MeTZelf collaborates with the International Commemoration Committee on Eugenic Mass Murder to organize annual memorials for the victims of psychiatrists during the nazi regime. The date chosen by ICC-EMM is May 2.

The first memorials were held in December of 2002 and the second in May 2003. This year on May 2 memorials were held in Toronto, Chicago, Bernburg (one of the mass murder sites) and Amsterdam. This last one was of course the one organized by MeTZelf.

We requested a permit for Museum Square like the previous times. At the last minute on Thursday (as Friday, April 30 is a national holiday – the queen’s birthday) City Hall phoned and told me that the permit was rescinded due to construction work on Museum Square. Heineken Square was recommended instead. We agreed, but moved the date to May 3 as Heineken Square is deserted on Sundays.

Heineken Square is behind the Heineken brewery, which today is used only to usher around groups of tourists. It is near the crowded Albert Cuyp Street market. Cuyp was a painter. Almost all of the streets in this part of town are named after famous painters. When a decade ago Heineken Square was totally renovated, the city fathers faced a minor dilemma. They had to give the square a new name. A city ordinance required all new streets and squares to be named after women, but they realized that no matter what they named it, people would continue calling it Heineken Square. The problem was solved by the discovery that brewer Heineken had a female cousin whose last name was also Heineken, and who was an (obscure) painter.

In the past our memorials totally failed to draw attention. This year we prepared a black poster with white letters that read: “They were people too. Who will commemorate them?” In Dutch it’s a near rhyme:

The poster did the trick. Curious passers-by came up to ask who the people being referred to were. Some admitted to not knowing anything about this sorry history. Several people rightly connected it to headline news of the past week. Politicians have proposed making a law requiring mildly mentally disabled people, who according to them are the most dangerous because they live in the community like normal people, to “be advised” that they shouldn’t have children. One woman who works in a nursing home spoke in favor of the Dutch euthanasia law. A very young woman related the good news that she was taught about the T4 program in public school. One man complained that the war was a long time ago (though he himself must have already been born at the time) and the memorials should stop. There was also somebody who said he thought the murders were a good idea, and he wished Amsterdam would likewise be cleaned up of its undesirables.

Dozens of copies of the memorial speech were taken along to be read later.

This year’s memorial was a success compared to the previous ones, and we intend to repeat this formula next year, maybe even on Heineken Square. We hope to have a photographer next year.