Amsterdam is to formally apologise for the first time for the central role the city played in the persecution and extermination of Jews during the Second World War.
Femke Halsema, mayor of the Dutch capital, will make the apology on April 24 during Amsterdam’s Yom HaShoah commemoration of the Holocaust. She will also recognise its poor treatment of survivors returning from Nazi death camps after the war.
“Better late than never,” Ronny Naftaniel, a senior figure in the Dutch Jewish community told the Het Parool newspaper. “It would be good if the apology was not just about the war, but also about the period immediately afterwards, given the cold reception that returned Jews received at the time.”
Keren Hirsch, a Labour councillor in the south
