Background

On Ceram Square in the Indische buurt, a simple memorial recalls World War II. The text on the memorial is short and sweet: ‘Their lives, our freedom. 1940-1945′. on 4th May, residents of the Indische Buurt commemorate the victims of the years 1940-1945 with an event organised by various neighbourhood organisations. They also commemorate victims of wars that have taken place since then and are still taking place. It is a gathering by and for the neighbourhood. It commemorates the 558 Jewish fellow citizens of the neighbourhood who were murdered by the Nazis.  They were rounded up at nearby Muiderpoort railway station, along with thousands of fellow Jewish citizens of Amsterdam, transported to Westerbork camp in Drenthe and then murdered in the Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Europe. Other histories are also covered during the commemoration. Ceram Square is named after one of the East Indies islands just like many street names in the neighbourhood which refer to the Dutch East Indies’ colonial past. During the commemoration, attention is also paid to the Japanese occupation of the former Dutch East Indies between 1942 and 1945.

The commemoration has a multicultural character. It reflects the composition of the neighbourhood, inhabited by people from different ethnic backgrounds. As a result, there is a multifaceted remembrance of the past with room for the many stories about World War II that have mostly gone untold. For instance, there is a focus on the role that Morocco (and in particular Moroccan soldiers) played during World War II; a history that has long been underexposed. Over a hundred thousand Moroccan soldiers took part in the fight against Nazi Germany. Because Morocco is a French colony, they formed part of the French armed forces. At the time when the Netherlands was being overrun during the German offensive in May 1940, Moroccan soldiers were deployed to defend Belgium and France. In Zeeland, French troops fought in vain against a German supremacy. The centre of Middelburg was heavily destroyed by heavy artillery shelling. The men retreated. The French soldiers who fell here are buried in the war cemetery in Kapelle, Zeeland. Most of them washed up on the Zeeland coast later that year, when the hasty flight to England from the French coastal town of Dunkirk took place. Nineteen graves belong to Moroccan soldiers

In Morocco, Jews faced heavy persecution during World War II. As a French colony, the Moroccan Sultan, Mohammed the 5th was a subordinate to the French government and therefore had to follow French direction. After its inglorious defeat in 1940, France gained a pro-German government. This directly affected the 300,000 Jews who had lived in Morocco for centuries. Nazi racial laws were introduced and must excluded Moroccan Jews from public life. The sultan opposed the introduction of anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish measures in his country. As he himself said, because all his subjects are children of Morocco and all were equally dear to him. However, his protection didn’t extend to European Jews in French Morocco. The sultan had them accommodated in camps, but refused to allow them to be deported to death camps in Eastern Europe. Moroccan soldiers, like Algerian and Tunisian troops, were deployed in the liberation of Europe during the war. Moroccan units played an important role in the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943 and the subsequent advance northwards. The price Morocco paid for liberating Europe was high. Out of the approximately 110,000 Moroccan soldiers deployed, an estimated 70,000 died.