# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1914-1918 - The Netherlands maintains its neutrality during World War I. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany goes into exile in the Netherlands at the end of the war.

1922 - Dutch women get the vote.

1932 - A 31-km dam is completed across the Zuider Zee forming a freshwater lake known as the IJsselmeer. Part of the lake has since been drained and the reclaimed land used to grow crops.

1939 - At the outbreak of World War II, the Netherlands declares its neutrality.

1940 - Nazi Germany invades on 10 May. The Dutch Royal Family flees to England, accompanied by the Dutch cabinet. The Germans bombard Rotterdam from the air, destroying tens of thousands of buildings in a few hours. The Dutch army is overwhelmed and the Netherlands surrenders.

1940 onwards - The Netherlands suffers greatly under German occupation. There is political repression, Dutch workers are forced to labour in German factories, Dutch Jews are deported to the death camps. Some go into hiding, including Anne Frank, whose posthumous diaries make her world-famous. The Dutch resistance movement draws its members from all social groupings. The Germans execute Dutch hostages in retaliation for acts of resistance.

1944-5 - As the Allied forces advance towards Germany, the Netherlands becomes the site of bitter fighting. There is further destruction through bombardment of German positions. The food supply is severely disrupted with many Dutch civilians suffering near-starvation.

1945 - The occupation ends with the surrender of Nazi Germany on 8 May.
Reconstruction and integration
1945 - The Netherlands becomes a charter member of the United Nations. The leader of the Dutch Nazis is sentenced to death in December.

1949 - The Dutch East Indies, which had been occupied by Japan during World War II, receives its independence as Indonesia.

1949 - The Netherlands abandons its policy of neutrality and joins Nato.

1952 - The Netherlands is a founding member of the European Coal and Steel Community, which is to become the European Economic Community five years later.

1953 - Nearly 2,000 people die when dykes are breached by storms.

1963 - Colony of Netherlands New Guinea is ceded to Indonesia.
Dealing with the past
1965 - Princess Beatrix, the heiress to the throne, arouses controversy when she announces her engagement to a German diplomat. Former Dutch resistance fighters protest. The Dutch parliament eventually approves the marriage, which takes place in 1966.

1975 - Dutch colony of Surinam achieves independence. Hundreds of thousands of Surinamese emigrate to the Netherlands.

1980 - Queen Juliana abdicates; Beatrix becomes queen.

1985 - Government decides, despite widespread opposition, to site nearly 50 US cruise missiles in the country within three years. The controversy is subsequently dissolved by the ending of the Cold War.

1993 - Netherlands regulates euthanasia by doctors. Official estimates suggest that 2% of all deaths in the Netherlands each year are assisted.

1994 - Labour party leader Wim Kok becomes prime minister at the head of a three-party coalition.

1995 - Serious flooding leads to a state of emergency, with a quarter-of-a-million people evacuated from their homes.

1998 - Wim Kok re-elected as prime minister.

2000 - Parliament legalises euthanasia, setting strict conditions for doctors.

2001 April - In the first official ceremony of its kind, four homosexual couples are married in Amsterdam under new legislation. The new laws also allow homosexual couples to adopt children.

2002 January - Euro replaces the Dutch guilder.

2002 April - Wim Kok's government resigns following official report criticising its role in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 when just over 100 lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers failed to stop Bosnian Serb forces from murdering thousands of Muslims.

2002 May - Widespread shock as anti-immigration party leader Pim Fortuyn is killed by gunman. His party, formed three months earlier, comes second in elections. Moderately conservative Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) led by Jan Peter Balkenende tops poll.

2002 July - Balkenende becomes prime minister in centre-right coalition with List Pim Fortuyn Party and liberal People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).

2002 October - Balkenende's government collapses, brought down by infighting in List Pim Fortuyn Party.

2003 January - Narrow win in general election for Christian Democratic Appeal. Coalition talks begin.

2003 April - Animal rights activist Volkert van der Graaf sentenced to 18 years for Fortuyn killing. He said he saw Fortuyn as a threat to democracy. His subsequent appeal is rejected.

2003 May - Centre-right coalition sworn in with Balkenende as premier for second term. New coalition involves Balkenende's Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and Democrats-66.

