A special commemoration of the victims of the holocaust has begun in the Dutch capital Amsterdam.
The names of 102,000 men, women and children who were deported from the city during the Second World War to Nazi concentration camps are to be read aloud continuously for 112 hours.
Most of the names are of Jewish victims of the holocaust, 215 are of Sinti and Roma. The first name was read at Muiderpoort station by Jules Schelvis, who survived Sobibor. Trains deporting Jews, Sinti and Roma from Amsterdam departed from this station.
The name-reading continued in busses destined for Westerbork camp in the northeast of the Netherlands. Anne Frank was one of the last people to be transported from Westerbork to the death camps. The last name will be read by holocaust survivor Fia Polak on Wednesday afternoon.
On Wednesday, it will be exactly 65 years since the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland by the Red Army.
© Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Parliamentary chair reads names of holocaust victims - ANP
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