British News Agency

Susan Smit, Bregje Hofstede and Manja Bedner, chair and board members of the National Witches Memorial foundation, have raised €35,000 for an official memorial to the estimated 70,000 people who died during the Satanic panic that swept across Europe and America.

"This is about raising more awareness of this history, which is basically femicide. The witch is still a funny figure today. Every year in the Netherlands, people burn effigies of witches at the carnival ... But there is almost no information about the real history of people being burned at the stake," Hofstede said.

The foundation is soliciting public opinions on three municipalities that want to host a national monument. In Roermond, at least 75 people, mostly women, were burned alive during the most important witch trials in 1613 and 1614. In the Montferland region, Mechteld ten Ham was burned alive in 1605 despite wanting to stand trial. The latest candidate is Oudewater, which has an official witch weighing scale and a royal warrant to issue a certificate of innocence if a person’s weight matches their body mass (i.e. too heavy to fly on a broom).

There was a time when the masses truly believed that others (usually “weak” women) were in league with the devil and causing chaos, said Steije Hofhuis, a historian who is publishing a book on European witch hunts.

“People were really panicking about witches. It was widely thought that the end of times was near. And the terrible witches were very dangerous. “We can say that this is a big conspiracy theory that the devil is working with people to destroy Christian communities, and the way it spreads is like a cultural virus,” he says.

Isa van der Wee, director of the Museum de Heksenwaag, where the Oudewater witch-slaying tea is also on display, believes that Oudewater would be an ideal location for a memorial because it actually protected the victims, who were often women and minorities, who are the subject of a temporary exhibition.

“Maybe they were a little different, maybe they weren’t paying attention to their surroundings, maybe they had a very strong personality and were defending themselves, or they just knew a lot about herbs and how to heal,” the museum director said of the “witches,” drawing attention to the witch hunts that continue to rage on in modern social media. “You can disagree with others, but you shouldn’t judge them… and that’s a message for all times,” he said.

In Roermond, where the injustice done to the victims of the witch trials was officially recognised as a “dark chapter in the city’s history”, the mayor, Yolanda Hoogtanders, told councillors that a memorial could help raise awareness of contemporary issues such as femicide and violence against women.

While historians such as Hofhuis say the witch hunt was not an outright conspiracy by the church or government, campaigners believe a memorial would convey a powerful political message. Right-wing MP Geert Wilders called former deputy prime minister Sigrid Kaag a “hex” (witch) in widely shared tweets and comments. Kaag, who was ambushed by protesters with flares, later said that “hatred, intimidation and threats” had driven her from Dutch politics.