The celebration of 75 years of freedom in Westerbork has been postponed for the fourth time.
“Celebrating a freedom festival, while elsewhere in Europe a country and its inhabitants are in dire circumstances and die due to a war, do not go together”, the organizing foundation said to the newspaper. RTV Drenthe.
The Westerbork: village of freedom foundation was established in 2016 especially to “work on a positive connotation with regard to the name Westerbork”. The village is often identified with the nearby Camp Westerbork, which was a transit camp during World War II. From there, nearly 107,000 Jews, 247 Sinti and Roma and a few dozen resistance fighters were deported to German concentration camps.
The Westerbork Foundation had planned a large-scale celebration of 75 years of freedom for April 2020, with theater performances, skydiving from a historic Dakota and a big party. The association Keep Them Rolling would come with old army vehicles.
Wrong associations
But after the event had already been postponed three times due to corona, it will be canceled again in April, now because of the war in Ukraine. “War and the celebration of freedom are so at odds with each other that they are incompatible,” the organization said.
Keep Them Rolling also has the Drentse Liberty Tour cancelled, which would have been in the same period. Dick Koole of the organization involved in keeping historic military vehicles running, calls “It is inappropriate to commemorate and celebrate the liberation of the Netherlands with a column of more than 200 military vehicles. It could evoke wrong associations.”
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