The 35th anniversary of the February 1941 strike, when a large portion of the population of Amsterdam and neighboring towns went on strike to protest the Nazi deportation of the 400 Dutch-Jewish youths to concentration camps, was marked here last week. As has happened every year since the end of World War II, the gesture of popular resistance to Nazi brutality was commemorated by a parade headed by the Mayor and Aldermen of Amsterdam.
They placed a wreath at the statue of “The Stevedor,” symbolic of the strike in this port city, The statue is located in Jonas Daniel Meyer Square which was the center of Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter before the war and where the 400 deportees were rounded up.
They were the first Dutch Jews sent to their death by the German occupiers of Holland. The deportation was in reprisal for an attack on a group of Dutch Nazis. The strike, which occurred on Feb. 25-26, 1941, was a failure insofar as it did not prevent the deportation and led to even more victors anti-Jewish measures. But it served as a symbol of Dutch resistance. Among the thousands who filed past “The Stevedor” monument and placed wreaths were members of the Moroccan Workers Committee in Holland.
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