The Dutch King has defied protests from mosques in the country to attend the opening of a new Holocaust museum in Amsterdam alongside Israel’s president.

The K7 alliance of over 200 Dutch mosques called for King Willem-Alexander not to participate in the reception given to Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on Sunday. The organisation said Herzog’s presence at the opening was a “huge blow to anyone who cares about the fate of Palestinian people”, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

But the King said the inauguration of the National Holocaust Museum on Sunday was of too “great significance and national importance” for him to not attend, according to the country’s government information service.

King Willem-Alexander arrives to take part in an opening ceremony for the National Holocaust Museum, at the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, 10 March, 2024 (Credit: RAMON VAN FLYMEN/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)

The Rights Forum, a Netherlands-based political advocacy organisation focusing on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, said the museum should “not be opened in the presence of a president who promotes genocide”.

Austria’s president, Alexander van der Bellen, and a German state premier, Manuela Schwesig, were also due to attend.

King Willem-Alexander and Herzog visited a synagogue in the city ahead of the opening.

The museum, housed in a former teacher training college that had been used as a covert escape route to help 600 Jewish children escape the Nazis, will tell the stories of some of the 102,000 Jews who were deported from the Netherlands and murdered in Nazi death camps.

King Willem-Alexander attends a visit of the National Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam, during its opening, 10 March, 2024 (Credit: RAMON VAN FLYMEN/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)

The museum will also be the first in the country to explore how the involvement of Dutch officials under Nazi-installed laws led to approximately three-quarters of Dutch Jews – the largest proportion of any European country –  being among the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.

Exhibits include photographs and mementos which had once belonged to the many Dutch Jewish lives lost. In one room, the walls are covered with the texts of hundreds of dehumanising laws against Jews enacted by the Nazis during their occupation of the Netherlands.

A group of anti-Israel protesters demonstrated outside the museum on the day of its opening.