In a historic moment of reckoning, Amsterdam’s Mayor Femke Halsema issued an emotional apology on April 24, 2025, for the city's complicity and neglect of its Jewish residents during the Holocaust. Speaking at a commemoration event at the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former deportation center for Jews during the war, Halsema emphasized the grave injustices inflicted upon the 80,000 Jews living in Amsterdam before the Nazi occupation.

“Administrators and officials were not only cold and formalistic, but even willing to cooperate with the occupier,” she stated regretfully, noting that more than 60,000 Jews were deported to their deaths with local officials' assistance. Halsema highlighted that instead of displaying heroism, Amsterdam City Hall's response during the Nazi regime was one of indifference and complicity, overshadowed by the horrors of isolation and dehumanization faced by the Jewish community.

The mayor further stated, “Antisemitism wasn’t brought to the Netherlands by the German occupier, and it didn’t disappear after the liberation,” acknowledging that the roots of discrimination existed long before and have persisted beyond the war. Her address was not only a tribute to the suffering endured but also a call to confront ongoing prejudices in society today.