Toespraak minister Sterk bij de internationale conferentie ‘Remember the past, Secure the Future: A Call to Action’.
Minister Sterk hield op 19 maart 2026 op het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken in Den Haag een toespraak bij de internationale conferentie ‘Remember the past, Secure the Future: A Call to Action’. De toespraak is in het Engels.
Good afternoon everyone,
Every Monday, the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant features an interview with a centenarian.
Almost all of them tell stories about the Second World War.
Some talk about the resistance activities they or their loved ones performed.
Others recall forced labour.
Their fear of air raids.
Almost everyone talks about the hunger they experienced. Some tell of brothers or fathers who were arrested, executed or deported.
And a few of those interviewed, are themselves camp survivors.
Last year, the paper spoke to holocaust-survivor Elly Vleeschhouwer-Blocq.
In the space of only two-and-a-half years, she survived seven concentration camps, as did her Jewish husband Wim.
After the Netherlands was liberated, a silence descended.
Perhaps this was also the case in other countries.
Forget and move on, was the idea.
Elly and Wim stayed quiet too.
Just like many people who had resisted the Nazis.
People who’d been arrested because they were Jew, Sinti, or Roma.
People sent to camps because of their political convictions.
Fortunately, a lot has changed since then.
With the passing of the years the silence was broken and there was increasing - international – attention for the horrors that took place in the concentration and extermination camps.
Survivors and volunteers worked together in international and national committees to preserve what was left of the camps spread across Europe.
Children and grandchildren have now often taken over the baton.
With the help of many people, these camps were turned into memorial sites.
Places where you can learn about the ugliest chapter of 20th-century history in Europe.
Each of those former camps is now a silent witness in a complicit landscape.
Sombre places, where voices are hushed,
and the whisper of the breeze sounds like a gale-force wind.
A few years ago I visited the concentration camp Dachau with my children.
I wanted to show them what happens when you give free rein to intolerance.
It made a deep impression on all of us.
It’s one thing to learn about what happens when hatred triumphs.
It’s quite another to walk on the ground where so many people were killed for incomprehensible reasons.
Now that the last remaining eyewitnesses are passing away, the importance of these places – and your role in preserving them – only grows bigger.
Because each former camp shows where dehumanisation,
the death of democracy and the rule of law can lead.
So I’m honoured to be able to meet with you – international camp committees, international organisations and Dutch organisations – at this early point in my term as minister.
I would also like to extend a warm welcome to the ambassadors of the Czech Republic, Germany and Austria.
It is important that we meet here.
Because commemorating the Second World War means so much more than just remembering.
It means defending the foundations of democracy and the rule of law.
I just told you a little about Elly Vleeschhouwer-Blocq and her husband Wim.
All her life, Elly stayed silent about the horrors she experienced as an 18-year-old girl.
But three years ago, she felt the time had come to tell her story.
She saw antisemitism flaring up again, and decided that speaking up was more important than staying silent.
She wants people to understand what happens when you choose hatred over love.
When you choose tyranny over democracy.
When you make someone inferior to yourself.
I think that’s a message that unites us here today.
It’s crucial to preserve those places where you are keeping history alive, so we can spread that message and people can learn about the Second World War.
It’s crucial to keep telling the stories of that war.
And given the tectonic shifts we’re seeing in global geopolitics, it may be more important than ever.
All over our continent, we see that the freedoms we once took for granted are no longer so certain.
That people are being dehumanised.
That they – once again – feel it’s dangerous to be who they are.
The incidents that took place last weekend in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Liège were a painful reminder of this trend.
As minister, I will do all I can to ensure that we never forget this history.
That mission is succeeding, thanks to the efforts of many people, both nationally and internationally,
including survivors, and their children and grandchildren.
Let us honour them – and the millions who were killed in the camps – by preserving these authentic places, and having them serve as enduring warnings against exclusion, discrimination and injustice.
Thank you.