DISSENTING VOICES?
STICHTING 1940-1945, LOE DE JONG AND THE POST-WAR MYTH OF RESISTANCE IN THE NETHERLANDS
by
Laurien Vastenhout, MA
MASTER THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY (RESEARCH) 2015
UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM
Supervisor: Prof. dr. J. Th. M. Houwink ten Cate Second Reader: Dr. K. Berkhoff
Dissenting Voices?
Stichting 1940-1945, Loe de Jong and the Post-War Myth of Resistance in the Netherlands
– Contents –
Introduction – Competing Narratives: the Memory of the Second
World War 7
The Different Phases in the Approaches to the War 9 Successful Government-led Myth versus Dissenting Voices 26 Chapter 1 – Stichting 1940-1945: ‘Resistance’ as an Elusive 40
Definition
1.1 The Organisational Structure and Tasks of the Stichting 44 1.2 ‘Resistance’: Inclusion and Exclusion 52
1.3 The Communists 64
Chapter 2 – Loe de Jong: Shifting Approaches to Resistance 70 2.1 A Benchmark of Dutch Collective Memory 72
2.2 Resistance in Het Koninkrijk 80
2.3 Historian versus Moral Educator 96
Conclusion 106
Archives 111
Bibliography 112
Appendix 117
– Introduction –
Competing Narratives: the Memory of the Second World War
‘Thanks to their sacrifice, a new nation will be resurrected that differs from the past, it will take a different stance vis-à-vis her allies than before. Our national resistance will be remembered as the most characteristic attitude of our people in this period of our history.
It will make our history grow brighter. This, in particular, is what the Dutch people should be aware of today’.1
The days marking the end of the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1945 were euphoric; people danced on the streets and celebrated the Nazi defeat. However, their joy was short-lived. The Dutch nation had suffered some serious blows during the war. In the literal sense this concerned, amongst others the bombardments of Rotterdam in May 1940. In the figurative sense this blow was mainly caused by the rapid occupation of the country, – the struggle against the Germans in May 1940 had only lasted for five days – the relative large number of Jews that had been deported from the Netherlands and the fact that a famine had struck the Dutch nation (particularly the densely populated areas in the Western part of the country) during the last winter (Hongerwinter) of 1944-1945. The first post-war government, headed by the Social Democrat Prof. dr. Willem Schermerhorn, faced the tremendous task of having to revive the country and to restore its honour. Next to the practical responsibilities that had to be taken care of – e.g. freezing assets, trying collaborators, taking care of housing as well as the financial restoration of the country – the government also had to create an atmosphere in which Dutch citizens were willing to actively contribute to the restoration of the country. A continuous emphasis on the dreadful and uncertain period of Nazi occupation, in which quite some individuals had played a rather dubious and even collaborative role, would be detrimental to the constructive and optimistic mood that was necessary to achieve this aim. By pretending that the
1 Dutch Prime Minister Schermerhorn in a radio speech on August, 31 1945. Het Parool, Sept, 1 1945. NIOD Archief 263–7c. “Dank zij hun offer zal hier een andere natie herrijzen dan die van voorheen, zal deze een andere plaats innemen tegenover haar bondgenoten dan vroeger. Ons nationaal verzet zal als de meest kenbare houding van het volk worden aangemerkt in deze periode van de geschiedenis. Het zal er de kleur en den glans aan verleenen. Dit vooral dient het
Dutch citizens, with the exception of some collaborative elements, had behaved in an honourable way and by focussing on the idea that Dutch society at large had been heroic during the period of Nazi occupation, the difficult history of the war could be easily dealt with.
An important question that has occupied historians to date is what role the government has played in the construction of this idea that the vast majority of the Dutch people had been heroic citizens under Nazi occupation and to what extent this idea of a heroic nation was widespread and successful in the first place. The Belgian historian Pieter Lagrou has argued that the government deliberately put forward the ‘myth of resistance’ and thereby ignored the stories of persecuted groups that were not constructive to the myth that the entire society had been heroic. In doing so, the government consciously marginalised particular groups: ‘labour conscripts, survivors of concentration camps and Jewish survivors of the genocide in particular suffered from a lack of recognition of their particular fate’.2
In contrast, Dutch historian Martin Bossenbroek has stated that, taken the difficulties of the post-period into consideration, the government has done all it could to pay attention to the stories of these persecuted groups.3 There was, in his view, not a deliberate intention to ignore the stories of persecution and these groups received attention at different levels in his view.4 The Dutch anthropologist and sociologist Rob van Ginkel has introduced yet another view in which he states that the government in fact did not have a significant influence on the position of these persecuted groups as they constructed their own views and memories of the war.5
If the government was indeed instrumental to, and successful in, the construction and maintenance of the all-encompassing idea that the Netherlands had been a heroic nation as Lagrou has argued, there must have been no room for dissenting voices or alternative memories that were destructive this heroic story.
