrated to Israel, as well as the Israeli counterpart institutions to the Amsterdam museum, which, it said, shared knowledge and content for the Dutch site.
In an apparent nod to the animosity from pro-Palestinian groups over Herzog’s attendance, the museum said, “It is bitter that we open the National Holocaust Museum during the war in Israel and Gaza. However, we expect a dignified ceremony that will do justice to the significant national and international importance of our museum.”
The war erupted when Hamas launched a devastating assault on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Terrorists also abducted 253 people and took them as hostages to Gaza. Israel responded to the attack with a military campaign to destroy the terror group, topple its regime in Gaza, and free the hostages, over half of whom remain in captivity.
According to a statement from Herzog’s office last week, his one-day visit will focus on efforts to release the hostages and on the rise of antisemitism since the outbreak of the war.
Herzog was among Israeli leaders cited in an order issued in January by the International Court of Justice for Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction, and any acts of genocide in Gaza. He accused the court of misrepresenting his comments in the ruling. Israel strongly rejected allegations leveled by South Africa in the court case that the military campaign in Gaza breached the Genocide Convention.
“I was disgusted by the way they twisted my words, using very, very partial and fragmented quotes, with the intention of supporting an unfounded legal contention,” Herzog said, days after the ruling.
In February, the Jewish Cultural Quarter said in a statement that it is “deeply alarmed by the impact that the war is having in the Netherlands” and that “the reduction to black-and-white opposites and apparently incompatible arguments… has spread hatred toward Jews and Islamophobia. ”
Noting that the mission of the museum is “signaling the danger of dehumanizing and excluding those who live among us,” it added that it is “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 in Amsterdam tells the stories of some of the 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands and murdered in Nazi camps, as well as the history of their structural persecution under German World War II occupation before the deportations began.
Three-quarters of Dutch Jews were among the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, the largest proportion of any country in Europe.
Writing in the de Volkskrant newspaper, Dani Dayan, chair of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center, said that opening the Dutch site “marks a milestone” signifying “Dutch recognition of the devastating impact of the Holocaust, particularly on the Dutch Jewish population.”
Dayan, who was also to attend the opening ceremony, noted that “amid the passage of time, we are once again witnessing a disturbing trend of antisemitism and ignorance,” an apparent reference to a spike in antisemitism around the world that has come alongside the war against Hamas, much of it expressed by pro-Palestinian activists.
The museum is housed in a former teacher training college that was used as a covert escape route to help some 600 Jewish children to escape from the clutches of the Nazis.
Exhibits include a prominent photo of a boy walking past bodies in Bergen-Belsen after the liberation of the concentration camp, and mementos of lives lost: a doll, an orange dress made from parachute material, and a collection of 10 buttons excavated from the grounds of the Sobibor camp.
The walls of one room are covered with the texts of hundreds of laws discriminating against Jews enacted by the German occupiers of the Netherlands, to show how the Nazi regime, assisted by Dutch civil servants, dehumanized Jews ahead of operations to round them up.
