In first, Dutch prime minister apologizes for country’s role in Holocaust

cde.news desk 27 January 2020, 06:00 · 1 min read

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte (R) embraces chairman Jacques Grishaver of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee at the Auschwitz Never Again monument during the National Holocaust Remembrance in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 26 January 2020. EPA-EFE/EVERT ELZINGA

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized for how his kingdom’s wartime government failed its Jews, a first by a sitting prime minister.

Rutte, on Sunday during a Holocaust commemoration, offered “apologies for the government of those days, while the last survivors are still with us.” That government, he said, “failed is in its responsibility as provider of justice and security” for Dutch Jews.

Mr Rutte made the remarks ahead of the 75th anniversary on Monday of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp.

Rutte, in power since 2010, has resisted calls for issuing such an apology, including by Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs in 2015 and by the Party for Freedom in 2012.

Some 75 percent of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands before the Holocaust were murdered by German Nazis and their local collaborators.

France, Belgium and Luxembourg have officially apologized for their authorities’ roles in the systemic annihilation of Jews in statements.

In first, Dutch prime minister apologizes for country’s role in Holocaust

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