Monday 4 May is National Remembrance Day and Tuesday 5 May is Liberation Day in the Netherlands. Due to the spread of the coronavirus, stricter measures have been taken and all local festivities and events have been canceled. Normally, on May 4 there would be a whole delegation of councilors and mayor and public at wreath laying in various cities in the Netherlands, now wreaths are still being laid, but without an audience.
The National Remembrance Day on Dam Square in Amsterdam will continue without an audience, it says National Committee. King Willem-Alexander will also give a speech during the Remembrance Day. Gerdi Verbeet, chairman of the National Committee, says that the Commemoration of the Dead takes place everywhere and that it is commemorated everywhere in the Netherlands and not only on Dam Square in Amsterdam. In this difficult time of crisis, she hopes that everyone in the Netherlands can stop to commemorate and honor people who died in the war violence in World War II.
This year, May 5 would be a very special day, this would be 75e times when we celebrate our freedom. How bizarre it is actually that we cannot celebrate this Liberation Day in freedom because of the corona crisis, because we are dealing with all kinds of freedom-restricting measures. In the media we read that in Ede on May 5 old army vehicles of Keep Them Rolling (KTR) would drive through the Utrecht ridge towards Utrecht, this is the same route that the Canadians drove in 1945 during Operation Faust. This cannot therefore continue, says Johan Goudkuil
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