Who we think about during Remembrance Day. ‘I am more concerned with the concept of silence’

aWho do we think of on May 4, when just after eight o’clock the sounds of the tattoo blow away on Dam Square? To ‘our own dead’, Mayor Femke Halsema said last week. Or also the current ‘violence in the world’? Yes, said Andrée van Es, chairman of the Amsterdam 4 and 5 May Committee, because if you ‘don’t make room for that, there comes a time when your commemoration becomes unbelievable’.

The bickering over this question is as old as Remembrance Day itself. Initially, mainly fallen resistance heroes and soldiers were commemorated, then veterans of other wars claimed their place, and it was only decades later that more attention was paid to the fate of the victims of the Holocaust.

The memorandum grew over the years and now reads: ‘During National Remembrance we commemorate all – civilians and military personnel – who died or were murdered in the Kingdom of the Netherlands or anywhere else in the world; both during the Second World War and the colonial war in Indonesia, as well as in war situations and subsequent peace operations.’

Each era brought new victims to commemorate, and new criticisms of them. The fear of dilution is always great. It has become a ‘hodgepodge commemoration’, wrote sociologist Jolande Withuis in 2012 de Volkskrant, and that was not meant positively. Because: ‘He who commemorates everything commemorates nothing. The implicit message is that the Second World War in itself has too little weight to commemorate.’

Banal reality

You could also say that it is somewhat ridiculous to want to control what people think about on May 4. “Thinking is free,” Halsema also said on Tuesday News hour. Local committees may place their own emphasis, but the mayor will reflect on the dead ‘in our own wars’ during the National Remembrance Day. She does not mention the war in Gaza in her speech on Saturday. The debate is ‘too politicized’ for that.

That there is little point in forcing people to think about specific wars or victims is also proven by a (non-representative) survey that de Volkskrant distributed among readers. To the question ‘who or what are you specifically thinking about on May 4?’ for example, one reader replied: ‘The taking away of rights of homosexuals all over the world. The lust for power of dictators’.

Another thinks of ‘anyone who has experienced genocide and hatred. Rwanda, Jews in the Netherlands, gays in Russia, etc.’ Yet another thinks on a slightly more abstract level: ‘Especially about the shame that humanity forgets so quickly and continues to make the same mistakes.’ Or: ‘What scapegoat theories (can) lead to.’ Or, completely abstract: ‘I have no concrete thoughts’.

And then there is the more banal reality, such as a mind that cannot be guided by the supreme moment. Thanks to ‘a chaotic brain’, reader Floor van der Have (27) is ‘not always successful’ in thinking about war. ‘I am more concerned with the concept of ‘silence’. I see it more as an expression of respect: I keep quiet for two minutes. Thinking about war comes up again at other times.’

Free and versatile

Very honest, and private. But in the comments of readers of de Volkskrant constants can also be discerned (which may also be distorted by the fact that young readers are underrepresented).

Many think of family members and friends who died in World War II. For example, reader Juus Kreiken (74) writes – in heartbreaking terms – thinking ‘of the pain and sorrow of my mother, of all those I never knew, of the moment of their suffocation, then I see my nephews of 8 and 11 Then I stand again, as in my nightmares, next to my naked grandmother in the gas chamber.’

One third of people think about family and acquaintances, according to the National Freedom Survey. But it turns out that in those two minutes they can also think of several groups at the same time: 83 percent think of all Dutch victims of the Second World War. And previous studies have already shown that a large majority also thinks about war victims from other countries. This is how we commemorate Volkskrantreaders this year will see the victims in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza.

So (re)thinking is free, multi-faceted and cannot be pinned down. The wars abroad, near and further away, also seem to increase the importance of Remembrance Day. More people have realized in recent years that freedom cannot be taken for granted, as shown by the National Freedom Survey. In 2020, 49 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: ‘Our freedom is becoming less and less self-evident.’ In 2024 it will be 65 percent.

The fear that another war could break out here has been cited more often as a reason to commemorate since 2020: then it was 45 percent of respondents, but that share has now risen to 58 percent. It is not known whether these gloomy visions of the future also lead to more thoughts about perpetrators during the two minutes of silence. But perpetrators are being considered, that much is clear. About 30 percent do it, according to the National Freedom Survey from a number of years ago.

So is one Volkskrant-reader. “Strangely enough, not with anger,” she says. ‘Especially because it is becoming so clear today that many people are not averse to extreme ideas. People are aggrieved, angry and also afraid. I think about how easy it is to gradually become an offender. That may provide satisfaction at the moment, but will lead to endless regrets later.’

Connectedness

Not all Dutch people find Remembrance Day equally important, according to the National Freedom Survey. Of all Dutch people, 78 percent say that May 4 appeals to them. This applies a lot less to Dutch people of Turkish and Moroccan origin (43 percent) and of other non-Western origins (60 percent). In addition, people over 65 attach more value to the commemoration (91 percent) than young people (71 percent).

Of all migrant groups, Dutch people of Indonesian descent are the most positive about the National Commemoration (82 percent). They are even less indifferent to the ceremony than Dutch people without a migration background (although the difference is not significant). The changed memorandum, which has explicitly mentioned the colonial war in Indonesia since 2022, is appreciated by that group.

Residents with a non-Western background participate less often in May 4 and 5. If they do, they fully associate those days with feelings of national solidarity. According to researcher and historian Esther Captain, they then connect the Netherlands with the freedoms that can be celebrated here. That leads to a ‘click’, especially if they or their family witnessed war. “That is why they left their native country,” said Captain.

The figures show that the two minutes of silence is the cork on which the entire ceremony floats. 87 percent of respondents say that the silence appeals to them. This means that the minutes of silence are preferred to the playing of the national anthem (75 percent positive), the reading in De Nieuwe Kerk (33 percent) or the speech on Dam Square (51 percent) – this year by author Dido Michielsen and human rights activist Lilian Gonçalves -Ho Kang You.

Why is it that silence, the apparent nothingness, that is so appealing? One of the researchers of the National Committee 4 and 5 May referred to Tony Walter, the British professor emeritus of death studies at the University of Barth. In complex societies, Walter argues, words occasionally have an exclusionary rather than a connecting effect. Silence is sometimes the strongest way to convey a message.