De staat van ontkenning

Before the latest parliamentary elections, PvdA leader Bos demanded an inquiry into the Dutch participation in the war in Iraq. When his party was elected into the cabinet, this demand was dropped. Which mechanism underlies this process? In this documentary essay, witnesses and experts shed light on three instances in recent history: the holocaust under the German occupation, the colonial war in the Netherlands East-Indies and the role Dutchbat played in the Srebrenica massacre. What is most striking is the play with language. In the fall of 1942, Queen Wilhelmina mentioned 'the systematic extermination of our Jewish compatriots' on radio Oranje, but after World War II everybody said they had not had the faintest idea. When a little later Dutch soldiers put countless Indonesians to the sword, it was called 'police actions'. In Srebrenica, the word 'evacuation' was preferred over 'deportation'. Every catastrophe is followed by an extensive inquiry, which is then safely put away in some drawer. By so doing, we make our biggest lapses disappear from the collective memory.