I've never attended the main Holocaust Memorial Service in Amsterdam; not once in my life. For many people, that statement alone will sound provocative, perhaps even unacceptable. For me, it's simply factual. I didn't grow up needing an annual ritual to explain what the Holocaust was or what it meant. It was already there. In family histories that shaped all of us. In conflicts that carried more weight than exchanges of solely words. In an inherited alertness to danger, moods shifting, and being watched.
Remembrance, for someone like me, was never something external, although I understand its value. It wasn't something you stepped into once a year and then stepped back out of, feeling morally ‘great’ about yourself for showing off. It indeed wasn’t undermining my self-worth to gain favour from a city leadership that works against common sense and the logical support of the community’s minimal interests. It was embedded, constant, and unavoidable. There's another reason I stayed away, well, there are many. But this one makes people uncomfortable.
I've always struggled with the mentality that dominates an obvious part of Jewish life in the Netherlands, particularly around Buitenveldert, a suburb in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I know that world from the inside. I went to school there. Oftentimes, I was treated appallingly within that community, in ways that were humiliating, dismissive, and cruel. That experience didn't make me stronger but wary. It taught me early how conformity is enforced, how difference is punished, and how quickly moral language is used to mask power.
Over the years, my discomfort didn't fade. Because what I keep encountering is a combination of insularity and loud certainty, a conviction paired with a startling lack of self-reflection, including a failure to learn from thousands of years of persecution – every single time in a different shape. A readiness to speak, explain, condemn, and represent. A complete blindness to how that posture looks from the outside, and what it provokes. What does it mean for the larger group?
I’m not part of that community anymore in terms of my daily life. I want the people to thrive, though, and I love certain people on an individual level. In any case, I haven't been active for a long time. That separation is real and deliberate. Back in those days, it cost me friendships, a sense of belonging, and any sense of safety within that group. And yet, none of that matters when things turn ugly in the world. Because where my cradle stood still counts to today. Whether I want it to or not, I can never get rid of it.
Since 7 October 2023, that fact has become inescapable. My life didn't just change politically or emotionally. After ten years, I closed my lodgings. Now, I'm preparing for what I want to do next. My sense of personal freedom in my city has been narrowed for years already, and I’m beyond fed up.
Meaning, I don’t go to at least 85% of the neighbourhoods of Amsterdam anymore, unless I really have to. Apart from safety and security, I don’t enjoy it because I don’t recognise the standards this city used to have. Plus, those neighbourhoods look ugly and dirty. This city used to have archaeological standards. However, I’m not (financially) running away from something but toward the sun, my standards, and choices made by my most authentic self.
In recent years, in the larger scheme of things, I’ve become a category and a projection surface. A stand in for other people's rage and grief in a ‘holy’ war, thus for dangerous ideology and religion. Jewish history is long enough to teach us one brutal lesson over and over again. In times of crisis, individuality collapses. The separate voice is erased. People don't see persons but groups. And groups are flattened into a single imagined will, a single imagined voice. The loudest voices are taken as representatives, even though they're not the ones I asked for. This is where my anger erupts.
I'm furious at those who endlessly invoke the image of dialogue, connection, and moral responsibility while casually appointing themselves as spokespeople for others and twisting facts around. They actively contribute to turning perpetrators into victims. They speak about the Jewish population in the Netherlands as if they've been officially authorised to do so. They haven't. No one asked them. No one consented.
They just network and take the power to do so, sucking up to the collective gatekeepers of the thinking establishment. And yet their words land on all of us! This is very different from speaking out as a critical thinker on my own behalf, not on behalf of the group. The consequences ripple outward. People like me carry them. People who didn't choose those positions. People who disagree. People who are permanently marked by their origin.
Now the world feels entitled to demand explanations, apologies, and positions from strangers like me. Antisemitism doesn't disappear. It just updates its manners. It remains as blunt and accusatory as ever. But those so-called representatives, who oftentimes don’t have the sharpest analytical minds or tools to conduct data analysis, work towards the downfall of us all. Meanwhile, the calls for European takeover by the perpetrators grow ever louder.
How can anyone with even a minimal degree of sound judgment ignore such explicit language and stated intent, and in doing so, place everyone at risk? The local leadership of Amsterdam using the Holocaust Memorial Service for different agendas and providing a sermon on totally different matters is one thing. But Jews now participating and doing the same is another. It’s unforgivable.
It’s about being reduced, again and again, to something I'm not. It’s seeing internal bravado and external hostility feed each other in a vicious loop. What enrages me most is how little responsibility those who brown-nose the most actually bear. No backbone means not being morally principled and awake.
There's a fundamental confusion at the heart of all this. Responsibility is being treated as collective by default as something inherited, automatic, and unavoidable. When it's smeared across entire populations, it loses meaning. When it’s supporting the erasure of Jewish history, culture, architecture, societal imprint, and more, it’s truly unforgivable.
So stop the nonsense claims, such as: first, it’s ‘us’ and now, it’s the immigrants. There’s enough hate already. And there’s enough data that showcases exactly what’s going on to counter the stupidity of the simple-minded. It’s never about just ‘immigrants’. And from what I recall, Jews didn’t behave the way certain immigrants behave. ‘We’ never jeopardised safety and security in the same manner. And that is data, in other words, the truth.
Now, groups such as the community that attends the annual Holocaust Memorial Service promise safety, clarity, and purpose. The price, however, shouldn't compromise the truth. History suggests this trade is dangerous again and again. My dignity doesn't live in imposed unity, but in the right to refuse representation. In the insistence on speaking only for myself, even when that's inconvenient, and even when it leaves me exposed. When I do say, I use data that never lies. And so far, ‘my antenna’ never got anything wrong in almost forty-one years of age.
Meanwhile, the ‘game of pushing’ continues; the climate in which the Holocaust Memorial Service took place. Suddenly, the city of Amsterdam, which has nothing to do with Gaza, needs a statue to remember, paid for with tourist taxes. I laughed out loud when I read that in the local newspaper.
Too bad I won’t pay any from this year onward, huh? Sorry, creeps of the political party I refuse to name and give space to, you won’t be able to punish me for something I’m only connected to because of my identity at birth. With your stupid proposal and ideology that has nothing to do with the city of Amsterdam… Oh yes, that’s not racism but clarity.
The evil is pushed in our society, but let’s all look away and turn the perpetrators into victims! It makes me want to vomit. Indeed, it’s part of the reason why I’ll leave this city as soon as I can. I told the chairman of the local organisation representing the interests of B&B entrepreneurs that they have a tough time ahead of them in the municipal councils.
Hope, justice, and truth shaping the near future lie in restraint and accuracy. In refusing to instrumentalise the worst trauma of the Holocaust for theocratic performance of taking over Europe – their words, not mine! Memory deserves seriousness. Dialogue requires humility. Neither survives self-appointment. And again, when perpetrators tell you what they want, believe them. Moreover, I’ll say it once more: data never lies, ever.
If this sounds harsh instead of common sense, it's because the stakes are real. I want a future. So do these ‘representatives’. But they are now actively contributing to no future at all. So allow me to close this rant with: shut the f*ck up a bit more often, and have some dignity. That isn't collective but singular. In my opinion, it's worth defending, even if doing so means standing alone. At least, it means standing outside of the lies that will outlive history. Unless we’re all killed, of course. I don’t think so.
