Annual Auschwitz commemoration remembers 59,500 Dutch Jews

AMSTERDAM - The newly declared January 27 UN Holocaust Remembrance Day has been observed in the Netherlands for decades. The annual Auschwitz commemoration in Amsterdam remembers the 60,000 Dutch Jews who were shipped to the death camp. Only 500 ever returned. At the 2006 commemoration in the Dutch capital, Amsterdam’s mayor Job Cohen reiterated that Auschwitz stands as a symbol for all the horrors and crimes committed in the 20th century. During the German occupation of the Netherlands, 1940-1945, a total of over 104,000 of the 130,000 strong Dutch Jewish community were killed in the death and concentration camps. The others mostly survived by hiding in guest homes and on farms.