The city of Amsterdam held a ceremony honoring the approximately 33,000 Dutch Jews who were killed in the Sobibor death camp during the Holocaust.
The commemoration occurred at Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, at the site of a memorial installed in 2021, the Dutch language Reformatorisch Dagblad reported.
The memorial contains a plaque and a mirror. Niels van Deuren, the creator of the monument, explained that its purpose was for people to look at themselves in the mirror and ask if they can do when they detect hatred or intolerance. The monument also drew inspiration from a speech by Dutch King Willem-Alexander’s 2020 speech at the National Commemoration on Dam Square during which he said: “Sobibor began in the Vondelpark. With a sign: ‘Prohibited for Jews.’”
Sobibor Foundation President Christine Gispen-de Wied said: “In Sobibor more than 33,000 Jews from the Netherlands were gassed in five months. Imagine that. That is a death machine. From Sobibor you don’t come back.”
“With the war in Ukraine and refugees all over the world, we still have a long way to go for a better future,” she added.