One of the most solemn days in The Netherlands is May 4, the day that the Dutch remember all the victims of World War II. I remember the day very well for my father always took me to the remembrance ceremonies on a little square not far from our home which was appropriately called Square 40-45, as the war in Holland lasted from 1940 to 1945. It was always a very sober ceremony, some music, a speech by the mayor, veterans and survivors placing some wreaths in front of the statue on the square and a silence of two minutes followed by the Dutch national anthem. It was always deeply moving and standing there as a child I could feel the pain and sorrow of those who suffered and died under Nazism. Or so I thought.

I remember one time, I must have been about ten years old, that I was standing next to an older man who was there together with a younger man who I had seen before in our hometown. The younger man was probably somewhere in his thirties, had very dark, black hair and was mentally challenged or so it seemed to me. The older man started talking to me and I could not really follow what he was saying. I just couldn’t, I was paying attention to the ceremony and I always get somewhat uneasy if strangers engage me in a conversation I am not looking for, even as a child I had an issue with that. So, all I did was smile to the man, nodding yes, and thinking: “whatever”. As he talked on it became evident that he was talking about the mentally handicapped younger man standing next to us. All of a sudden he cut right to the heart of the matter, pointing to the young man and said to me: “they made him watch his parents’ execution”. I froze completely and I instantly pictured this poor soul having to watch the brutal killing of his father and mother. I also was deeply embarrassed for trying to dismiss the old man while trying to focus on the ceremony. The only thing he was trying to do was share his grief for I assume he had adopted the young man, and explain to me as a representative of the younger generation what had happened during those dreadful terror laden years. He gave me enough to think about during the two minutes of silence that followed.

I wanted to share this with you as Dutch newspapers last week reported that Moroccan youths had disturbed a number of these ceremonies throughout the country earlier this week. In one instance by throwing eggs onto participants and in another by playing football with the wreaths. The absolute bottom was reached when during the ceremony in one of Amsterdam’s suburbs a number of these youths shouted “we must kill the Jews”. This under any circumstance is a grieving and depraved comment, but to shout it out in a city from which 100,000 Jews disappeared never to return during the most sensitive of commemorations is beyond belief and it was no doubt perpetrated on purpose. I am not writing this as yet another piece seeking to provide further evidence of the ever growing levels of anti-Semitism Europe, although that would certainly warrant a post on this site. What happened last week goes well beyond anti-Semitism.

What happened last week is evidence of a complete disconnect of one group of people with society at large. The disconnect manifests itself in a manner that not only betrays a complete disregard for a culture’s sacred institutions, it also reveals a willingness to inflict further pain upon that society during a moment of grief and sorrow. You have to wonder how deeply some have fallen to produce such reckless venom and indeed wonder whether any of these individuals are beyond moral repair. We know that a lot of these groups have essentially become so marginalized that they are excellent targets for terrorist recruitment. But more than potential recruits, they are representing a domestic decay that is eating away at the normative foundations on which many western societies are built, as their despicable behavior may very well (and it very often has) find its way into other groups in society. Juxtaposing my memories of remembrance day with the evil defiling that took place last week, I came to realize that there is a very long way to go to stop the moral unraveling that is taking place in Western Europe today.