2004 March - Queen mother Juliana dies, aged 94. Juliana reigned for 32 years from 1948.

2004 November - Film-maker Theo Van Gogh is murdered. He was reported to have received death threats after his controversial film about the position of women in Islamic society. A radical Islamist is jailed for life for the murder in July 2005.

2005 June - Dutch voters reject a proposed EU constitution, days after a French referendum goes against the treaty.
Afghanistan mission
2006 February - Parliament agrees to send an additional 1,400 Dutch troops to join Nato-led forces in southern Afghanistan. The decision comes after weeks of wrangling and international pressure.

2006 June-July - Prime Minister Balkenende forms a temporary, minority government after his coalition collapses in a row over immigration, precipitating early elections in November.

Cabinet backs plans to ban the burqa - the full body and face covering - in public places.

2007 February - Jan Peter Balkenende is sworn in as head of a three-party centrist coalition, three months after general elections.

2009 January - Court orders right-wing politician Geert Wilders should stand trial for inciting hatred against Muslims for a film linking radical Islamists' actions to the Koran.

2009 May - Seven people are killed at a parade in a failed attack on the royal family.

2009 June - The far-right Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, comes second in European elections in the Netherlands, winning 15% of the vote.

2010 February - Coalition government collapses following dispute over troops in Afghanistan.

2010 June - Centre-right Liberal Party emerges as largest party in parliamentary election.

2010 August - The Netherlands withdraws its 1,900 soldiers from Afghanistan, ending a four-year mission that had grown increasingly unpopular at home.

2010 October - After months of coalition talks, Liberal Party and Christian Democratic Appeal agree to form minority government with parliamentary support from Geert Wilders' far-right Freedom Party.

Netherlands Antilles dissolved. Curacao, St Maarten become nations in Netherlands Kingdom. Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba, became autonomous special municipalities of the Netherlands.

2011 June - Populist politician Geert Wilders is acquitted of all charges in a hate speech trial in Amsterdam. Judges find his comments comparing Islam to Nazism might be offensive but fall within the scope of protected speech.

2011 July - A court rules the Dutch state responsible for the deaths of three Bosnian Muslims in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Dutch trrops were in charge of the UN "safe area" when Bosnian Serb forces overran it in 1995 and killed 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. The court in The Hague ruled that Dutch troops should not have handed the three men over to Bosnian Serb forces.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1914-1918 - The Netherlands maintains its neutrality during World War I. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany goes into exile in the Netherlands at the end of the war. 1922 - Dutch women get the vote. 1932 - A 31-km dam is completed across the Zuider Zee forming a freshwater lake known as the IJsselmeer.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A genuinely great man of letters, the writer many acknowledge as Holland's finest novelist is decades overdue for recognition in this country.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This is how ''The Assault'' opens. The rest of Harry Mulisch's remarkable novel is devoted to unraveling the consequences of that first fateful night. Anton grows up determined to put the past behind him. He becomes a successful anesthesiologist (a symbolic choice of career, but the symbolism is handled lightly); he marries, has a child, remarries, has another child, lives a quiet life, adopts a stance of mildly ironic detachment. But in a series of episodes spaced over 35 years, we watch the experience he wants to forget reasserting itself.

Not only are there pent-up emotions that have to be unlocked, and memories that have to be confronted before they can be exorcised. There are also nagging riddles. Why did the Kortewegs, decent people, act in the way they did? Even if they were in a panic, what made them choose to endanger the Steenwijks - a family with children, with whom the Korteweg daughter at least was on friendly terms - rather than dumping the body in front of their other neighbors, the Aartses, a childless couple who had always held themselves aloof? What exactly happened to Peter after he disappeared? And there are other puzzles, too, about the original shooting itself as well as its aftermath.

Anton doesn't actively pursue these questions; on the contrary, most of the time, he tries to keep them at bay. But they force themselves on him, piecemeal, and the urge to get at the truth about them is what gives ''The Assault'' its narrative thrust. At one level, the book can be read as a detective story, of the superior Simenon variety, with intriguing twists and turns and a definite solution.

It is also a morality tale (though one that doesn't point out any easy moral), a dark fable about design and accident, strength and weakness, and the ways in which guilt and innocence can overlap and intermingle. There are multiple ironies in the drama that binds together Steenwijks, Kortewegs, Beumers, Aartses, Resistance fighters - and the Ploegs, too (for Fake Ploeg has a son). Tragic ironies, with nothing facile or contrived about them; and ironies, it should perhaps be added, that are never allowed to diminish our sense of the pure evil of the regime against which the initial violence in the story is directed.