2 Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945-1965 (Cambridge: University Press, 2000), 295.
3 Martin Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep Terugkeer en opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2001), 367-380.
4 Ibid.
5 Rob van Ginkel, Rondom de stilte: herdenkingscultuur in Nederland (Amsterdam: Bakker, 2011), 726-727.
Still, both Bossenbroek and Van Ginkel, albeit from different perspectives have indicated that memories and stories challenging this conspiracy of silence were visible in Dutch society. This thesis will explore whether or not the government was instrumental to, and successful in spread of a nation-wide of the myth of resistance as Lagrou has indicated or whether dissenting voices can be identified.
Different Phases in the Approach to the War
The memory of the Second World War is inevitably linked to the historiography of Dutch resistance. There have been several attempts to identify different phases in the way the war has been remembered, copying the Dutch marxist historian Jan Romein who established a theory on the way the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) – the revolt of the seventeen provinces of Holland against the political and religious hegemony of Spain – had been approached throughout history. Romein argued that six phases could be identified. First there was the chaotic reality, then the filtered reality followed by a condensed story. After that, there was the dramatic representation and then the genuine image of the war. In the last phase, a conceptual image could eventually be identified.6 Only with the passing of time, Romein argued, one is able to develop a more distanced and well-balanced approach to such a turbulent period. In 1983 Hans Blom, Dutch historian and future director of the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (the current Dutch Institute for War- Holocaust- and Genocidestudies, NIOD), formulated an alternative model in order to understand the different phases of our approach to the Second World War.7 These different phases identified by Blom will be followed.
During the first phase – the immediate post-war years – the suffering that had taken place during the war was still fresh in the memory of the people. In the Netherlands, there were severe casualties that had to be dealt with. In the first place, the country had hardly provided any serious resistance against the invasion
6 Jan Romein, “Spieghel historiael. De geschiedschrijving over de Tachtigjarige Oorlog” in: ibidem et al., In opdracht van de tijd. Tien voordrachten over historische thema’s (Amsterdam: Querido, 1946).
7 Hans Blom, “In de ban van goed en fout?: wetenschappelijke geschiedschrijving over de bezettingstijd.” Inaugural lecture at the University of Amsterdam, 1983.
of the Germans; the struggle lasted only from May, 5 1940 until May, 10 of the same year. This fostered feelings of anger and humiliation. The nineteenth century ideal of the nation-state, which was supposed to guarantee the integrity of the national territory, had proven defenceless when faced with foreign invasion.8 Second, in comparison to surrounding countries, the percentage of Jews deported from the Netherlands was significantly higher than elsewhere; 75% of the Jews living in the country were deported, in Belgium this amounted to 40% and in France ‘only’ 25%.9 Combined with the fact that there had been relatively little resistance against the Germans during the occupation, and the fact that atrocities had been part of the daily reality in post-war internment camps for collaborators, this fostered an unstable post-war situation.10 At a later stage, the situation grew even worse after the unsuccessful decolonisation and the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-1949) – a struggle that lasted over four years and involved a bloody armed conflict, internal Indonesian political and communal upheavals and two major international diplomatic interventions. In the end, Dutch forces were not able to prevail over the Indonesians, and was forced to recognise Indonesia's independence at the end of 1949.11 Again, the honour of the Dutch nation had been at stake.
In short, the Netherlands had suffered some serous blows, and in order to restore the highly fragmented country and to emphasise the legitimacy of the post-war government, a national consensus had to be reached on the experience of the Second World War: [the] national reconstructions required a self-confident image of the past’.12 Despite the fact that individuals and particular groups in society all
8 Louis de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, part III (‘s Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1970), 473-380.
9 Blom, “De vervolging van de joden in Nederland in internationaal vergelijkend perspectief” Amsterdam: De Gids Vol. 150, 6/7 (1987), 484-507.
