Why a Common European Culture of Remembrance Shall Not Emerge
Why a Common European Culture of Remembrance Shall Not Emerge

Summary/Abstract: It is an annual ritual in the Netherlands. In late April, the first documentaries on the Nazi occupation of the small country and movies inspired by it are broadcast on TV, while numerous articles concurrently appear in newspapers and magazines and dozens of new books are published. They all offer a reconstruction of the traumatising German attack of May 1940, the activities of the underground resistance, the bloody battle near the town of Arnhem (September 1944), the Hongerwinter (the ‘Winter of Hunger’ of 1944-45, when the Nazi’s cut off the food supplies to the western part of the Netherlands), and the Endlösung that hit the Jewish citizens so hard (eighty percent of the Dutch Jews were annihilated in the extermination camps). This massive stream of information reaches its peak on 4 and 5 May, when the War dead are commemorated and the liberation by the Allied forces, mainly Canadians, is celebrated. Over the past few years, more attention has been paid to the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, as well. Thousands of Dutch lost their lives in Japanese concentration camps, or while working as slaves on the Burmese railway line.

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