If I had been prime minister, I would have offered apologies to the Dutch Jewish community without hesitation. This would refer both to our government's attitude during the Second World War and to the very late postwar discovery that the restitution process had been poorly conceived.

I have always lived in Amsterdam. During the war, we inhabited the Rivieren neighborhood where many Jews lived at the time. Our downstairs neighbors were Jews, and there were also Jews a few houses from us. We saw how they were rounded up and taken away. That made a very great impression on me.