10 Johannes Houwink ten Cate, “De kampen voor ‘foute’ Nederlanders na de Tweede Wereldorlog” in: Historisch Nieuwsblad No. 7 (2001). In the first weeks after the liberation, many persons who were suspect of collaborative activities were interned by former members of illegal groups. The conditions in these internment camps was immoral and inhuman – people were continuously beaten up and dehumanized by all sorts of ‘punishments’. Despite the fact that authorities were aware of these atrocities, nothing was done to improve the situation of people, of whom a vast amount was innocent.
11 Peter Romijn, “Learning on ‘the job’: Dutch war volunteers entering the Indonesian war of independence, 1945-1956” in: Journal of Genocide Research Vol. 14, No. 3 (2012), 317-336. 12 Pieter Lagrou, “The politics of memory. Resistance as a collective myth in post-war France, Belgium and the Netherlands 1945-1965” in: European Review Vol. 11, No. 4 (2003), 527.
had suffered in their own way, a national history of the war was formulated.13 As there was no homogenous national heroic figure like the Great War veteran, who could provide an undisputed milieu de mémoire,14 a heroic story of collective resistance against the Nazis was with which everyone was supposed identify was invented. In doing so, a particular mass-psychological need was satisfied: an uncomplicated, heroic image of the war ensured that people could relatively easily live on their lives after this disrupting period.15 However, the negative result according to Lagrou was that the experiences of those whose story could not be easily integrated in this collective story of resistance – Jewish survivors, prisoners of war and voluntary labourers to the Reich – were ignored and suppressed as they represented quite different and often antagonistic experiences of the war and occupation.16 The stories of persecution were, in short, not paid attention to. Resistance, as the antidote of collaboration, became the sole basis for the reconstruction of national identity after the war. This first post-war period has in historiography been characterised as mythologizing because it wrongfully emphasised the large scale resistance activities of the Dutch people.17
Already during the early war years, scholarly as well as propagandistic works were written on the behaviour of Dutch society at large under occupation, satisfying this need for a collective story of resistance. The occupation of the country was viewed as a collective history, which had connected the large majority of Dutch citizens in their struggle to resist the German occupier.18 Characteristic of this are the writings of Louis (Loe) de Jong, a Dutch journalist whose aunt Aaltje (Alida) had a thriving career as a politician and was one of the first female representatives in the Dutch parliament, the Tweede Kamer, as
13 Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 295.
14 A concept introduced by Pierre Nora. A milieu de mémoire is a place which remind us of the past and often serves a certain (political) goal of memorialisation. Pierre Nora (ed), Les lieux de mémoire part of the series Bibliothèque illustrée des histoires (Paris: Gallimard, 1984). 15 Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 295.
16 Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 295.
17 See for example Van Ginkel, Rondom de stilte, 726-733. Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 25. Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 295.
18 Frank van Vree en Rob van der Laarse, “Ter Inleiding”, in: ibid. (eds), De dynamiek van de herinnering: Nederland en de Tweede Wereldoorlog in een internaitonale context (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2009), 7.
member of the Socialist Party (SDAP). She was an important factor in the lives and (socialistic) upbringing of her highly intelligent nephews, who were successful students.19 After successfully finishing his History studies at the Gemeentelijke Universiteit of Amsterdam, Loe de Jong aspired to obtain a research position at the Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (ISG), but he was rejected because of a lack of funding opportunities.20 Therefore, the first serious position he obtained in 1938 as an assistant editor of the liberal-democratic weekly De Groene Amsterdammer was only his second choice. When De Jong fled to London after the outbreak of the war in May 1940, he was one of the first Dutch journalists to report on resistance activities in the Netherlands.
In Hollands Fights the Nazis (1941), part of the series Europe under the Nazis (1941-1945) published by the English publishing house Drummond, the entire Dutch population, with the exception of some despicable traitors, has been characterised as having resisted the Nazis from the occupation in May 1940 onwards.21 De Jong claimed that Dutch citizens were collectively fighting the Germans.22 One of the many examples he mentions is a man living in Apeldoorn, in the Eastern part of the Netherlands, who had offended a German soldier who was buying groceries. The man received four months’ imprisonment on account of behaviour offending the honour of the German army. This was, according to De Jong, only one example ‘characteristic of Dutch resistance to the Nazi occupation’.23 In his second propagandistic work The Lion Rampant (1943), a similar tone prevails. Dutch citizens in general are referred to as an ‘indissoluble unity’ desiring nothing but active resistance against the Nazis: ‘every patriot wants to do something, be it listening to prohibited broadcasts or reading underground newspapers – all forms of sabotage which one may have to pay for
19 Peter-Paul de Baar, “Alida de Jong (1885-1943): Één knotje tussen de snorren” in: Historisch Nieuwsblad (2014).
20 Boudewijn Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005: Historicus met een missie (Amsterdam: Boom, 2014), 63.