For a book to have deeply serious intentions, as this one does, is, of course, no guarantee of artistic success. But Mr. Mulisch also brings exceptional skill and imagination to his task. Townscapes and interiors are firmly delineated - cliche or not, you can hardly help being reminded of the clarity of Dutch painting; characters are established with a deft economy; in the opening pages, Anton's small-boy reactions, the stolid humanism of his father, the adolescent impatience of his brother are all equally convincing, and as the story develops, a hundred small touches sustain the effect of psychological truthfulness. There is a particularly strong feeling for the way the past changes as each new layer accrues.

While there is nothing to suggest that ''The Assault'' is in any way autobiographical, Mr. Mulisch's family background has obvious relevance to a story of personal conflict and uncertainty with a wartime setting. He was born in 1927, and even though his mother was Jewish - her family was murdered by the Nazis - his father was a collaborator who was subsequently jailed. He himself is a highly regarded writer in the Netherlands, but this is the first of his novels to appear in America.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This is how ''The Assault'' opens. The rest of Harry Mulisch's remarkable novel is devoted to unraveling the consequences of that first fateful night. Anton grows up determined to put the past behind him.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with clinical psychologist Richard McNally about memory retention following traumatic events in light of the sexual assault accusations brought against Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Soon after Christine Blasey Ford went public with her story about Brett Kavanaugh, critics began to question her memory. Ford says Kavanaugh and a friend assaulted her at a house party when they were teenagers. They are both in their 50s now. Ford has recalled the attack in gripping detail to The Washington Post. But she can't say whose house they were in or exactly how they ended up there. To shed light on how trauma affects memory, let's bring in Harvard psychology professor Richard McNally.

Welcome.

RICHARD MCNALLY: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SHAPIRO: We know that memory in general is not entirely reliable and it can be difficult to precisely recall events from long ago. Does that change when we are talking about trauma and traumatic events?

MCNALLY: Yes. In fact, the stress hormones that are released during a terrifying experience tend to render the central features of that experience vivid and memorable. That said, the process does not operate like a videotape machine. So for example, it doesn't infallibly encode every detail of the experience. Nevertheless, the central features are typically retained - often all too well, as the case of post-traumatic stress disorder exemplifies, and sometimes at the expense of the peripheral details.

SHAPIRO: Do you find that these kinds of memories change over time the farther people get from the event?

MCNALLY: No, not necessarily. With traumatic events, they're fairly stable. I mean, memory is - it's a dynamic process. That's true. But to the extent that you've experienced the intense emotion at the encoding of the memories, it tends to render the central features of them quite stable. So you find this with war veterans, rape victims, victims of torture or natural disaster. They don't forget these things. They tend to be recalled quite vividly.

SHAPIRO: So you say the central event may remain vivid while peripheral details may not. That seems to come to bear in the Ford case, where she is saying she remembers the alleged incident very clearly but can't say for certain whose house she was at.

MCNALLY: Exactly. Right. Yeah, so the central features are those that the person's attending to. They're are often the most threatening, the most terrifying features of the experience; where the day in which it happened or the house or a dress or the day of the week it happened - these things may get scrambled up, forgotten because they're not really the ones that you are attending to at the very moment of terror.

SHAPIRO: Brett Kavanaugh categorically denies that anything like this assault ever happened. And he has suggested to Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, that maybe this is a case of mistaken identity. Does it seem plausible to you that Ford may be remembering this traumatic incident correctly but not the cast of characters?

MCNALLY: That's possible. That's certainly possible that there's a mistaken identity. I really don't know. I don't know enough about the case, quite frankly. But eyewitness testimony is sometimes fallible. But the memory of the actual (inaudible) that a person might experience is unlikely to be garbled up to that extent.

SHAPIRO: Another variable here is alcohol. Ford told The Washington Post that Kavanaugh was stumbling drunk during this alleged incident. How does alcohol affect recall?

MCNALLY: Well, alcohol can sometimes impair the encoding and, therefore, the memory of experiences. The most dramatic examples are alcoholic blackouts, where the person is behaving and acting and so forth but has consumed so much alcohol that they have no memory of it at all. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case here, but alcohol does not improve memory. If anything, it tends to impair it.

