Protest at new Holocaust museum

AMSTERDAM: The opening of a National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam with a ceremony presided over by the Dutch king and Israeli President Isaac Herzog prompted angry protests because of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

The museum tells the stories of some of the 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands and murdered in Nazi camps, as well as the history of their persecution under German World War II occupation before the deportations began.

The museum ‘‘gives a face and a voice to the Jewish victims of persecution in the Netherlands’’, Dutch King Willem-Alexander said. It also ‘‘shows us the devastating consequences that antisemitism can have’’, he added.

‘‘That is why we must continue to be aware of how things began and how they went from bad to worse,’’ the king said. Earlier, he and the Israeli president visited Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue.

Herzog hailed the Netherlands’s initiative to create a new Holocaust museum amid what he said was rising antisemitism around the world.

‘‘At this pivotal moment in time, this institution sends a clear powerful statement,’’ Herzog said. ‘‘Remember! Remember the horrors born of hatred, antisemitism and racism, and never again allow them to flourish.’’

Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered amid tightened security at the Waterloo Square in central Amsterdam, near the museum and the synagogue, waving Palestinian flags, chanting ‘‘Never again is now’’, and demanding an end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

The protest leaders emphasised they were against Herzog’s presence, not the museum and what it commemorates.

‘‘For us Jews, these museums are part of our history, of our past,’’ said Joana Cavaco, an anti-war activist with the Erev Rav Jewish collective, addressing the crowd ahead of the ceremony. She added: ‘‘How is it possible that such a sacred space is being used to normalise genocide today?’’

Three-quarters of Dutch Jews were among the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis.

A pro-Palestinian Dutch organisation, The Rights Forum, called Herzog’s presence ‘‘a slap in the face of the Palestinians’’.

The Jewish Cultural Quarter that runs the museum said it was ‘‘profoundly concerned by the war and the consequences this conflict has had, first and foremost for the citizens of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank’’.

It said that it is ‘‘all the more troubling that the National Holocaust Museum is opening while war continues to rage. It makes our mission all the more urgent’’.