Work to prepare the ground for a memorial in Amsterdam to the over 102,000 Dutch Jews who were deported or murdered during the Holocaust can proceed, despite objections from locals on environmental grounds, a Dutch court ruled Tuesday.
The preparatory work in the city's Weesperstraat neighborhood was frozen after a group of residents petitioned the court, arguing that the construction of the memorial required 24 trees to be uprooted. The petitioners secured a temporary injunction against the project, under which the city of Amsterdam was forbidden to pull up the trees.
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On Tuesday, a court ruled against the petitioners.
The memorial was designed by world-renowned artist Daniel Libeskind. Its maze-like walls will feature the names of all the Jews deported from the Netherlands during World War II.
Jacques Grishaver, chairman of the nonprofit group Auschwitz in Holland, who has spent 13 years fighting for the memorial, expressed satisfaction with the court's decision. Grishaver told the Het Parool newspaper that "For people like me, who lost their families in the Nazi death camps, not much time remains, and I'm happy about the decision that was delivered."
Construction is scheduled to proceed in October and the project is expected to take some two years to complete.