SHAPIRO: Richard McNally is a clinical psychologist who teaches at Harvard University.

Thanks for joining us today.

MCNALLY: Thank you for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOSHUA REDMAN AND THE BAD PLUS' "AS THIS MOMENT SLIPS AWAY")

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harvard Psychology Professor Discusses How Trauma Affects Memory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with clinical psychologist Richard McNally about memory retention following traumatic events in light of the sexual assault accusations brought against Judge Brett Kavanaugh. ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Soon after Christine Blasey Ford went public with her story about Brett Kavanaugh, critics began to question her memory.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In Thursday's testimony at Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings, Christine Blasey Ford alleged Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party in 1982, when she was 15 years old and he was 17.

Kavanaugh staunchly denied these allegations.

But memory is fallible. A question on many people's minds is, how well can anyone recall something that happened over 35 years ago?

Pretty well, say scientists, if the memory is of a traumatic event. That's because of the key role emotions play in making and storing memories.

On any given day, our brains store or "encode" only some of the things we experience. "What we pay attention to is what's more likely to get encoded," says Jim Hopper, a teaching associate in psychology at Harvard University and a consultant on sexual assault and trauma.

A region of the brain called the hippocampus plays an important role in this process. Ford referred to the hippocampus when questioned by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., about how she was so sure that Kavanaugh was the perpetrator of the alleged assault.

"The hippocampus certainly plays a role in taking things into short-term memory and then transferring them and consolidating them into long-term memories," says Hopper.

If an event elicits an emotional reaction in us, then it's more likely to make it into our memory. "Things that have more emotional significance tend to get more encoded," he says.

And when something elicits an intense negative emotion, like a trauma, it's even more likely to be encoded in the brain.

"The stress hormones, cortisol, norepinephrine, that are released during a terrifying trauma tend to render the experience vivid and memorable, especially the central aspect, the most meaningful aspects of the experience for the victim," says Richard McNally, a psychologist at Harvard University and the author of the book Remembering Trauma.

That's because a high-stress state "alters the function of the hippocampus and puts it into a super-encoding mode," says Hopper, especially early on during an event. And "the central details [of the event] get burned into their memory and they may never forget them."

Whether it's sexual assault victims or soldiers in combat or survivors of an earthquake, people who have experienced traumatic events tend to remember the most essential and frightening elements of the events in vivid detail for life, says McNally.

However, this doesn't mean that these memories include every detail of the event. The brain holds on to the most important stuff at the expense of the peripheral details.

Take, for example, a clerk at convenience store who gets robbed at gunpoint, says McNally. "The person may often encode the features of the weapon, the gun pointed at him, but not recall whether or not the person was wearing glasses, because their attention is focused on the most central features of the experience."

McNally says this would explain why Ford says she remembers what happened during the alleged assault but she can't remember the date of the party or its location.

"They were forgotten because they were never encoded," says McNally. "When somebody has an experience such as this, they're not necessarily saying, 'I better get down the address.' They're preoccupied with trying to escape this terrifying experience."

Also, "people in general are not good about dating events, whether they're traumatic events or nontraumatic events," he adds. Unless there are other clues to the date, most people tend to forget when something happened.

As for the memory of perpetrators of sexual assault, there's been little research on it, says Hopper. But what the research on emotions and memory suggests is the perpetrator's memory will depend on their emotional state, he says.

"If holding someone down and trying to take their clothes off was an entertaining experience, or a routine, familiar experience you're less likely to store that," he says. "It really depends on how the perpetrator is relating to things."

Another factor that affects how memories are stored is alcohol use.

"Generally alcohol can make people forget things," says Mary Beth Miller, a clinical psychologist at the University of Missouri, Columbia who has studied the impact of alcohol consumption on making and retrieving memories.

Earlier this month, Ford told The Washington Post that she remembers Kavanaugh being "stumbling drunk" whereas she recalls having one beer that night.

Other accusers who did not testify Thursday have also suggested Kavanaugh was part of a group of friends who indulged in heavy drinking in the 1980s.

In his testimony, Kavanaugh said he likes beer, but he denied ever drinking so much that he didn't remember things.

Miller says memory loss from alcohol - blackouts - are very common among young people.

"In a blackout, you're walking around, talking to people," says Miller. "And a lot of times in a blackout people will be very coherent. You're just doing your thing, and people don't know, because it's hard to know if someone's in a blackout state."

