THE HAGUE – Dutch Nazis who died in World War II will be commemorated this year
alongside their victims, at the national memorial ceremony in
Amsterdam.
The homage is to be paid in a poem written by the 15-year-old
relative of a Dutch SS soldier who died on Germany’s Eastern Front.
The
boy’s poem, “Wrong Choice,” speaks of his great uncle, who “sought to escape
poverty and dreamed of a better life,” but “chose the wrong army and wrong
ideology.” He “needs to be remembered too,” on May 4, Dutch Memorial Day, the
poem states.
The boy who wrote the poem is scheduled to publicly read it
on Dutch Memorial Day at the Dam Square during a ceremony attended by the Dutch
army’s top brass, war veterans and members of the royal family of the
Netherlands.
Representatives of the Dutch Jewish community said they
would not attend the ceremony unless the national memorial committee, Nationaal
Comite 4 en 5 mei, scraps the poem.
“It is wholly inappropriate to
compare the consequences of a wrong choice with the death of partisans, Jews and
other victims of the Nazi regime,” said Ronny Naftaniel, director of the
Hague-based Center for Information and Documentation on Israel. “According to
the same logic, Adolf Eichmann could also be commemorated as victim one
day.”
In a letter addressed to the committee, Naftaniel called the poems
inclusion in the program “an insult to all the real victims.”
Nine
Nooter, director of the Nationaal Comite 4 en 5 mei, said the poem should not be
interpreted as a plea to commemorate Nazi Dutchmen. She added that the fallen SS
soldier had four brothers who fought as partisans against the
Nazis.
“It’s a poem about the right and wrong choices taken inside one
family,” she said, adding that she did not intend to remove the poem from the
program.
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