A young Dutch tour guide paused his group so people could take photos. I talked to him for a while and then to an Dutch-American tour group without a guide about the issue of there being no connection with Dutch responsibility for Jewish deaths then or now. When I mentioned the Dutch in the Balkans in the 1990s the older Dutch-American knew the guys at Srebrenica were Dutch. His position was that we don’t know where the orders came from. The older woman in the group was understanding when I mentioned the Dutch in photos of roundups to Westerbork: „what happened was their families were threatened – what could they do?“
The man listed different family members who died in camps. He repeated several versions of relatives not identifying as Jewish, but as Dutch, and as being confident that as Dutch they would be safe.
At all of these places people take their photos of „Never again!“ Heads are shaken: „so sad…“ People walk on to the next tourist destination. No one possesses agency, or expects others in the past or the present to possess it. We are a people who consume. The activity we are capable of is shaking our heads in disbelief at the crimes of others.
