The inviolability of silence

On 4 May, historical specificity, and the erosion of remembrance in an age of moral excess

There are moments in a society when speech must yield to silence. Not because words are lacking, but because they are inadequate. The Dutch Remembrance of the Dead on 4 May is such a moment. Two minutes of silence that do not signify emptiness, but density: a space saturated with history, guilt, loss, and an uneasy form of national self-awareness. It is a ritual that does not call for renewal, but for attention. It is precisely in this restraint that its meaning resides.

Against this background, the growing tendency to attach contemporary political conflicts to 4 May, in particular through the presence of pro-Palestinian protest, is not a minor shift, but a fundamental redefinition of remembrance itself. This is not a question of whether present-day suffering deserves recognition. It does, unequivocally. The question is whether all suffering can be invoked at any given moment, in any given place, without hollowing out the meaning of that moment itself.

Remembrance presupposes a shared understanding of what is being remembered. It is not an open terrain upon which any meaning may be inscribed, but a carefully bounded space in which speech and silence exist in a particular relation to one another. Once that boundary dissolves, the nature of remembrance changes with it. What was intended as a moment of focused reflection becomes an arena in which competing moral claims jostle for recognition. In that shift, not only is clarity lost, but the very possibility of understanding what is at stake begins to recede.

4 May was never intended as a universal moral forum. It is a historically situated ritual, rooted in the experience of the Second World War, and more specifically – though too often left unspoken – in the systematic destruction of the Jewish population in the Netherlands, enabled in part by a strikingly efficient administrative and societal compliance.

The Netherlands has one of the highest proportions of deported and murdered Jews in Western Europe. This is not merely a statistic, but a moral fact that cuts deeply into the fabric of national history. Unlike in some neighbouring countries, a relatively well-functioning administrative system contributed, under pressure, certainly, but not without active participation, to the identification and deportation of Jewish citizens. Here, evil did not present itself solely through ideology or overt brutality, but through the quiet execution of ordinary tasks, carried out without visible cruelty, yet with devastating consequences. It is precisely this that renders the history so difficult to bear: it reveals how destruction may arise not only from exceptional malice, but from the absence of reflection within seemingly ordinary structures.

But the story does not end in 1945.

The return of Jewish survivors was, in many cases, marked by bureaucratic coldness and social indifference. Homes had been occupied or sold, possessions had vanished, and legal processes for restitution proved slow, often humiliating. The society that styled itself as liberated showed little capacity for moral hospitality. For many, liberation did not bring closure, but rather the beginning of a different, more elusive struggle – one defined by rejection, displacement, and a lingering sense of not belonging.

This experience resists easy incorporation into collective memory. It speaks instead to a rupture: an existential fracture in which survival must once again be negotiated, this time not against an identifiable enemy, but within a society that turns away. There was little space for grief, scant recognition of loss, and even less willingness to confront what had been done – or left undone.

In the decades of reconstruction, this rupture persisted in another form. Under the banners of progress and housing reform, entire urban landscapes were reshaped. Former Jewish neighbourhoods disappeared, not always deliberately, but nonetheless effectively, from the city’s living memory. Shopping precincts, infrastructure, and civic buildings replaced what had once been dense, communal worlds. The city renewed itself with a confidence that left little room to consider what was being erased. What is no longer visible is, in time, no longer remembered.

A peculiar tension emerges from this: as society modernises and looks ahead, it becomes increasingly estranged from the concrete past that formed it. Remembrance, in this light, becomes a rare interruption, a moment in which time does not simply move forward, but folds back upon itself, confronting what cannot be resolved.

And that interruption is fragile.

In an age of global conflict, digital mobilisation, and geopolitical influence, the boundaries between genuine moral engagement and strategic instrumentalisation grow indistinct. When a society ceases to articulate clearly what its rituals signify, confusion does not merely arise; it becomes available – available to those who would use it. This is not an abstract concern. Dutch security services, including the AIVD, have in recent years pointed to attempts by state and non-state actors to influence social tensions, identity fault lines, and political discourse across Europe. Such influence rarely appears in overt form. It operates through narratives, networks, digital ecosystems, and at times through financial or organisational support that amplifies movements already in motion.

This is not to suggest that participants in pro-Palestinian protests are reducible to instruments of foreign powers. Such a claim would be both careless and inaccurate. The issue is more subtle, and therefore more serious: when a commemoration such as 4 May fails to guard its own meaning with clarity and conviction, it becomes susceptible to appropriation by movements whose logic is not that of remembrance. What was intended as a moment of historical attentiveness risks becoming a stage for contemporary political contest.

For this reason, responsibility does not rest solely with those who seek to attach their causes to such moments, but equally with institutions, authorities, and public voices. Their task is not to deny suffering elsewhere, nor to suppress protest, but to articulate – calmly, consistently, and without ambiguity – why 4 May cannot function as a generalised platform for moral expression. Its integrity depends upon historical precision. Particularly in a time when antisemitism is once again on the rise, and Jewish communities report renewed feelings of vulnerability, the meaning of the national commemoration must not be blurred or displaced. There is space, and must be space, for other forms of remembrance, for other histories, for other solidarities – but not at the cost of dissolving what 4 May is.

Beneath these developments lies a recognisable impulse: the desire for moral coherence. Those who are attuned to injustice seek to respond, to connect, to make visible. Yet here, too, lies a danger. When everything is connected to everything else, the capacity for distinction begins to erode. And without distinction, judgement itself falters.

Not every moment can bear everything.

The strength of 4 May lies precisely in its limits. In its refusal to subsume the particular into the general. In its insistence on a history that must not only be remembered, but endured – including the deeply uncomfortable role played by the Netherlands itself.

This need for precision is sharpened by the present. As antisemitism becomes increasingly visible across Europe, and as Jewish citizens once again speak of insecurity, the stakes of remembrance shift. To remember is not merely to look back, but to orient oneself. When the past that informs that orientation is diluted, its guidance weakens.

The capacity to judge begins with the capacity to distinguish. Not everything is the same, and not everything can be remembered in the same way. It is in that distinction that responsibility becomes possible.

The conclusion, then, is not that contemporary activism is misplaced, nor that political engagement is unwelcome. A democratic society depends upon both. It depends upon the articulation of injustice, upon participation, upon dissent.

But such engagement demands discipline.

4 May is not an empty canvas onto which each generation may project its concerns. It is a historically charged moment that calls for restraint: the restraint not to say everything, not to fill the silence, not to enlist history in the service of the present.

There are other moments, other spaces, other forms through which grief, protest, and solidarity may be expressed. They exist, and they must exist. But for that very reason, 4 May must remain what it is.

Not out of exclusion, but out of seriousness.

For without that seriousness, remembrance loses its weight — and the silence that should hold the dead instead dissolves into noise. On this day, let the silence remain what it is: not absence, but presence — a brief, unbroken space in which the past is allowed to stand, and the living learn, if only for a moment, to be still before it.