NETHERLANDS (JNS) – U.S. Ambassador to Holland Pete Hoekstra visited a Dutch cemetery on Thursday where Nazis are buried.
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“Walked among the graves at Ysselsteyn, a cemetery for German soldiers from WWI & WWII. A terrible reminder of the cost of going to war and why we must always work towards peace,” he tweeted.
Buried at the cemetery are many members of the Waffen-SS, a military branch of the Nazi Party that killed Jews during the Holocaust.
It is unknown whether or not Hoekstra knew about the Nazi graves at the cemetery.
Walked among the graves at Ysselsteyn, a cemetery for German soldiers from WWI & WWII. A terrible reminder of the cost of going to war and why we must always work towards peace.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson told JNS on Monday that “Ambassador Hoekstra and his team at the U.S. embassy have made it their priority to honor and remember those who liberated the Netherlands from Nazi occupation 75 years ago,” and that he “visited the German Military Cemetery in Ysselsteyn to see another of the many historical sites related to the liberation.”
The spokesperson added that “Hoekstra is not the first U.S. official to visit the cemetery and no new precedent was set by his visit. Officials from Canada, France, Israel, Poland, U.K., the Netherlands and the United States have all participated in formal events at the cemetery.”
Before becoming Washington’s ambassador to Amsterdam in January 2018, Hoekstra, who was born in Holland, served in Congress, representing Michigan’s 2nd Congressional District. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate and governor of Michigan in 2010 and 2012, respectively.
Hoekstra is the kind of ignorant person you get to represent and embarrass the United States when you support the raving antics of a bigot like Trump (a pretend philo-semite), whose anti-muslim and anti-Black rhetoric seems to endear him to many foolish Jews. He had to seek out that German military cemetery which includes Nazi soldiers from WW II, as it is one of several whose location is not publicized so as not to become a draw for neo-Nazis.
Who cares?
Hope he had a good time singing the maga Horst Wessel song there. This rightist conspiracy theory lobbyist is a typical tone-deaf trumpf appointee, big campaign donor and slob.
Reagan did the same thing, when he visited a German military cemetery at Bitburg, in May of 1985. At that cemetery, there were also SS soldiers, who were buried there. The trip was arranged by an aide, Michael Deaver, who was a known shiker, and who probably didn’t know the first thing about the SS. When this was brought to Reagan’s attention, he refused to back down. Even his wife Nancy couldn’t convince him not to go. He was pressured by Helmut Kohl who was Chancellor of West Germany, to go. Even Henry Kissinger told him to go. Many veteran’s groups protested, and one GI, who saw the barbarism of the SS, returned his combat medals to the White House. When Reagan walked through that cemetery, he was accompanied by General Mathew Ridgeway, who commanded U.S. Army troops at Normandy, as well as General Johannes Von Steinhoff of the Luftwaffe. When Jewish groups from the USA and other countries, tried to protest Reagan speaking at Belsen, later that day, the White House ordered the West German police to prevent them from going near that site. I remember one protester yelled at Reagan “Go home, we don’t want you”. Yet, the entire sordid episode about Reagan and Bitburg, has hardly made a dent in the history books, as it is hard to find. Reagan, who was a friend to the Jewish community, and was otherwise a good President, was very stubborn, and would not budge on the above issue. Unfortunately, he could not appreciate the negative symbolism which his visit had towards Jews.
He was an ignoramus of history
It is a Republican thing. They have to appeal to their base.
Nazi leaders probably didn’t directly kill one person in the War. Wermacht soldiers and SS men, in that very cemetery did. That’s why this desceration by a high trump appointee of Jewish and Dutch civilan victims is news.
Hoekstra did nothing wrong, didn’t mention SS graves probably didn’t even know about them. Some Jews just don’t like the fact that Germans actually died in WWII, and get mad at anyone who mentions it, it’s childish really.