21 De Jong, Holland Fights the Nazis (London: Drummond, 1941), 68-81. 22 Ibid.
with his life’.24 The Dutch citizens realised that a battle of ‘life and death’ had to be fought to the end, ‘no matter the costs’.25
In Nederlands verzet tegen Hitler-terreur en Nazi-roof (1945), of which the authors remain unknown because it was published by the illegal publishing house De Algemene Vrije Illegale Drukkerij (D.A.V.I.D), has been stated in a similar vein that typed and stencilled songs mocking the enemy were spread through the entire nation immediately after the Germans had occupied the country: almost the entire population was somehow involved in this activity.26 The so-called ‘Februaristaking’ on the 25th and 26th of February 1941 – the strike of a large number of Dutch citizens against the laws of the Nazis and the treatment of Jews – in which ‘all but a few exceptions participated’ is also continuously referred to as being exemplary of the general attitude of Dutch citizens.27 Due to its scale, the strike was a unique phenomenon in Western Europe and was therefore a useful and often repeated example of the attitude of the Dutch citizens in general.
The choice of wording for the title of the work Onderdrukking en Verzet – Oppression and Resistance – a series of works on the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands published between 1949 and 1954, is yet another illustrative example. Abel Herzberg, a Dutch lawyer and public prosector, who was one of the Jews who had returned to the Netherlands from concentration camp Bergen-Belsen in the summer of 1945, was responsible for one of the key publications in the Onderdrukking en Verzet series: Kroniek der Jodenvervolging 1940-1945 (1950). This was internationally considered one of the most thorough and important scholarly works on the persecution and destruction of the Jews.28 Herzberg emphasised the Jewish cultural and intellectual life during the occupation had flourished and defended the course of action taken by the leaders of the Amsterdam Jewish Council – de Joodsche Raad van Amsterdam –, whom
24 De Jong, The Lion Rampant (New York: Querido, 1943), vii. 25 Ibid., v.
26 J.J. Boolen and J.C. van der Does, Nederlands Vijfjarig Verzet (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij D.A.V.I.D, 1945), 16.
27 Ibid.,19-20.
28 Conny Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht: Abel Herzberg, Jacques Presser en Loe de Jong over de jodenvervolging (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1998), 17.
by then were officially prosecuted for its role in the deportations of Jews to Eastern Europe. His work had a major impact because the charges against the Council leaders Abraham Asscher and David Cohen were dropped as a result of his claims. Rather than arguing that the Jews had been successfully demolished by the Nazis, as the German Jewish journalist Heinz Wielek had claimed in 1947,29 Herzberg argued that the Jews had been able to withstand the Germans, despite the fact that severe losses had been suffered.30
Next to the hagiographic approach towards the attitude of Dutch society at large, attention was also paid more specifically to former members of organised resistance groups. In some cases, these groups published histories of their own undertakings during the war. One example is Den Vijand Wederstaan: Historische Schetsen van de Landelijke Organisatie voor Onderduikers, Landelijke Knokploegen en Centrale Inlichtingendienst (1946). It was the first attempt to write the history of one of the largest armed resistance groups in the Netherlands: the LO-LKP, a resistance organisation that was established by the Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers (LO, the only national organisation aiming to help people in hiding). In this work, the deeds of those who had played an active role in this organisation were commemorated and honoured. The resistance heroes, ‘despite the fact that their Jewish neighbours had been egoistic, demanding and nervous’ (because of which, the author states, it was difficult to live with ‘these people’) had acted in their (the Jewish – LV) interests. The compassion of these people hardly knew any boundaries and they had been extremely brave.31
The first biography of one of Holland’s most famous resistance fighters, Gerrit van der Veen describes how he, as a small child already had the right moral standards: he especially befriended those children whose parents he knew were
29 Heinz Wielek, De oorlog die Hitler won (Amsterdam: Amsterdamsche Boek- en Courantmij, 1947), 337-346.
30 Abel J. Herzberg, Kroniek der Jodenvervolging 1940-1945 (3rd ed., Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1978; first ed., 1950), 165.
