Dossier

Leiden University and the war

Leiden University commemorates its victims of the war and pays tribute to all members of the university community who resisted injustice. Rudolph Cleveringa, for instance, the dean of the law faculty who gave a protest speech in 1940 after his Jewish colleagues were fired. We honour their memory through memorial meetings, the annual Cleveringa lecture and historical research.

News

Contested heritage in The Hague: what to do with the remains of the Atlantik Wall? 28 June 2022
During World War II, the Nazi’s ordered a coastal defensive line to be built from the south of France to Norway. This Atlantik Wall aimed to defend th...
Heritage expert Ian Lilley holds commemoration speech at Netherlands-Australia War Memorial 16 May 2022
Professor Ian Lilley, the Faculty of Archaeology’s Willem Willems Chair in Archaeological Heritage, was invited by Her Excellency Mrs. Marion Derckx, ...
Second World War victims commemorated in Hour of Remembrance 10 May 2022
On 4 May, Leiden University remembered the victims of the Second World War from our university community. Alumni, students and present and former staf...
Traitors, profiteers or collaborators: ‘The Jewish Council has long been judged too harshly’ 02 May 2022
For too long the Dutch collective memory has judged the Jewish Council too harshly. This perspective needs to be adjusted, Bart van der Boom argues in...
Hour of Remembrance on 4 May: ‘We commemorate war victims and draw links to the present’ 19 April 2022
During the ‘Hour of Remembrance’ on 4 May, the University community remembers its students and staff who were killed in the Second World War. It also ...
‘Stolpersteine’ at the University Library to commemorate Leiden war victims 28 March 2022
Two Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) have been placed in front of the University Library in memory of the Jewish Cosman family. At the time of the Sec...
Indonesian resistance hero and Leiden student Irawan Soejono is given a face 28 January 2022
To mark its 75th anniversary, the Netherlands War Graves Foundation is publishing a portrait of a war victim every week this year. On 24 January the d...
University historian Pieter Slaman: ‘I can point to valuable constants and experiments that went too far’ 18 January 2022
As University historian, Pieter Slaman researches the University’s past, but he’s equally interested in its present. ‘It’s useful to be familiar with ...
Lecture Antoaneta Dimitrova in Prague: Freedom is Precious 30 November 2021
Antoaneta Dimitrova, Professor Comparative Governance, presented the Cleveringa Lecture at the Vaclav Havel Library in Prague last week. We spoke to h...
Cleveringa lectures: how the Polish government is distorting the history of the Holocaust 26 November 2021
In Poland the commemoration of acts of resistance is being misused to distort the history of the Holocaust. That is what Cleveringa Professor Jan Grab...

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