How often do we hear the words “Never Forget!” after a tragedy, either a man-made terror act or a natural disaster? Sadly, it seems like it’s frequently these days. Inevitably the hurt and shock of an event fade with time, yet I think it’s important to always remember, both to honor those who died as well as learn from the lessons of the past.

The bulk of our day Friday was spent learning about and remembering the Amsterdam Holocaust victims as well as those who tried to save as many as they could through their resistance activities. Amsterdam has a historic Jewish quarter that houses several locations of significance. We visited two of them on Friday — The Resistance Museum and the National Holocaust Museum.

Before the start of WWII Amsterdam had a thriving Jewish population of about 75,000-80,000. Drawn by Amsterdam’s history of religious tolerance, the Jewish population flourished economically and socially. There was never a Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam as in so many other European cities. That all changed virtually overnight with the German occupation in 1940.

I really can’t describe the range of emotions I felt as we toured the museums and other important sites. It’s one thing to read accounts or visit a museum here in the states, but it’s another to walk the halls of the school that was used to smuggle children to safety or the theater that was used as a deportation center.

Both museums were excellent, and extremely thought provoking in different ways. The Holocaust Museum left me wondering how and why such evil could exist, and the Resistance Museum made me question what I would have done. I always thought the answer to what I would have done was simple, but when you read the first hand accounts and learn of the terror of living through the Nazi occupation the answer isn’t that simple. I found the visits left me with a lot of questions with no straightforward answers.

Would I have been willing to risk my life, my home, my loved ones? Jim’s grandmother was a German Jew by heritage, who later married a Catholic and converted. Thankfully she had been born in the US, but if she had been in Germany would she have survived? Would Jim have been murdered because of a Jewish grandparent?

I thought it was a profound and sad sign of our times that entry into the Holocaust Museum was heavily guarded. There was an outdoor bag check, followed by entry into an outer chamber, and finally entry into the building. The safety precautions were brought home on Saturday when several tram stops near our hotel were shut down because of a Palestinian protest in Dam Square. We later learned that is an almost daily occurrence.

I also learned that the few Amsterdam Jews who survived the Holocaust weren’t welcome back with open arms after the war. The ill and traumatized victims returned to a hostile environment to find their homes occupied and their businesses gone. At one point the government even tried to get returning victims to pay back taxes for the time they had been imprisoned!

It is estimated that only 5,000-6,000 Jews returned to Amsterdam from the concentration camps or hiding places. The rest were murdered by the Nazi regime. Never forget.