1970: A wreath for gay victims
On 4 May 1970, just before Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard were due to lay a wreath at the monument on the Dam, two young men tried to step forward with a wreath in their hands. Before they could lay it, they were led away by the military police. The ceremony continued without interruption.
The wreath of these two men was meant as a tribute to the homosexuals who died in the concentration camps. Later that day, during the commemoration organised by the city council, they were given the chance to lay their wreath after all. This incident is seen as an important moment in the fight for gay rights in the Netherlands.
2010: The Damschreeuwer
During the Remembrance Day ceremony of 2010, the solemn occasion was abruptly disrupted when a man near Madame Tussauds suddenly started screaming during the two minutes' silence. This unexpected moment caused panic among those present, leading to chaos and a mass attempt to flee. In the panic, 63 people ended up injured, ranging from minor bruises to broken bones. The royal family was immediately taken to safety. Once the situation had calmed down, the ceremony was able to continue that same evening.
The man, who came to be known as the Damschreeuwer (the Dam screamer), was overpowered by a bystander and undercover police officers and arrested. He turned out to be a 39-year-old man, known to the police for earlier violent offences. For his false alarm cry, the court of appeal sentenced him to 16 months in prison, 8 of them suspended. Although he appealed to the Supreme Court, the conviction was upheld. In the years after the incident he was detained preventively twice more because he failed to comply with police orders to stay away from locations where Queen Beatrix would be present.
2018: An air-raid siren and an advertising plane
In 2018 the action group 'Geen 4 Mei voor Mij' (No 4 May for Me) announced that it wanted to stage a noise protest on the Dam during the two minutes' silence of the Remembrance Day ceremony. They wanted to draw attention to the Indonesian civilians who lost their lives during the 'police actions' in the Dutch East Indies. Their plan included setting off the air-raid siren. Acting mayor Jozias van Aartsen banned the protest, and the court backed this decision by imposing a ban as well.
And something else happened that year. A 66-year-old man from Schiedam paid 1,800 euros to have an advertising plane fly around with the message 'Remember the Churchill dead too'. During the two minutes' silence on the Dam, he held up a banner reading 'Churchill mass murderer'. The police arrested him for disturbing the peace. The man, who told his story anonymously in Het Parool a week later, stressed that it was not about him, but about the debate on Churchill. "Someone had to raise this subject at some point,'' he explained, keeping his identity secret for fear of the consequences for those around him.