These blackouts are what scientists call "fragmentary" blackouts, where someone has partial memory loss, but "you can usually recall, if someone reminds you later."

These fragmentary blackouts can occur at low blood alcohol concentrations, as low as 0.06, she says. (For comparison, the legal limit for driving is 0.08 in all states except Utah.)

Miller also says that animal studies suggest that "adolescent brains are actually more sensitive to the memory impairing effects of alcohol."

A permanent memory impairment, what scientists call "en bloc blackout," has a beginning and an end, says Miller, and the person cannot remember anything that happened in between. She says these typically occur at higher blood alcohol concentrations, around 0.24.

This is because higher amounts of alcohol prevent short-term memory from being converted to long-term memory, says Miller.

"And people with a history of heavy drinking are more likely to have more memory deficits," she adds.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How Trauma Affects Memory: Scientists Weigh In On The Kavanaugh Hearing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In Thursday's testimony at Judge Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings, Christine Blasey Ford alleged Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party in 1982, when she was 15 years old and he was 17. Kavanaugh staunchly denied these allegations. But memory is fallible.

# data[].attributes.body
Dutch Resistance

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
WWII Dutch Resistance member (Netherlands/UK) - BBC News - 27th September 2018

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Every 5 May the Netherlands celebrates Liberation Day. That is to commemorate the end of the occupation by Nazi-Germany during WWII.

A large part of the Netherlands was liberated by the First Canadian Army. By the liberation of the Netherlands there were also other allied forces involved incuding the British, Americans, Polish, Czechs, the French and others.

On 5 May the Canadian general and the German commander reached an agreement about the surrender of the German forces in Wageningen. A day later the agreement was signed. Liberation Day is a national holiday and is celebrated every year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands. They came from the north, middle and south and they bombed Rotterdam to force the Dutch to surrender. The Netherlands was occupied for 5 years, from 1940 until 1945. In the first week of May, the Netherlands commemorates the dead and celebrates its liberation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Netherlands were occupied by the Germans in May 1940. After 5 years of suffering they were liberated amongst others by Canadian troops. A fierce fighting took place. This film was made not so long after the war.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article was most recently revised and updated by

Harry Mulisch, in full Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch, (born July 29, 1927, Haarlem, Neth.-died Oct. 30, 2010, Amsterdam), prolific Dutch author known chiefly for his clear, economical prose.

Mulisch's maternal grandmother and great-grandmother died in German concentration camps, whereas his father was an official of a bank under German control; after World War II Mulisch's father was sent to prison as a collaborator. These early experiences equipped Mulisch to write about divided loyalties.

Mulisch began writing when the war interrupted his studies. His first novel, Archibald Strohalm (1952), won a literary prize. His novel Het stenen bruidsbed (1959; The Stone Bridal Bed), in which an American pilot involved in the bombing of Dresden returns to the city years later, won him an international audience. Twee vrouwen (1975; Two Women; filmed 1979) explored love between two women. Perhaps his most popular work is his novel De aanslag (1982; The Assault; filmed 1985), in which one family betrays another during the war. The reason for that betrayal is revealed to the only surviving member of the betrayed family over the following 35 years.

Many of Mulisch's works deal with the effects of war on the individual. Hoogste tijd (1985; Last Call) tells the story of an elderly actor who collaborated with the Nazis during the war. De ontdekking van de hemel (1992; The Discovery of Heaven; filmed 2001) increased Mulisch's international presence with its discussion of the theological questions raised by science. De procedure (1998; The Procedure) echoes the Jewish golem myth with the story of a scientist who creates life from crystals found in clay. Siegfried (2001) is an alternate history novel in which it is revealed to the main character that Adolf Hitler had a son with Eva Braun. In addition to his many novels, Mulisch wrote plays, essays, short stories, and several books of poetry. De zaak 40/61 (1962; Criminal Case 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichman) details his experience watching the trial of the man who orchestrated the Holocaust.

Amy Tikkanen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Harry Mulisch | 20th-century novelist, WWII survivor, Dutch literature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Harry Mulisch, prolific Dutch author known chiefly for his clear, economical prose. Mulisch's maternal grandmother and great-grandmother died in German concentration camps, whereas his father was an official of a bank under German control; after World War II Mulisch's father was sent to prison as a

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dutch writer whose most famous work is The Assault