THE HAGUE, July 9 (Xinhua) -- The Amsterdam court on Tuesday ordered that the construction of a monument with the names of the 102,000 Dutch victims of the Holocaust in Amsterdam should go ahead and denied the objection by local residents.
The municipality of Amsterdam in 2017 already approved to build the monument at the Weesperplantsoen, near the center of Amsterdam. However, residents near the location complained about the size of the monument and the fact that they had no say in the decision process. Therefore they went to court.
The judge on Tuesday denied the claims of the residents and stated that the importance of a national monument for Dutch Holocaust victims who have never been given a grave rightly outweighs the objections of residents. The construction will now probably start on October 1 this year.
The monument is an initiative by the Nederlands Auschwitz Comite, an organization for Dutch victims of the Holocaust and relatives. It includes the names of all 102,000 Jews, Roma and Sinti deported from the Netherlands by Nazi Germany in World War II between 1940 and 1945, who died in concentration camps.
Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind, known for creating the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site in New York, designed the monument. It is the first monument for all Holocaust victims from the Netherlands.
