These searing questions, which invaded me, which I could not help asking, do not undermine or disrespect the ceremony at the Centrale Markthal. They make the need to remember more relevant than ever, the certainty that never again should humanity witness terrible war crimes without demanding accountability, as the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague has done. More relevant, also, because those who acclaim Hamas — a murderous, theocratic, misogynistic, oppressive organization that also massacres children and holds innocent hostages — those who share its dreams of ridding the region of its Israeli enemies, would do well to attend memorials like the one I was at on May 4 in Amsterdam.

How could a state that had been founded by the survivors of the Holocaust be inflicting starvation on its Palestinian neighbors? How could its armed forces massacre children who, unlike Max, had nowhere to hide, no one to take them in? How could so many Israelis feel indifferent to such grief and afflictions — an indifference that, alas, recalled how so many Germans (and Dutch people, and millions around the world) had turned a blind eye to the sins of the Nazis?