A large screen was set up for the crows to view the speeches and ceremonies.
The famous monument in Dam Square, the center of Amsterdam.
A military band plays in the background.
A soldier looks onward.
Local scouts participate in the ceremony.
Hundreds of people lines up all day to lay flowers at the base of the wreaths.
Soldiers stand at attention as a news crew films from a platform above.
National guard type soldiers march foward.
People wait to pay their respects.
Some people remember who helped free Europe 50 plus years ago.
Soldiers stand at attention in ceremonial uniforms.
Security was tight due to the number of dignitaries that appeared to pay respects.
Single file lines formed as onlookers pay respect.
Local scouts hand out flowers to each of the persons to be placed upon a wreath.
The youth of the Netherlands is indoctrinated into the realities of the last century.
Young scouts volunteered to hand out carnations.
A group of soldiers stand at attention.
A semi circle of wreaths lay before the monument.
Dam Square at twilight.
Biking over the Amstel River.
There were a series of memorial concerts throughout the city and country.
Freedom cannot be bought
The Netherlands suffered five long years under German occupation in World War II and commemorates those who fell with an emotional two-minute silence on 4 May. The nation also celebrates its liberation on 5 May.
Invasion and occupation
Remembrance
Day
Liberation
Day
Freedom
cannot be bought
Celebrations
Do you have
the day off?
The German army invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940 in an attack that culminated in the aerial bombardment of Rotterdam on 14 May that destroyed the city centre. The Netherlands quickly surrendered and remained occupied until Canadian and other Allied forces fully liberated the country on 5 May 1945.
There were 120,000 Jews living in the Netherlands at the start of World War II, including many thousands of German Jews who sought sanctuary from the Nazis. But 107,000 were deported to German occupation camps and only 5,000 returned alive after the war.
Among the dead was Anne Frank.
The
teenage girl became the human face of the Dutch Holocaust with the
posthumous publication of her diary. She wrote the diary while she and her
family hid in an Amsterdam canal house from July 1942 until they were
betrayed and arrested in August 1944.
Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945. Her father, Otto, was the only member of the family to survive. He published the "Diary of Anne Frank" in 1947 and she soon became a household name across the globe.
The Anne Frank Foundation was established on 3 May 1957 to save Anne Frank's house from demolition and three years later the museum was officially opened at the Prinsengracht apartment.
There were thousands more who died in the war: 2,300 soldiers and 2,000 civilians who died during the German invasion; the 102,000 Jewish victims; the 30,000 Dutchmen who died in Germany as forced labourers; the 23,000 civilians who died in bombings and other military actions and the 20,000 who died in the still occupied north of the country in 1944 in a bitterly cold winter.
The list also includes the several hundred people who died as political prisoners on Dutch soil, plus those transported to Germany. More than half of the 11,000 Dutch involved in resistance died and German reprisals killed more than 2,000 civilians.
These were bloody times for the Netherlands.
The Germans officially surrendered on 5 May 1945 but the southern half of the country had been liberated in September 1944. On 12 August 1945 Japan surrendered, liberating the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia).
The Netherlands officially honours its World War II victims and those who have fallen in wars since then on 4 May, an occasion known as Herdenkingsdag (Remembrance Day).
This year's commemoration will start with a special ceremony in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, but its highlight will be the ceremony at Dam Square as Queen Beatrix lays a wreath at the national war memorial.
At 8pm, a two-minute silence will be observed across the country, after which Amsterdam Mayor and member of the Jewish community, Job Cohen, will give a short speech. The Amsterdam ceremony will be broadcast live on NOS television stations 1, 2 and 3.
Six other wreaths will be placed at the base of the war monument and the 17-year-old winner of the youth Remembrance Day national poetry competition, Branko van Hulst, of Heemskerk, will read the poem Oorlog voorbij (War is Over). Gathered dignitaries, including survivors of WWII, will then file past the war monument to conclude the ceremony.
Such ceremonies are a reminder that WWII had a tragic and lasting impact on many people who have spent years trying to come to terms with their past. Dozens of organisations have been established for people to meet and support each other in processing problems and sharing in the search for their own identity.
But the website www.oorlogsgetuigen.nl says the future of commemoration in the Netherlands belongs to the young, with the results of a survey showing that today's youth attach more importance to commemoration than the generation of 40 and 50-year-olds.
It also says that with such a high level of youth interest, the future of commemoration is guaranteed, even when the first generation is no longer present.
The conclusion of the Remembrance Day ceremony in Amsterdam marks the start of Liberation Day (Bevrijdingsdag) festivities and war veterans will gather in Wageningen, where the historic surrender was signed, and parade through the city in celebration of the anniversary of regained liberty.
Commemorations on 5 May will be of an entirely different character to the events on 4 May. It is day to rejoice.
Each city and village in the Netherlands organises its own festivities and the day culminates with a concert on the Amstel River in Amsterdam, which is broadcast live on television. Queen Beatrix and government ministers will attend the concert.
The theme of this year's 4 and 5 May commemoration is Vrijheid is niet te koop (Freedom is not to buy) and is designed to spread the message that the population shares liberty with each other and that the freedom of one cannot come without the liberty of another.
The National 4 and 5 May Committee writes that the motto focuses on the differences in wealth and the tension, migration and wars that stem from unequal personal freedoms. Prosperity and freedom is stimulated through an open economy, free trade and international co-operation, it says.
But it also questions who is ultimately responsible for a fair division of freedom and wealth, and states that money cannot buy freedom in lands suffering from war and oppression.
It places a retrospective focus on the freedom lost and the freedom the Netherlands regained during World War II — the type of freedom that is priceless.
In Amsterdam, the Liberation Day festival will be centered on Museumplein where a host of bands — including Trio Hasjee, Slampampers, Candy Dulfer, Soulvation and Ish — will perform from midday until 10pm.
From 1-11pm, a pop concert will be held in Rotterdam at the Grotekerkplein. The event features FoolMoonBand, BS1, Do, VSOP, Magnapop, Caesar, Longplayers, Rank 1 and Dj Montana. Other activities will also occur in and around the Laurenskerk featuring music, dancing and storytelling.
In Utrecht, the festival will be held at the Smakkelaarsveld near Central Station and will feature on two stages the bands DAC, New Cool Collective, Supersub, Dolf Jansen, Relax, DJ Tommy, Green Lizard, Rude Rich and the Highnotes Cowboy Billy Boem. Bands, including No-Madz, Cuata and La Troupe Saaba, will perform on the other stage.
The national tour artists, Di-rect, Within Temptation and Dolf Jansen, will be transported to various festivals by helicopter on 5 May to perform all across the country.
For information about other festivals and celebrations around the Netherlands, the website www.bevrijdingsfestivals.nl is your best bet.
A royal decree on 24 September 1990 ruled that 5 May is a national holiday, but that does not mean you do not have to go work. The government decided that employers and employees must come to their own agreement.
Employees do not have to work if their workplace agreement (CAO) stipulates that 5 May is a public holiday. If no agreement has been made, or the business does not have a CAO, the employer decides whether employees do not have to work.
Many CAOs state that 5 May is only a public holiday every fives years (2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 etc) and it is advisable to check with your employer before taking the day off.
Government employees usually have a holiday on 5 May, in cases where this allows, and primary and secondary schools can decide whether to take a holiday. In most regions of the Netherlands, 5 May will fall in the May vacation until 2007 and students and teachers will be on holiday anyway.
April 2003
More information on the Remembrance and Liberation Days can be found at the website: www.4en5mei.nl