31 Klaas Norel, Charles Hubert Eyck et al., Den vijand wederstaan: historische schetsen van de Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers, Landelijke Knokploegen en Centrale Inlichtingendienst (Wageningen: N.V. Gebr. Zomer en Keuning’s Uitgeversmij, 1946), 14.
less fortunate.32 Also, he could not stand the cruelty of bullfights and was so disgusted when he once attended one, that he left the show halfway through.33 Even more dramatically exposed is the life story of Johannes Post, written by Dutch novelist Anne de Vries in 1948. Already a few days after he is born, Johannes’ mother saw that this was a special and very wise child.34 The continuous references to religious habits and beliefs are tied in with an almost Chirstlike description of Posts’ character. Whereas everyone is afraid and in panic after the outbreak of the war in May 1940, Johannes is brave. He walks outside, and God tells him: ‘Please call to mind, Johannes, that my loyalty to you is eternal knows no boundaries’.35 As if God has spoken to his son, Johannes walks inside and tells his wife that all will be fine. Post is portrayed as having been sacrosanct rather than a mere human being; his moral and spiritual superiority is continuously emphasised throughout the work.36
In the collective story of unequivocal resistance, these kind of hagiographic descriptions of members of organised resistance groups and the sanctification of particular resistance fighters fulfilled a complex role. Stories in which individuals, or particular groups, were extricated were liable to disrupt the national consensus of large-scale resistance to the German occupier – just as attention for the suffering of Jews as a group could damage the constructed myth of oppression versus resistance. Whereas short-sightedness remained visible with reference to the Jewish suffering in this period,37 former resistance organisations claimed and received (limited) space to honour their heroes. Each of the pillars (zuilen) – Communists, Catholics, Social-democrats, Protestants and Liberals – of Dutch society put forward its own heroes. These were particularly admired and honoured. As Dick van Galen Last has indicated:
32 Albert Helman, Een doodgewone held: de levensgeschiedenis van Gerrit-Jan van der Veen 1902-1944 (Amsterdam: Uitgeversbedrijf de Spieghel, 1946), 24.
33 Ibid, 46.
34 Anne de Vries, De levensroman van Johannes Post (Kampen: Kok, 1949), 14. 35 Ibid, 107.
36 Ibid.
‘Each zuil had its own heroes. For the Calvinists there were Frits de Zwerver and Tante Riek, the founders of the LO, together with Johannes Post of the LKP. For the Roman Catholics, there were Father Bleijs and Titus Brandsma, for the Liberals, Professor Telders, for the Socialists, Wiardi Beckman and for the Communists Hannie Schaft. They were all installed in the Pantheon of resistance even before the war was over.’38
This was not surprising taking into consideration that the glorification of the contribution of resistance movements was the only basis available for a true national myth.39 Each of the pillars of the divided society wanted to have their share in the Dutch collective memory of the war. Therefore, they cherished their own heroic moments and tried to fit their private heroic stories in that of the Dutch society at large.40 Already at an early stage, these claims for a place in the larger story of resistance were made at the expense of other groups, of which Communists were the easiest target in light of the Cold war tensions. As a result of the space these former illegal workers successfully claimed for honouring the heroes of the group they had belonged to, thereby weaving the individual memory into the collective memory of Dutch society at large, their personal stories were not irreconcilable with the national myth of resistance.
It was an absolute necessity, however, that the freedom entitled to these former illegal workers, was not boundless as this would eventually obstruct the national consensus of resistance. This is most visible in the construction of monuments and the speeches that were given as soon as these monuments were revealed to the larger public. The policy of the construction of war monuments was aimed to prevent all kinds of symbols that would make individuals stand out. In most cases, although these monuments were meant to honour the acts of illegal workers, they represented the majority of the population instead; the memory of the war was polished to such an extent that ‘resistance’ became a concept with which the vast majority of Dutch society could identify itself with.41 Exemplary
38 Dick van Galen Last, “The Netherlands” in: Bob Moore (ed), Resistance in Western Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 215.
