Commemoration as we do on National Remembrance Day is not only a sign of respect for past suffering, but also a means of keeping society together. That writes Geerten Waling.
‘This country was once a very nice country, where it was nice to live, where everyone was connected,’ said actor Huub Stapel recently in Op1, where he was co-initiator of the ‘orange yarmulke’ for mayors on King’s Day, as statement against anti-Semitism.
Whether this country was ever really that nice depends on who you ask. But the feeling behind Stapel’s words is recognizable. Can this divided, bitter society still hold together?
A successful nation
The intentions to disrupt the May 4 commemoration with noise demonstrations, including by anti-Israel fanatics, suggest otherwise.
In the lecture What is a nation? (1882, published in translation by Elsevier Boeken in 2013), the French liberal Ernest Renan answers his own question by naming two basic ingredients of a successful nation.
‘One is the common possession of a rich legacy of memories; the other is the present feeling of solidarity, the desire to live together, the will to give new value to the inheritance that we have received together.’
The legacy of The War is not a pretty one: capitulation, betrayal, hatred, powerlessness, misery. Sadness that cannot be glossed over with stories of heroic resistance from those few brave ones. Yet that legacy has provided generations with a shared cultural language and, above all, a moral framework. This is most strongly expressed in three words: never again.
‘The sacrifices we have made and the setbacks we have endured determine our patriotism,’ Renan thought, echoing the credo of ancient Sparta: ‘We are what you once were. We will be what you are now.”
Remembrance Day old-fashioned?
Renan was easy to say. For centuries, shared successes and setbacks have helped generation after generation to achieve greater unity and solidarity. Even in the Second World War, the (idealized) memory of the Dutch struggle, led by William of Orange, against the tyranny of the Spanish king, was like a beacon in a pitch-dark night. Certainly Queen Wilhelmina in London drew strength and inspiration from the memory of her distant ancestor.
Imagine that again in 2024. Almost eighty years after the liberation, every national celebration and commemoration, from Sinterklaas to Budget Day to King’s Day, suddenly seems old-fashioned, ridiculous or downright suspicious.
It is actually special that the National Remembrance Day on May 4 at 8 o’clock in the evening on Dam Square, together with hundreds of smaller commemorations throughout the country, could become such a fixed and solemn ritual. Obviously, that was never the case, as we know.
Fighting for Remembrance Day
It would be appropriate for the divided and individualistic Netherlands, in which indifference is disguised as ‘tolerance’ and normlessness as ‘freedom’, to slowly abandon May 4 as a national ritual. When the last witness of The War has died – and especially when the shared ethical framework that ’40-’45 gave us has sunk into the moral fog of the 21st century.
Still, May 4 is worth it. Yes, the commemoration of the past also fits on a local scale – and also in a European context or larger. But that exceptional national ritual on May 4, that moment when anyone who wishes can share in those two minutes of serenity, contemplation and respect for those who fell for freedom…?
That is something to fight for. Not only for the past, but also for the future.
