MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th January, 2020) Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has apologized for his country's role in the persecution of the Netherlands' Jewish population during World War II at a ceremony in Amsterdam on Sunday, the Dutch news portal reported.
"Now that the last survivors are still among us, I apologise today on behalf of the government for what the government did back then," Rutte said at a ceremony commemorating the country's Holocaust Memorial Day, as quoted by the portal.
Dutch state railway company Nederlandse Spoorwegen apologized in 2018 for its role in transporting Jewish people to Nazi German concentration camps during the Holocaust. Three quarters of the Netherlands' Jewish population died during the Second World War, the portal states.
Earlier on Sunday, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas published an op-ed in Der Spiegel magazine calling on European Union member states to take stronger action against antisemitism, ahead of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, which will be commemorated on Monday.
