2 movies and some commemorations - part I

About a year ago I went to watch In Syria, a very powerful movie about a woman and her extended family trying to make it through a day in war torn Damascus. The camera work is excellent drawing you into the claustrophobia of the appartment, even more powerfully than the tank in Lebanon.

What made it even more powerful to me is that these people are recognisable, westernised and hip, worrying about shaving their legs and the availability of broadband on their phones. It emphasises how much out of place are the bombardments and bouts of gunfire close by. And even though the  door of the appartment is blockaded, the sanctity of the home will be violated.

I cannot recommend this movie strongly enough to you.

Commemorating 'the war'

On May 4th last year, the official day of commemorating the war victims in the Netherlands, I joined the commemoration at Kamp Amersfoort, a concentration camp where the Germans in WWII kept Dutch high profile hostages from political parties and civic organisations to disencourage sabotage as well as people suspected of being part of the resistance. Over half were at some point moved on to camps in Germany, often with fatal results. Several hundred were shot or died from cruel treatment or the bad conditions during the war.

It was cathartic to file past the monument on the execution place in silence, with nothing but the evening sunlight and the spring chatter of birds.

Further on, at eight o' clock we kept the two minutes silence. As always, I thought of my grandfather who fought the German invasion in May 1940 and later survived as a POW in eastern Europe. But thanks to In Syria, I was now also more aware of the plight of those at home trying to keep going as best they could.

Whose commemoration is it anyway?

But the past isn't the past. It's here every day and part of today's struggles. The Dutch commemoration on the 4th of May has become part of the discussion about integration and inclusion. Anticolonial activists demanded that the commemoration also include the victims of the Dutch decolonisation wars, on the grounds that the Dutch soldiers killed in those wars were being commemorated as well.

On the other hand some right wing commentators tried to debunk the narrative that Moroccan soldiers (and other French colonial subjects) were actively involved in the defense of the Netherlands in 1940.

While there is no use in overstating the impact of Moroccan soldiers in this instance, it is good to realise that millions of Moroccans, Algerians, Senegalese and others from French colonies, but also similar amounts of Africans and Indians from British colonies, and Indonesians from Dutch colonies were enrolled in the armies that liberated Europe, Africa and Asia.

Many of them volunteers, many of them motivated by the struggle against nazism, or otherwise to show that by liberating others they were worthy of their own independence. At least, they are as worthy of our thanks as the American, British, Canadian, French and Russian soldiers.

Not to mention the length the colonial powers went to extract resources from these countries, even if it caused famine and poverty. Millions died in famines like that in Bengal, where food was denied the population to feed troops at the front, or working in mines, plantations or field works, or as carriers. It is a side of the war that doesn't always get its fair share.

And if we want immigrants to identfy with their new home, there is no harm in showing that at that point in time we were on the same side, the right side. And that the fruits of that struggle are for them to reap as much as anyone.

Some people disagree with changing anything about the commemorations on the grounds that 'things have always been done like this'. But I was enlightened by a historian pointing out that only from 1966 did the official commemoration in the Netherlands include the victims of the Holocaust. The most important lesson for me is that we should be very critical of the argument that 'this is how we've always done it'. People's memories are very poor and short.


More in tomorrow's post.