Former Deputy Prime Ministers Els Borst (D66) and Gerrit Zalm said that the Dutch government in exile in London failed the Jews under German occupation and that the current Dutch government should apologize to the Jewish community for that. Borst also mentioned that Dutch Queen Wilhelmina was hardly interested in the fate of the Jews. She said that the government in exile saw the Jewish Dutchmen as a special group and not as true Dutchmen. She added, “My intuition is if all Catholics or reformed people had been deported to Germany, the government in London would have instructed the population in the occupied Netherlands about what to do.” The interviews with Borst and Zalm were originally published in Manfred Gerstenfeld’s new book Judging the Netherlands: The Renewed Holocaust Restitution Process, 1997-2000.www.depers.nl/mobile/detail.aspx?id=621165
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