AMSTERDAM (AP) — The mayor of Amsterdam apologized Thursday for the role the Dutch capital played in the persecution of its Jewish citizens during World War II, saying the government at the time “let its Jewish residents down terribly.”
Speaking at an event marking Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Mayor Femke Halsema said that civil servants in Amsterdam played an active role in the murder of some thousands of Jewish citizens of the city.
Of the estimated 80,000 Jews who lived in Amsterdam at the outbreak of World War II, only some 20,000 survived. Among those deported was teenage diarist Anne Frank and her family. Only her father, Otto, survived.
“The Amsterdam government, when it came down to it, was not heroic, not determined and not merciful. And it let its Jewish residents down terribly,” Halsema said.
“On behalf of the city government, I offer my apologies for this,” she added. Halsema spoke at Hollandsche Schouwburg, a theater which operated as a collection point for Jews who were deported to extermination camps.
She recalled how the municipality helped with the registration of Jewish citizens and the drawing up of cards where Jews lived.
“Services were prepared to help enact one after the other anti-Jewish measure,” she said. “Step by step, the municipal machine became part of the machinery of evil.”
Halsema’s a …