Prime minister Dick Schoof, the king, queen and princess Amalia were among the Dutch delegation to Monday night’s ceremony to remember 80 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

The memorial ceremony was attended by people from 54 countries and included 62 survivors and their family members.

Schoof issued a short statement on social media describing the location as a “place for silent reflection”. Auschwitz-Birkenau is “a place that no words can adequately describe,” he said. “A place that commands us to combat antisemitism and all other forms of discrimination and exclusion. Always, and everywhere.”

Over one million people were murdered in the Auschwitz complex alone, most of them Jews.

The Netherlands is still struggling to come to terms with the way it treated Jews who returned home in 1945 and whose property and possessions had been stolen or lost.

Only 35,000 of the country’s Jewish population of 140,000 survived the war and 102,000 of the 107,000 who were deported to death camps were killed.

Those who returned found their houses and possession had been taken, and many were presented with bills for unpaid taxes and ground rent for their homes, scandals which are only now finally being dealt with.

In 2024, the National Holocaust Museum opened in Amsterdam, telling the story of the Holocaust through personal possessions, photographs and texts.