Representations of a Nation? Comparing the Dutch 1956 National Monument and the 2021 National Holocaust Monument of Names

The Dutch National Holocaust Monument of Names was inaugurated in
Amsterdam in September 2021. Reciting, for the first time, all 102,162
known names of Jewish, Sinti and Roma Holocaust victims from the
Netherlands, the monument is the latest Dutch national World War II
monument. The earliest one is the National Monument at Amsterdam’s
Dam Square, completed in 1956. Following James E. Young’s claim that
national monuments express national memories, this paper investigates
both monuments’ relationship with the Dutch national memory of World
War II, comparing the monuments’ expressions with other acts and
artefacts of commemoration in the 1950s and today: Remembrance Days,
rituals, other monuments, and texts. I argue that the National Monument
aligns more with other acts and artefacts of commemoration in the 1950s
than the National Holocaust Monument of Names does today, due to a rise
of transnational acts of commemoration since the early 1990s.
Consequently, I argue that in the global age, nationa