The National Committee for 4 and 5 May ( nl, Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei) is a Dutch authority for war monuments and memorials since 1987.
The committee is best known for its annual organization of the
Remembrance of the Dead
Remembrance of the Dead ( nl, Dodenherdenking) is held annually on May 4 in the Netherlands. It commemorates all civilians and members of the armed forces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands who have died in wars or peacekeeping missions since ...
observances on May 4, and also its organization of music festivals to celebrate freedom on May 5,
Liberation Day
Liberation Day is a day, often a public holiday, that marks the liberation of a place, similar to an independence day. Liberation marks the date of either a revolution, as in Cuba, the fall of a dictatorship, as in Portugal, or the end of an oc ...
(Dutch: "Bevrijdingsdag").
Text of nr. 87M000989
on government website reflecting 1987 law, based on 1982 Royal decision Prior to its founding, the various observances were all organized locally with little or no central coordination. The organization now keeps a database of all war memorials and monuments erected over time throughout the kingdom, and this includes objects in former state-controlled territories. Since starting the May 4th Amsterdam ''dodenherdenking'', located on the spot where civilians were killed during the May 7th 1945 Dam Square shooting, efforts to widen the focus to be more inclusive of all war casualties have continued. The committee was founded in 1987 to preserve the various recorded events and also to uncover lesser known stories of national importance. To this day memorials are still created to honor WWII
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
events, but also of national engagements since that time.
Dutch War Memorial Database
The database of war memorials (Dutch: "oorlogsmonument") is an ongoing effort to capture metadata about actual monuments and memorials. The best known monument is the National Monument, erected in 1956 on the Dam.
See also
* National Remembrance 15 August 1945
References
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:May, National Committee for 4 and 5
Government agencies of the Netherlands
History of the Netherlands