(Jewish Group) Dutch prime minister apologizes for how government failed its Jews during Holocaust
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized for how his kingdom’s wartime government failed its Jews, a first by a sitting prime minister
Rutte, on Sunday during a Holocaust commemoration, offered “apologies for the government of those days, while the last survivors are still with us.” That government, he said, “failed is in its responsibility as provider of justice and security” for Dutch Jews.
Rutte, in power since 2010, has resisted calls for issuing such an apology, including by Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs in 2015 and by the Party for Freedom in 2012.
Rutte in 2012 cited the absence of “broadly supported counsel from those involved or objective information” that would merit an apology.
Some 75 percent of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands before the Holocaust were murdered by German Nazis and their local collaborators.
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