Dutch senator: My remark about Holocaust Jews ‘going like lambs’ was misunderstood

“Jews did not go like sheep. There was resistance everywhere,” said Maria van Beurden Cahn of the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

By World Israel News Staff

A new Dutch senator from the Forum for Democracy party has drawn criticism over comments he made during an interview, in which he described Jews during the Holocaust as having gone to the gas chambers like “submissive little lambs.”

In the interview, with De Telegraaf, MP Toine Beukering said that “as a little boy I read a bookcase-full about the Holocaust. I have always been intrigued by how that was possible, that the Jews – such a brave  people – were just driven to the gas chambers like submissive little lambs,” he said.

“Never again,” Beukering added, “That is why I have been wearing a uniform for 40 years and have traveled all over the world,” he said, explaining that his inability to come to grips with this question inspired him to serve in the military.

Esther Voet, editor in chief of the Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad (NIW), a weekly Dutch Jewish magazine, termed Beukering’s description as “historically incorrect.”

“That this could have happened had nothing to do with Jews who went to the gas chamber like little lambs, but with disinformation, government cooperation, and the German machine of destruction. The truth is that it was unavoidable,” said Voet, quoted by De Telegraaf, adding though that Beukering is “a friend of the Jewish people.”

“Jews did not go like sheep. There was resistance everywhere,” said Maria van Beurden Cahn of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, based in Amsterdam. “Lack of and failing Holocaust education,” she wrote on Twitter.

In response to the criticism, Beukering said that he he did not mean to offend anyone, nor were his comments meant as an insult. He says that his statements have caused a misunderstanding, De Telegraaf reported.