Good on Geert Wilders for calling out his country's Jew-hatred during World War II. It bears repeating that Dutch collaboration with the Nazis led to the extermination of over 95% of Dutch Jews during the Holocaust. In 1941, there were 154,887 Jews in Holland. In 1947 there were 14,346 (*Census).
Where is the circumspection? This is Wilders' point, no doubt. The Holocaust, while it was a German initiative, was carried out by every nation in Europe, save for the Danes. Denmark saved its Jews.
There were Dutch Nazis, Polish Nazis -- Europe as a continent decided it was a good idea to get rid of the Jews. Holland had the highest rate of collaboration with the Nazis, higher than any other country in Western Europe. 95% of Dutch Jews were murdered.
The lesson that Holland and Europe should have taken away from the Holocaust was that they were evil and they have to be good. And that is the lesson they had to learn. But they didn't. They have to be able and willing to make moral distinctions and stand up for the good and fight evil and that is something the Europeans refuse to do.
Germany, Holland et al decided to embrace madness and evil as their central unifying characteristic under the Nazis. That was what the problem was.
Subsequently they took all the wrong lessons from World War II and are applying them (i.e. nationalism is bad therefore EU transnational gobbledygook is good), while ignoring the only lesson that's really relevant from their defeat in WWII, which is that you have to choose good and defend good and fight with the intention of defeating evil.
This is important at such a time where we are witnessing a return to that deadly pattern, as Holland and most of Europe passively submit to the evils of Islamic imperialism and anti-semitism in much the same way.
The answer is not to fetishize six million dead Jews but to stand against the current annihilationist ideology and support Israel.
Wilders: Dutch government should apologize for ‘passive’ attitude to WWII deportation of Jews
By Associated Press, Wednesday, January 4, 12:31 PM
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders is calling on the government to apologize for the country’s “passive” response to the mass deportations of Jews by Nazi occupiers during World War II.
The move is likely to re-ignite debate about Dutch attitudes to the wartime persecution of the country’s Jewish population.
Wilders wrote to Prime Minister Mark Rutte Wednesday asking if he would apologize based on comments by two former government ministers in a recently published book about postwar reparations to Jews.
One of the former ministers, Els Borst, says in the book “Judging the Netherlands” that she believes the response by the Dutch wartime government in exile would have been tougher had Nazis been deporting Catholics or Protestants.
