The mayor of Amsterdam apologizes for the role of City in the Holocaust
Eight years from the end of the Second World War, Mayor Femke Halsma of Amsterdam apologized on Thursday for the role of the city in the persecution of his Jewish residents during the Holocaust, in a rare recognition of a collective moral failure by a leader in the city."The Government of Amsterdam was, when it counted, not heroic, not determined and not merciful," he said. "And his Jewish residents are horribly abandoned."Mrs. Halsema issued the apologies in a speech in a commemoration of the Holocaust at the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a theater that the Nazis turned into an important deportation center from which many of the Jews of Amsterdam were sent to the concentration camps in the Netherlands and in other parts of Europe.Before the Holocaust, Amsterdam, the Dutch capital, had 80,000 Je...