In 2014, the Germany’s ambassador to the Netherlands was reported to be in attendance in a commemoration at the German War Cemetery in Ysselsteyn, located in Eastern Netherlands close to the German border, and where many SS soldiers are apparently buried.

This piece notes that “of the 32,000 German war graves at Ysselsteyn, an estimated 3,000 are for fighters of the ‘Waffen SS”, a Nazi elite unit whose men were responsible for the murder of countless Jews during the Holocaust.”

JTA reported that Ysselsteyn cemetery is also a place where neo-Nazis have gathered in the past to honor Nazi soldiers buried there.  Ysselsteyn is the largest German war cemetery in the world. According to WW2 Cemeteries, the war dead on this site include Germans, Dutch, Poles and Russians who fought on the side of the German military.

Last week, the U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands Peter Hoekstra not only visited the cemetery but also tweeted about his visit writing, “A terrible reminder of the cost of going to war and why we must always work towards peace.”

I never imagined I would see this:

A US ambassador paying tribute to Nazi German fighters & occupiers. Including SS

I don’t care if they’re dead or alive, & I don’t care how long it’s been

Wish I could visit graves of my family the SS killed but I can’t: they were incinerated. https://t.co/aVD0ahJeK1

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) July 30, 2020

Via Nuremberg Trial Proceedings Volume 22:

TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTEENTH DAY Monday, 30 September 1946

The Race and Settlement Office of the SS, together with the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, were active in carrying out schemes for Germanization of occupied territories according to the racial principles of the Nazi Party and were involved in the deportation of Jews and other foreign nationals. Units of the Waffen-SS and Einsatzgruppen operating directly under the SS Main Office were-used to carry out these plans. These units were also involved in the widespread murder and ill-treatment of the civilian population of occupied territories. Under the guise of combating partisan units, units of the SS exterminated Jews and people deemed politically undesirable by the SS, and their reports record the execution of enormous numbers of persons. Waffen-SS divisions were responsible for many massacres and atrocities in occupied territories such as the massacres at Oradour and Lidice.
[…]
Units of the Waffen-SS were directly involved in the killing of prisoners of war and the atrocities in occupied countries. It supplied personnel for the Einsatzgruppen, and had command over the concentration camp guards after its absorption of the Totenkopf SS, which originally controlled the system. Various SS Police units were also widely used in the atrocities in occupied countries and the extermination of the Jews there. The SS central organization supervised the activities of these various formations and was responsible for such special projects as the human experiments and “final solution” of the Jewish question.
[…]
…the SS was instructed that it was designed to assist the Nazi Government in the ultimate domination of Europe and the elimination of all inferior races. This mystic and fanatical belief in the superiority of the Nordic German developed into the studied contempt and even hatred of other races which led to criminal activities of the type outlined above being considered as a matter of course if not a matter of pride. The actions of a soldier in the Waffen-SS who in September 1939, acting entirely on his own initiative, killed 50 Jewish laborers whom he had been guarding, were described by the statement that as an SS man, he was “particularly sensitive to the sight of Jews,” and had acted “quite thoughtlessly in a youthful spirit of adventure,” and a sentence of 3 years imprisonment imposed on him was dropped under an amnesty. Hess wrote with truth that the Waffen-SS were more suitable for the specific tasks to be solved in occupied territory owing to their extensive training in questions of race and nationality. Himmler, in a series of speeches made in 1943, indicated his pride in the ability of the SS to carry out these criminal acts. He encouraged his men to be “tough and ruthless,” he spoke of shooting “thousands of leading Poles,” and thanked them for their co-operation and lack of squeamishness at the sight of hundreds and thousands of corpses of their victims. He extolled ruthlessness in exterminating the Jewish race and later described this process as “delousing.” These speeches show that the general attitude prevailing in the SS was consistent with these criminal acts.