Hello, Blogonauts!

Touring Europe in general, and Amsterdam in particular, encourages learning how World War II shaped both the continent's boundaries and its citizens self-understanding. I visited several of the Amsterdam sites that keep the memory of that time alive.

In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded The Netherlands, which until that point had been neutral in the war. In order to limit further casualties after the Nazis bombed Rotterdam, the Dutch government quickly surrendered. Almost immediately there began an effort to recruit Dutch citizens into a political party similar to the Nazis of Germany. The Dutch Resistance Museum retells the stories of how the Dutch resisted German rule and dealt with such efforts to transform the Dutch republic into a Nazi state.

The museum's designers give voice to the question Dutch citizens had to answer: Do I collaborate with the invaders? Do I ignore it and go on living life as normally as possible? Or do I join the resistance against the Nazis?

The Museum does not sugar coat the Dutch response. Personal stories of citizens who followed each of these paths are told in detail and followed throughout the occupation. For 5 years the Nazis ran The Netherlands, first with kindness in an effort to win them over, but then with ever increasing brutality and injustice.

The oppression of the Jews followed the same path, first with the simple requirement that all civil servants register their religion. Within weeks, however, all the Jewish government employees were fired. Then in succession Jews were forbidden from using city parks and pools, their bicycles were taken away, they were no longer allowed to ride public transportation, and all Jewish children were segregated into separate schools. Non-Jews were prohibited from inviting Jews in their own home.

As we have all seen in the movies, Jews were compelled to wear yellow stars-of-David on their outer clothing so they could be identified immediately. Their identity cards, also a new measure instituted by the Nazis, were imprinted with a large "J" next to their picture and their name. Finally, they were told they were going to be transported to Germany to work “for the war effort.”

In fact, this was the exportation of Jews to concentration camps, and this is the point when Anne Frank and her family went into their hiding place. The Anne Frank House, where I visited on Saturday, is preserved to show the rooms where they spent their days before being betrayed, arrested, and sent to concentration camps.

More than 140,000 Dutch Jews lived in the Netherlands before the war, but fewer than 30,000 survived by its end. Among the dead were Anne Frank and most of her family. Her father, however, survived and helped to publish Anne's diary from their time in hiding.

About a block southeast of the Anne Frank House lies an outdoor monument known as the Homomonument. It consists of three large pink-granite triangles, reminiscent of the pink triangles that, akin to the Jews' yellow stars-of-David, identified gay men in public and in the concentration camps. The first triangle juts down into the canal, where it serves as a boarding dock. The second lies flat with the pavement. And the last rises from the ground high enough to serve as a large granite seat for weary travelers or a stage for performers. The progression hints at the rise of both gay awareness and gay rights in The Netherlands since the war. Indeed, in 2001 The Netherlands was the first nation to grant same-sex couples the right to marry.

Another monument to the war sits in the Dam Square (pictured). This marble monolith surrounded by suffering individuals serves as the national war memorial for The Netherlands.

I recognize this entry is a bit long, but it represents my feeble effort to make sense of what happened in Europe a short 70 years ago. The lessons should be obvious, but nonetheless we have been surprised when recent invasive wars have prompted a responses from those citizens similar to the Dutch reactions described by the Resistance Museum. And I fear some of the invaders' actions are not always distinguishable from the Nazis.

Touring Europe, if you pay a particular kind of attention, can convince you of both the folly of war and the cruelty of bigotry.

But watch the upcoming Dutch elections to see if they're paying attention.