A Rotterdam ceremony honouring the city’s deported Jewish residents was briefly halted yesterday when protesters shouted slogans during a speech by Israel’s ambassador.

The commemoration takes place each year at Loods 24, a former warehouse in Rotterdam-Zuid from where thousands of Jewish residents were sent to Nazi death camps during the war.

This year’s edition drew in hundreds of people, around twice the usual turnout, with the disruption breaking out just as the Israeli ambassador began to speak.

The moment Israeli ambassador Zvi Aviner Vapni began his speech, a group of about ten people turned their backs on him and began chanting.

Organisers stopped the ceremony, and police moved in to lead the protesters away, reports NOS. Much of the crowd responded by breaking into a Jewish song, and after roughly five minutes the ambassador was able to continue.

Police had already cleared protesters from the site before the ceremony began, AD writes, directing about ten of them to a spot roughly 150 metres away and escorting off those who would not go.

“Our goal is not to disrupt the commemoration,” Ineke Palm of the Rotterdam Palestine Coalition tells AD. “It is inappropriate for a regime that commits genocide to be present at a commemoration of genocide.”

READ MORE | 250,000 Red Line for Palestine protesters march through Amsterdam

And, by all accounts, that tension had been building for weeks.

Parties including DENK and the Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals) had formally questioned whether a representative of the Israeli government belonged at a commemoration of genocide, regional broadcaster Rijnmond reports.

For the organisers, the protest crossed a line. As Theo Kemperman, who chairs the Loods 24 foundation, tells AD, “this is a gathering with relatives, even with survivors.”

“That gentleman was on that train,” he says, pointing to one of the ceremony’s attendees. “He survived. You wish him a quiet, dignified gathering.”

Meanwhile, Chris den Hoedt, chair of Rotterdam’s Jewish Community, was far blunter: “People disrupting a commemoration is a new moral low point for us. If they have a problem with the ambassador, they shouldn’t come. I don’t understand what possessed them.”

Mayor Carola Schouten, who attended despite calls to boycott, told those gathered that the systematic murder of Jews is beyond comparison, drawing applause. A commemoration, she added, is not the moment to make a statement.

What are your thoughts on the protest? Share your two cents in the comments below.