39 Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 25. 40 Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 302.
thereof is the monument at the Dam square in Amsterdam in which ‘resistance’ is represented by two hardly recognisable men, symbolising in a rather broad way both intellectual resistance and workers’ resistance.42 Despite, or better said: exactly because of, the fact that the actual resistance heroes were crucial in the formation of a myth of resistance that was applied to all, illegal workers were not actually singled out as individuals, or members of a particular group. The fact that no formal decorations were given in this period underlines the idea that in the end, resistance heroes were not supposed to obtain a distinctive position in Dutch post-war society. As a result, the actual resistance heroes were largely ignored and marginalised.43
Although the previously mentioned hagiographic approach continued in the 1950s, a second phase in the approach to the war can be identified in this period. The carefully constructed idea of a shared, nation-wide attitude of resistance received its first serious blow. That is, the position of Communists became increasingly problematic. Already in the summer of 1945, a few months after the liberation of the country, the Communists were condemned for their supposed misbehaviour towards fellow prisoners in the camps during the war.44 In light of the Cold War, it became increasingly questionable whether the national consensus of resistance could still be applied to Communists and, consequently, whether they could still be part of the national community as such.45 In this period, Ben Sijes, a Dutch Jewish Socialist who had been in hiding during the war, conducted his first historical research on the Februaristaking: the largest collective strike against the Germans in Western Europe in which Communists had fulfilled a crucial role.46
On the one hand, Sijes underscored the typical post-war heroic consensus in which the majority population was inspired by, and praised the heroic element
42 Lagrou, “Herdenken en vergeten. De politieke verwerking van verzet en vervolging in Nederland na 1945”, in: Spieghel Historiael 29 (1994), 109-115.
43 Bob Moore, “Introduction: Defining resistance” in: Resistance in Western Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 1-2.
44 Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 289.
45 Hans Blom, In de ban van goed en fout: geschiedschrijving over de bezettingstijd in Nederland (Amsterdam: Boom, 2007), 125.
46 Ben Sijes, De Februaristaking 25-26 Feburari 1941 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954), 112-114.
of the strike.47 On the other hand, the work also challenged the notion that Communists had played a crucial role. By arguing that the Communists had indeed, as the common view was, initiated the strike, but underlining as well that they were not responsible for the eventual magnitude of it, oppositions between Communists and non-Communists increased.48 As a result of these increasing tensions, the commemoration of the strike was divided in two separate ceremonies from the 1950s onwards. In the morning, there was the ‘official’ commemoration of the municipality and representatives of three non-Communist organised resistance groups. In the afternoon the Communists held their own commemoration of the event on the same spot, the Jonas Daniël Meijer square in Amsterdam.49
Despite the visible cracks in the constructed collective story of resistance against the occupier, other groups were still tacitly affected by the national myth of resistance; there was little room for individual stories and attention to the suffering of particular groups, for example Jews, was absent. In short, the personal suffering still remained subordinated to the national story of heroism. The inevitable result, as Lagrou has argued, was some form of alienation between private memory and public discourse:
‘[t]he effect of the inadequacy of collective ways of remembering the war was not only that they did not suit the variety of individual experiences: they were obtrusive to the point of invading private memories, of creating silence instead of communication, since so many of these experiences did not suit de patriotic or anti-fascist reading of the past’.50
In the early 1960s the situation remained unaltered. The image of the Dutch heroic nation was still emphasised in the television series De Bezetting broadcasted between 1960 and 1965. The series were an initiative of VARA-secretary Jan
47 Ibid., 182. 48 Ibid., 186.
49 Van Ginkel, Rondom de stilte, 262.
Willem Rengelink,51 who had participated in organised resistance during the war and wanted to make the story of the Dutch occupation available to the generation that had not lived through the war.52 Because Loe de Jong was a well-known authority on the subject of the Second World War and since he was already an experienced presenter at the VARA, Rengelink asked him to participate in his project to which the latter agreed. De Jong was not only responsible for the content of each of the series; he also functioned as the presenter of all episodes.
The series was an instant success, not in the least because, as Dutch historian Chris Vos has indicated, the content of the program perfectly fitted the Dutch ‘model of consensus’.53 In all episodes, the national rhetoric that had been a dominant tendency in the previous decades, was strengthened. The occupation of the country was viewed as a national happening, connecting the large majority of Dutch citizens in their struggle to resist the German occupier.54 Out of 21 episodes, only one is centred around the notion of collaboration: ‘Mussert en de Duitsers’ – Mussert and the Germans. In this particular episode, a very narrow perspective prevails.55 That is, the movement of Mussert, the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging (NSB, The National Socialist movement in the Netherlands) is entirely isolated from the Dutch society at large. In fact, this example of collaboration is placed completely outside the Dutch national history.56 It is furthermore telling that, besides the name Anton Mussert, no other collaborator is referred to, let alone being interviewed as was common in other episodes of De Bezetting.57 Clearly, collaboration was only a minor subject in the
51 In the era of Dutch pillarization (verzuiling), the VARA had close links with the Social Democratic Workers Party (PvdA). Eventually, De Bezetting was broadcasted at the ‘neutral’ Nederlandse Televisie Stichting (NTS).
