The correct name is Hollandstan The capital city is Amsterdamabad Its port city is Rotterdamabad its official languages are Arabic and Urdu

Hey, jackass, he who forgets history is condemned to repeat it. So no, we will not "move on." We may forgive (that's hard enough), but we will never forget. Sorry, but genocide is just a little difficult to move past. The debt owed to the Jews by the world has no monetary value. What was taken from us can never be restored. And Israel is a thriving, highly successful and modern country which is the leading edge in quite a number of industries. Eat your heart out, Nazi swine.

Thanks for the translation; I've been looking for one. Best part? "Fighting against Russians." Only the Jewish ones, I fear. The idiot should change his name, not broadcast it with pride. There is nothing about what his great-uncle did of which he can be proud. But if it gives him cause for thanks, he can probably rest assured that there are a great many Jews who will now never forget the name "Dirk Siebe," either. May his name be cursed throughout eternity.

The Facebook group Like for Israel initiated publication of the remem berance of German soldiers and got 500 signatures to call on the local authorities of Vorden to stop the plann to remember German soldiers. But the mayor was not planned to stop. That they hurt the feeling of people in the Netherlands was less important then to create a image of reconciliation towards the Germans. Our group was on national TV to give a strong signal that this is not done!

25 k still isn't impressive out of 8 million. I think it did meantion 25k collaborators it appears to have been edited since i posted my comment. Or i simply misread it that's always possible. Still doesn't sound like such a considerable number to me, though it is higher than i thought.

How very big of you to forego an apology from someone who did nothing to someone who was never a victim. Assuming you're not an elderly woman in a retirement home suffering from senility, you weren't even alive during the holocaust so you have no right to demand anything. A lot of art work got stolen during the war and some of it have been returned, assuming someone can prove ownership of it. If someone can prove ownership they should try getting them back through the courts. As a Swede, i'm allowed to talk as much as i want. I can spell Axel Wenner-Gren, but you obviously can't. No one was ever able to prove he was a nazi sympathizer anyway. We were far from nazi collaborators, we were neutral. Even if we had been an ally of the nazis 70 years ago it wouldn't matter today. I don't see the dutch government committing any war crimes, maybe dutch civilians but if you want an apology from them you're out of luck, if they're true nazis i doubt they're sorry.

PLEASE USE PARAGRAPHS INDENT SEPARATIONS BY SKIPPING A LINE GIVE 'AIR SPACE' YOUR WRITINGS RUNS ONE THOUGHT INTO ANOTHER THOUGHT WHICH MAKES READING VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. AND DO NOT USE 'ONLY' CAPS. Do you see how difficult it is to read above?

I liked your last paragraph. So true. Let's call it poetic justice.

Thank you for your replies. First a minor correction: Gabriel, you quote "just a wrong choice" in #28. THere was no use of the word "just". That Dirk Siebe made a wrong choice, a big wrong choice, is the central piece of the poem, it is even the title of the poem. About the message of the poem, we all interpret texts differently. I immediately read it as a warning that it is easy to make the wrong choice and that I should not too lightly assume that I will make the right choice, should it come to that. It also stressed for me the importance of making the right choice. I am a historian. I know that people made choices for many reasons. Maybe Dirk Siebe joined the Waffen-SS out of sheer anti-semitism. Maybe he joined out of sheer anti-communism, which ran strong in the Netherlands in the 1930s and 1940s. The only source we now have, this testimony by his great-nephew, suggests that Dirk Siebe hoped to escape to a better life. Not impossible, considering that the Netherlands were struggling with poverty and high unemployment throughout the 1990s. I can imagine a naive young man, with perhaps personal issues, to then make this very wrong choice. Does that mean that I want to remember Dirk Siebe as a good man and forget about the side he chose? No. I want to remember him for who he was, for the very bad, criminal choice that he made and for the strength that he gave to a murderous regime. This was a lost life, a wasted life, a life devoted to a murderous ideal, and I want to learn from it and realize how easy it is for me, and for all of us, to make the wrong choice. Now, I do not know if it is good, or wise, to read out this poem during the ceremony service on the Dam in Amsterdam. Perhaps it is too sensitive an issue, too painful for some. But the poem has a strong, and important message, if only to learn from the past and not repeat the crimes and mistakes of the past. So perhaps we can find another place to apply it. Perhaps in the class room, to discuss with young children what happened during the war and why people make such wrong choices? Perhaps then the next generation can learn from it, and, who knows, avoid making such a wrong choice should it ever come to that again.

Brits and Americans are the last one who have something to forgive or forget.Maybe you should look on your own hands.The Empire caused by greed the US dropping nukes like sweets.I don't think you're in the position to forgive someone you can just ask for forgivness

The only miserable jackass is Sarah of #32. Can you do anything but name calling? Love to read your desperate idiot bubbling, the on and on rambling about the place (israel) that is a dead branch and a burden on the world. Israel's days are numbered, just sit back and watch it self destruct.

I don't have time right now to respond to your entire post. You may note that the sentence 'just a wrong joice' does not appear in my translation of the poem. I used the quotation marks incorrectly, I grant you. It was my intention to share that I take the overall tone of this rag to imply just that, and I still believe so. You wrote 'Maybe he joined out of sheer communism'. Please consider that anti-communism and anti-semitism at the time were difficult to seperate, since many in Europe assumed that Communism and Judaism were pretty much the same thing. I have made one misstake in translating the poem: It should read: 'mommy of eleven children, FOUR of whom are in the resistance', not eleven. Sorry folks.

Dear Gabriel, You are correct that anti-semitism and anti-communism often went hand in hand. Often, but not always. Frankly, we do not know why Dirk Siebe made the choices that he did. So let us not assume that we know why he did it. It could have been antisemitism, it could have been anticommunism, it could have been a search for adventure, it could have been a relationship gone wrong. We don't know. What we know is that he made a very, very wrong choice, he chose the side of the Nazis. But does that make it right for us to remove him from history? To pretend that people never make wrong and stupid choices? Much better that we are humble ourselves, realize that we too might easily make stupid, wrong choices, and remember all facets of history and all those who played a role, good or bad, and reflect on their choices. Perhaps we then can do things a little bit better. Let us hope so! With respect, Harmen

We know dutch big mouth no guts Just remember Srebrenica lesson: Never allow dutch to protect you