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The Netherlands opened the National Holocaust Museum on Sunday with a ceremony presided over by the Dutch king as well as Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose presence prompted protest because of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The museum in Amsterdam tells the stories of some of the 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands and murdered in Nazi camps, as well as the history of their structural persecution under German World War II occupation before the deportations began.
The museum “gives a face and a voice to the Jewish victims of persecution in the Netherlands,” the Dutch King Willem-Alexander said in the address at the inaugural ceremony on Sunday. It also “shows us the devastating consequences that antisemitism can have,” he added.
“That is why we must continue to be aware of how things began and how they went from bad to worse,” the king said. Earlier, the king and the Israeli president visited Amsterdam’s famous Portuguese Synagogue.
Increase in antisemitic vandalism at Holocaust sites in Germany
Herzog hailed the Netherlands’s initiative to create a new Holocaust museum that he said was a testament to raising antisemitism around the world.
“At this pivotal moment in time, this institution sends a clear powerful statement,” Herzog said. “Remember! Remember the horrors born of hatred, antisemitism and racism, and never again allow them to flourish.”
Sunday’s ceremony came against a backdrop of Israel’s devastating attacks on Gaza that followed the deadly incursions by Hamas in southern Israel on 7 October.
Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered amid tightened security at the Waterloo Square in central Amsterdam, near the museum and the synagogue, waving Palestinian flags, chanting “Never again is now,” and demanding an end of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
The protest leaders emphasized they were against Herzog’s presence, not the museum and what it commemorates.
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Several people have been reported missing after violent storms hit a large area of southeastern France late on Saturday night, authorities said on Sunday.
Five people, including two children, are missing in the Gard region, having been swept away by floodwaters while trying to cross bridges by car on Saturday night.
A father and his two children aged 4 and 13 were swept away in Dions, north of N？mes, at around 11:30pm on Saturday, and two other people in Goudargues, in the north of the department, at around 5am on Sunday, Frédéric Loiseau, Secretary General of the Prefecture, told a press briefing.
In Dions, occupants of a vehicle called for help after it started crossing the bridge. The mother of the family, a 40-year-old woman who was also in the car, was found by rescuers and taken to hospital.
A man has also been missing since Saturday evening in Saint-Martin-de-Valamas, in the Ardèche, the department's prefecture said on Sunday. A search and rescue operation is ongoing. According to authorities, the missing person is the manager of a hydroelectric power station.
Speaking on X, formerly Twitter, Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin thanked firefighters for their continued rescue efforts.
A seventh person was already reported missing on Saturday evening in Gagnières, in the north of the Gard department. The 62-year-old was swept away at around 7:45pm on Saturday when the car in which he was travelling drove over a submerged bridge bordering the Ardèche department, despite warnings from the authorities not to drive.
The other occupant of the car managed to get out of the vehicle and took refuge in a tree, before being treated by the fire brigade.
Orange alert - the second highest level of alerts - for flooding is still in effect on Sunday in the Ardèche, Aveyron, Gard, Lozère and Var regions, said Météo-France. In the south-west, Charente-Maritime and Gironde are under orange flood alert.
All seven departments should remain under orange alert until Monday.
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Polls have officially opened on Sunday in Portugal’s general election with mainstream moderates trying to keep a populist party at bay.
The election, with 10.8 million registered voters, is set against a backdrop of corruption and economic hardship that have eroded faith in moderate mainstream parties and could push a significant number of voters into the arms of a radical right populist party.
A slew of recent corruption scandals has tarnished the two parties that have alternated in power for decades — the centre-left Socialist Party and the centre-right Social Democratic Party, which is running with two small allies in a coalition it calls Democratic Alliance. Those traditional parties are still expected to collect most of the votes.
Public frustration with politics-as-usual had already been percolating before the outcries over graft. Low wages and a high cost of living — worsened last year by surges in inflation and interest rates — coupled with a housing crisis and failings in public health care contributed to the disgruntlement.
That discontent has been further stirred up by Chega (Enough), a populist party that potentially could gain the most from the current public mood.
Chega is widely expected to be the third most-voted party in a political shift to the right that has already been seen elsewhere in Europe. Spain and France have witnessed similar trends in recent years.
Chega could even end up in the role of kingmaker if a bigger party needs the support of smaller rivals to form a government.
Voting began at 8am and most ballot results were expected within hours of polling stations closing at 8pm.
Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, largely a figurehead but whose formal consent is needed for a party to take power, urged people to vote because uncertain times in world affairs threatened the country’s wellbeing. In the last election in 2022, turnout was 51%.
In a televised address to the nation on Saturday night, Rebelo de Sousa said the unpredictable outcome of elections later this year for the European Parliament and in the United States, as well as the war in Ukraine and conflicts in the Middle East, could bring more economic difficulties.
He said that “it is at grievous times like this that voting becomes more important.”
The election is taking place because Socialist leader António Costa resigned in November after eight years as prime minister amid a corruption investigation involving his chief of staff. Costa hasn’t been accused of any crime.
The Social Democrats, too, were embarrassed just before the campaign by a graft scandal that brought the resignation of two prominent party officials.
Meanwhile, voters have expressed alarm at Portugal’s living standards as financial pressures mount.
An influx of foreign real estate investors and tourists seeking short-term rentals brought a spike in house prices, especially in big cities such as the capital Lisbon where many locals are being priced out of the market.
The economy feels stuck in a low gear. The Portuguese, who have long been among Western Europe’s lowest earners, received an average monthly wage before tax last year of around €1,500 — barely enough to rent a one-bedroom flat in Lisbon. Close to 3 million Portuguese workers earn less than €1,000 a month.
The number of people without an assigned family doctor, meantime, rose to 1.7 million last year, the highest number ever and up from 1.4 million in 2022.
The 46-year-old Socialist leader Pedro Nuno Santos, his party’s candidate for prime minister, is promising change with what he vaguely calls “a fresh boost.” But he hasn’t broken with senior party members who served in previous governments.
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Social Democrat leader Luis Montenegro, 51, who would likely become prime minister if the Democratic Alliance wins, says he’ll draft non-party-affiliated figures – people he calls “doers” -- into his government.
Chega party leader Andre Ventura has cannily plugged into the dissatisfaction and has built a following among young people on social media. Just five years old, Chega collected its first seat in Portugal’s 230-seat Parliament in 2019. That jumped to 12 seats in 2022, and polls suggest it could more than double that number this time.
Ventura says he is prepared to drop some of his party’s most controversial proposals — such as chemical castration for some sex offenders and the introduction of life prison sentences — if that opens the door to his inclusion in a possible governing alliance with other right-of-centre parties.
His insistence on national sovereignty instead of closer European Union integration and his plan to grant police the right to strike are other issues that could thwart his ambitions to enter a government coalition.
Ventura has had a colourful career. He has gone from a practicing lawyer and university professor specialising in tax law to a boisterous TV soccer pundit, an author of low-brow books and a bombastic orator on the campaign trail.
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