An exhibition in Amsterdam this week memorializing children killed in Gaza appeared to appropriate Holocaust imagery by using shoes to symbolize the Palestinian victims.

The event was held on Sunday, less than two days before Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Hashoah, in the Dutch capital’s central Dam Square. It included thousands of shoes arranged in rows, an apparent allusion to iconic displays of the shoes of Holocaust victims throughout Europe. These include the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial in Budapest, Hungary, and a collection of about 8,000 shoes of child victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

The pro-Palestinian group Plant an Olive Tree Foundation, which organized the event, said the shoes were placed to commemorate more than 20,000 children who were killed in Gaza during the war, which began with the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel. As Dutch celebrities read the names of children and journalists reported killed in the war, a display showed the names and pictures of 313 children, and fliers were distributed to passersby, Plant an Olive Tree said.

The exhibition was held shortly before the beginning of YomHashoah on Monday evening, when Israel and Jewish communities worldwide commemorate the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. Reports of antisemitic incidents in the Netherlands have spiked since the October 7 attack, and the country has featured........

© The Times of Israel