52 Boudewijn Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005: historicus met een missie (Amsterdam: Boom 2014), 116.
53 Chris Vos, Televisie en bezetting: een onderzoek naar de documentaire verbeelding van de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Nederland (Hilversum: Verloren, 1995), 84.
54 Van Vree and Van der Laarse, Dynamiek van de herinnering, 7.
55 Loe de Jong and Milo Arnstadt, De Bezetting 5. Mussert en de Duitsers. NTS 28.4.1961. Can be accessed online via http://www.npogeschiedenis.nl/nieuws/2011/December/Bekijk-De-Bezetting-van-Loe-de-Jong.html, Nov, 9 2014.
56 Veerle van den Daelen, “Loe de Jong en Maurice de Wilde: twee oorlogsmonumenten” in: Bijdragen tot de eigentijdse geschiedenis, Vol. 22 (2010), 180.
57 Ellen Tops, “Lebendige Vergangenheit” in: Monica Flacke (ed), Mythen der Nationen. 1945 – Arena der Erinnerungen (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabem, 2004), 437-438.
series while resistance played a central role in all other episodes centred around the period of occupation.
The underlying idea of De Bezetting has been characterised by the German scholar Ellen Tops as portraying an image of the Netherlands as ‘ein mutiges und standhaftes Land, das sich deutlich von der verdorbenen deutschen Besatzungsmacht abhob’.58 Loe de Jong’s most recent biographer Boudewijn Smits has also indicates that the central image portrayed in De Bezetting is that of the ‘brave Dutchman’ and it can be safely argued that there is no attention for any deviating conception.59 Dutch historian Frank van Vree who has published extensively on the memory of the war, indicated that De Bezetting was a tool to fuse particular memories of the war into a national history – a highly idealistic national history of the war was portrayed, which was introduced in the first episode and was continuously repeated in the next twenty episodes.60 The foundation of the series was one of archetypical oppositions: it was a story of suffering and struggle, loyalty and betrayal, compassion and barbarity and goed versus fout.61
Although the series were extremely successful, it was also hunted by critique and mockery after its completion.62 This was the result of a changing society in which a new generation began to pose different questions to the period of Nazi occupation and thereby introduced an approach to the war that differed from the hagiographic approach that had characterised historiography until then.63 A new (third) phase in the approach to the war can be identified, which correlated with increasing secularisation and de-pillarization. The new generation that had not (consciously) experienced the war blamed the war-generation for its indifference during the occupation – feelings of guilt emerged regarding the
58 Ibid., 429.
59 Smits, Loe de Jong, 343.
60 Van Vree, “Televisie en de geschiedenis van de Tweede Wereldoorlog” in: Theoretische Geschiedenis, Vol. 22 (1995), 2.
61 Ibid., 4.
62 Van Vree, “Televisie en de geschiedenis van de Tweede Wereldoorlog”, 1. 63 Jan Bank, “Oorlogsverleden in Nederland”, Oratie (Baarn: AMBO, 1983), 9.
attitude of parents during the war, affecting the way Dutch resistance was approached.64
This correlated with the increasing attention for the fate of Dutch Jews during the war which was partly the result of the success of the two-volumed work Ondergang: De Vervolging en Verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom (1965) by Jacques Presser (1899-1970).65 Presser, who grew up in a rather poor Jewish family felt strongly connected to the rising socialism in the Netherlands. Presser first worked as a office employee but later decided to study history. In 1926, he obtained his PhD (cum laude) and became teacher at the Vossiusgymnasium in Amsterdam where he taught Louis and Sally de Jong.66 After the German invasion of the Netherlands, Presser unsuccessfully tried to flee to England. During the first year of the German occupation he was first suspended from his job and on March, 1 1941 fired due to German anti-Jewish regulations. In 1943 wife Dé Appel was deported to Sobibór where she was killed. Presser went into hiding in May 1943. After the war, Presser became Professor at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). In 1950, the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (RIOD) asked him to write the history of the Jews between 1940-1945 which resulted in his momentous work De ondergang: de vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom 1940-1945. As Dutch historian Jan Bank indicated in his inaugural lecture of 1983, the immediate sanctification of this scholarly work has indicated that Dutch public opinion was for the first time confronted with the scope of the catastrophe that had befallen Dutch Jews. An almost collective realisation of guilt resulted from this publication. This was also the result of a general change in the awareness of the history of the Second World War in the 1960s.67 Without doubt, the extensive attention for the 1961 trial of the State of Israel against Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer charged
64 Wijnand Mijnhardt, “Dutch Perceptions of World War II: the struggle with an unredeemable past”, 9; Chris van der Heijden, Grijs Verleden: Nederland en de Tweede Wereldoorlog
(Amsterdam: Contact, 2001), 380; Jan Bank, “Oorlogsverleden in Nederland” Inaugural Lecture at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam (1983), 25.
