The Simon Wiesenthal centre has expressed his concern in a letter to Premier Mark Rutte on what it sees as the government’s lax attitude to anti-Semitism. This was prompted by the situation in Arnhem, where a man who rejected the glorification of the Holocaust had to go into hiding due to threats from Turks.
On the TV programme Onbevoegd Gezag broadcast on 24 February, a number of Turkish youths said that they found the murder of millions of Jews in the Second World War good. “I am pleased with what Hitler did with the Jews," said one youth. “As far as I am concerned, he could have killed them all off.”
A homework supervisor of the boys, Mehmet Sahin, termed the statements unacceptable. After the broadcast, he had to go into hiding due to death threats from the Islamic community.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper and director Mark Weitzman of the Simon Wiesenthal Center spoke in a letter to Rutte of extreme anti-Semitic statements. “Even more shocking" is the fact that Sahin had to go into hiding. “This should have to set alarm bells ringing. But how can it be that those who threatened him have not yet being arrested,” Cooper said in NRC Handelsblad newspaper.
Simon Wiesenthal, the well-known Jewish Nazi-hunter, would turn in his grave if he were to see what is happening in the Netherlands, according to Cooper. “In the decades after the war, there was no country that Wiesenthal supported more than the Netherlands. He was a great admirer of your country.”
Cooper sent a letter to Rutte to share his concern. He has not yet received a response. “A reaction would be fine, but I consider it more important that the Dutch government takes measures against this sort of development.”