You just need to stay home...

“Your grandparents were called to war. You are being called to sit on your couch. You can do this.” If there is one meme that applies today, it seems to be this one. Tomorrow marks exactly seventy-five years since the Netherlands was liberated.

Rutte called the current pandemic the worst thing to happen to our country since World War II. It was a statement I couldn't wrap my head around, I think because war is such an incomprehensible and grand thing to me that I simply can't.

Two people once told me, separately, about their visit to a concentration camp. One was in Alsace, the other was Auschwitz. And both described it as such an incredibly heavy, suffocating, and sad place. As if the atmosphere had never recovered from the horrors of that time.

My grandfather told the story of his father, who managed to escape from the Germans. My mother told me about grandma, who survived the Hunger Winter in a flattened Rotterdam by eating tulip bulbs and potato peels, but lost every tooth she had.

I am silent every year on May 4th, but this year I am even quieter. Because for the first time in our lives we are being asked to take a little less freedom, so that the veteran and resistance fighter in the nursing home who fought for our freedom can receive visits from their children and grandchildren again.

So that we never forget…