Speech by Mayor Bezuijen at Commemoration of the Dead 2024

What would ík do....?
What would ík do, if I saw my neighbors being taken away,
If I am forced to do acts that I find appalling,
If I am not allowed to be who I am?

What would I do?
What would you do?
What would you do?

Today we don't have to think about questions like these for long.
No, of course we don't do anything that goes against our conscience.
Why should we?
But we have easy talk.
We live in freedom.
In fact, we are so used to this that we often don't realize how privileged we are.
The thought of how things were should therefore never be lost.

For five years, the Netherlands suffered under the Nazi terror.
It isolated, robbed and humiliated the Jewish community.
We recently saw how this was done in the very impressive TV series about the Jewish Council.
It tells the true story of the refined way in which the German occupier forced our Jewish compatriots... yes, forced them to cooperate in their deportation.
This deportation foreshadowed the murder of an estimated 102,000 Dutch Jews.
The system was criminal.
Those who refused risked death -
not only of themselves, but also of their spouse and children.
What would I have done in such a situation...?

The Second World War also claimed many other victims.
The Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and many others were also persecuted and murdered because they were who they were.
There were people who had the courage to resist.
Many paid a high, yes, sometimes the highest price for this. The population lived in fear,
Moreover, a few months before the liberation, a famine struck the big cities.
During the Hunger Winter, Zoetermeer too, saw large groups of desperate people pass by.
They visited the farms, hoping to get some food.
It was terrible.

Next year it will be exactly 80 years since the Canadians, the British, the Americans, the Poles and the troops of other allied countries liberated the Netherlands.
Since then we have been allowed to say and write what we want and what we think,
since then we have not had to be afraid,
since then we have lived in freedom.

Of course we are going to celebrate, but not without remembering the indescribable suffering that has also taken place here and elsewhere.
Today we commemorate the civilians and soldiers who have died or been killed since the outbreak of World War II
in the Netherlands,
in Europe,
in Southeast Asia
or anywhere in the world
in war situations and during peacekeeping missions.

Elsewhere in the world - and also in Europe, just a few hours' flight from here - wars are still raging.
That too makes us realize how precious and how fragile our freedom is.
Because freedom is not just something.
Freedom does not mean that I can shout whatever I want and you have to listen.
Freedom does not mean that we can judge each other without any obligations.
The 'v' of freedom is also the first letter of the word 'responsibility'.
Our freedom is precious and fragile.
Our freedom requires maintenance, time and again.
We must treat it with care.
We must continue to make an effort.

What would you do,
what would you do,

What would I do if that freedom were taken away from us and there was once again every reason to be afraid?
Do I rebel,
or do I shrug my shoulders and think, oh well, it won't be that bad?

At the Old Church we just laid a wreath at the grave of honor of the American pilot John McCormick and the resistance fighters Jacob Leendert van Rij, Jan Hoorn and Cornelis van Eerden.
They made a choice, just like so many others, here and everywhere.
What would I have done if I had been in their shoes?
It's the question we have to keep asking ourselves.
It's not easy to answer it, because our situation cannot be compared to that of those days.
But try it, go back in time with your ... go back in time with your thoughts.

What would I do?

Put yourself in the circumstances of World War II and ask that question.
The difficult consideration that may then follow makes us realize all the more how free and how privileged we are in our time.
We therefore commemorate the victims with the greatest reverence
and realize what we do not... what we must never forget:
our freedom is very precious, we must cherish it like a treasure.

Thank you.