Speech of Jet Bussemaker at the Humanity in Action dinner conference

Toespraak | 25-11-2009

Ladies and gentlemen,

Not long ago, I was invited to open an exhibition in Aalten, a small town in the east of our country just three kilometres from the German border. The exhibition, which runs until next May, is called Grensgevallen – ‘Borderline cases’. It is concerned with the many refugees who fled the Nazi regime in the 1930s, just before the outbreak of the Second World War.
It is something of a sober exhibition, but an impressive one. By focusing on five individual cases, it shows what sort of reception the refugees could expect here in the Netherlands.

I’m afraid the Dutch did not always extend the warmest of welcomes. Yes, many people did offer a helping hand, but others chose to take advantage of the precarious situation in which the refugees found themselves. One of the refugees featured in the exhibition arrived safely in our country, only to have all her possessions stolen by the very people who had set themselves up as her saviours.

The exhibition in Aalten, the tiny border town where many sought safety over seventy years ago, is impressive not only because of the very human stories it tells in words and pictures, but also because the subject matter is still very topical today. Refugees continue to knock at our door. We must again ask ourselves how to respond.

The organizers of the Aalten exhibition have done far more than fill display cases and hang up pictures.
They have been very proactive in producing educational material for schools. The material is available in Dutch and German, since the museum is visited by many German pupils as well. Germany, of course, also faces the issue of modern-day refugees. The final question of the educational material is very poignant: what would you have done?

The Aalten exhibition is entirely in line with the policy that I, as the member of the government responsible, pursue with regard to the way in which we remember and commemorate the Second World War. But that policy is not solely concerned with the past. We must ask ourselves what we can learn from the war. How can we prevent future genocides, with people being murdered because they follow a different religion, have a different sexual orientation or a different ethnicity?

The Netherlands promotes ‘active citizenship’. That means that we want people to think for themselves, rather than merely thinking what others tell them.
Any exhibition about the war which prompts people to think about the world of today and that of tomorrow can therefore rely on the government’s full support.

I greatly appreciate the activities of Humanity in Action, as this organization targets a section of the population that will be sitting in our seats in twenty years’ time. Making young people aware of how societies deal with and interpret the past is immensely valuable. What’s more, the foundation’s activities are international in character, encouraging people to take a critical look at their own country. In that context, the recent addition of Bosnian students to the international network provides a link with modern-day issues.

In successfully implementing our policy – which ties in well with the title of this conference, Future of the past, – we follow a dual approach.
The first component is to educate and ensure that people have the information they need to benefit from the lessons of the past.

The second entails ensuring that our wartime heritage is preserved, so that future generations will also be able to find answers to their questions about the Second World War.

Clearly, the Aalten exhibition makes a significant contribution to the first objective. I wish to encourage organizations such as the Aalten Museum to provide information about the war in an interesting and engaging manner. To that end, in 2006 I announced a government subsidy scheme by the name of Raak de juiste snaar: ‘strike the right chord’.

The grants available under this programme have been used to create many wonderful exhibitions and projects, as well as excellent educational material, which have reached hundreds of thousands of young people. For most, the Second World War is now no longer something that happened a very, very long time ago. They have learned to view it from today’s perspective and with an eye to the future.

To date, the subsidy programme has focused largely on the Second World War in the Netherlands.
We now intend to extend its scope to include the rest of Europe, and indeed the rest of the world.
One example is the Holocaust by bullets project.
The overall objective of this programme is to learn from each other how best to educate young people about war, and to see how other countries deal with their wartime past. In the early months of the Second World War, many villages in Ukraine saw their entire Jewish population brutally murdered. These people did not die in the concentration camps like so many others, but were gunned down in their own homes.

To date, project activities have included a conference at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies here in Amsterdam, while another particularly moving exhibition about this dark episode in history is being staged at Camp Vught. Currently, students who will themselves become teachers in a few years are involved in an exchange programme between the Netherlands and Ukraine.

Ladies and gentlemen,
As I explained a few minutes ago, the Netherlands follows a two-track approach.
I have talked a little about the first track, that of education. The second is concerned with preserving our wartime heritage and making it accessible to all.

We started doing so in earnest two years ago, when we realized that the number of people who had actually lived through the war, and who could therefore provide an eye-witness account, was steadily dwindling.
For future generations, this is a loss. Today, young people can still listen to their grandparents’ wartime experiences, and a few hundred volunteers regularly visit schools to tell children what it was really like to live through the war years. But in a few years, those who can tell the stories from first-hand experience will no longer be with us. We must therefore find other ways of remembering the war in an accessible way.

We have therefore begun to preserve a vast collection of wartime material which will be available to the general public. It includes thousands of home movies, newspapers, pamphlets, drawings, photographs and diaries.
It also includes filmed interviews with members of the resistance, with the doctors who treated wounded German soldiers, with the people who went into hiding and with those who chose to collaborate with the Nazis, some by actually joining the SS.

Most of this material is now available on the internet, or will go ‘online’ shortly. We believe that this collection is exceptionally valuable in that it may well offer answers to the questions of future generations. But today’s generation also needs this material in order to understand our shared history. This is why the material has been made available not just to the academic community, but to everyone who has an interest in the war.

To promote the accessibility of this important part of our national heritage, we have enlisted the help of a prominent Dutch television producer, Ad van Liempt, who is here with us this evening. We asked him to produce a television series based on the material. The result, entitled simply De Oorlog – ‘The War’ – is now airing on Dutch television.

A parallel series, 13 in de oorlog, or ‘13 in the War’, has been made especially for younger viewers. Like the exhibition in Aalten, every episode confronts its viewers with that poignant question, “What would you have done”?

Ladies and gentlemen,

I have given you a brief outline of how the Dutch government encourages the public to think about the Second World War and how it should be remembered and commemorated. I am aware that not every country will wish to follow the same approach. Some may have an entirely different view of dealing with the past. I believe that it will be extremely useful to share our thoughts and ideas in this regard, and I therefore look forward with great interest to the discussions to be held during this Humanity in Action conference.

In 2011, as you may be aware, the Netherlands will very likely assume the presidency of the Taskforce for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. I consider that to be a great honour.
Within this framework I would like to invite you to share our ideas about how we can allow future generations to learn about the Second World War.

For now, I hope you enjoy your meal and I would like to wish you all a very pleasant evening.