65 Kees Ribbens, Joep Schenk and Martijn Eickhoff, Oorlog op vijf continenten: nieuwe Nederlanders en de geschiedenissen van de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Boom, 2008), 298-299.
66 Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht, 49. 67 Bank, Oorlogsverleden in Nederland, 22.
with facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German occupied Eastern Europe, in which victims of the Nazi regime were for the first time publicly allowed to tell their stories, contributed to this awareness as well.
Finally, the collective story of resistance against the occupier was put aside for a story in which the suffering of particular groups could be centralised. The image of the Netherlands as a country that had bravely resisted the occupier was replaced by a more truthful, self-critical story. In this period, a more nuanced approach to resistance in the Netherlands became visible in Werner Warmbrunn’s The Dutch under German Occupation 1940-1945, published in 1965. In this work, Warmbrunn has given a thorough analysis of the behaviour of the Dutch population at large and underlined that the problem for most Dutch citizens was whether to resist, accommodate, or to practice ‘reasonable collaboration’, thereby introducing terms that had been unheard of until that moment. On the one hand, Warmbrunn argued, the Dutch citizens did not fall victim to the blandishments of national socialism: ‘the traditional loyalties and the commitment to democratic and humanitarian principles of the great majority of the population remained unshaken’.68 In that sense, the ideological conquest of Holland in his view did not succeed. However, the response of the Dutch people to German attempts to exploit the Netherlands economically was, in his view, less clear-cut than their resistance to nazification: ‘most Dutch men were prepared, albeit unhappily, to work for the German war effort’.69 Although many Dutch citizens were willing to take minor risks such as reading underground newspapers and passing them on to friends or listening to the Allied radio, Warmbrunn concludes, the bulk of the population did not participate in resistance activities.70 As a result of the distinction made by Warmbrunn between different forms of resistance, collaboration and ‘reasonable collaboration’ new light was shed on the attitude of Dutch society at large under occupation.
68 Werner Warmbrunn, The Dutch under German Occupation 1940-1945 (Stanford: UP, 1963), 264.
69 Ibid., 265. 70 Ibid.
Interestingly, in the foreword to this work, Loe de Jong also showed a more nuanced approach to the behaviour of the Dutch citizens in comparison his works previously mentioned.71 He noted that:
‘the real history of occupied Europe [...] has been less heroic than many observers supposed during and sometimes even after the war [..]. Unwilling adjustment was the rule – intentional resistance the exception’.72
Ironically, De Jong himself had been one of the ‘observers’ he accused of having portrayed an unrightfully heroic image of the Dutch society at large. Also, he condemned the approach he was still supporting in his series De Bezetting that was broadcasted in the same year. The attitude of the Dutch population under the occupation, De Jong continues:
‘can be summarised as having been uncorrupted by Nazi ideology, but as being ambivalent in respect to employment beneficial to the Germans and with regard to underground activities. The general dislike and hatred of the Germans and the desire to harm the enemy and to avoid doing anything that might benefit him, were in a dynamic balance for most people, with the concern over physical safety and economic security of self and family. For this reason, amongst others, participation in “militant resistance” activities remained limited to a small but ever widening section of the population’.73
Clearly, the all-encompassing heroic image De Jong had portrayed in his propagandistic wartime publications and his immediate post-war works on the attitude of Dutch citizens under occupation, was altered here.
The late 1960s can be characterised as a period in which the attitude of the large majority of the Dutch citizens was critically reviewed, as Pieter Lagrou has indicated:
‘[The] pride in the heroic acts of the resistance was replaced by a sense that the Dutch population had failed to protect its fellow citizens. Only in the 1960s, 71 In particular his propagandistic works Holland Fights the Nazis and The Lion Rampant.
72 Loe de Jong, ‘foreword’ in: Werner Warmbrunn, The Dutch under German Occupation 1940-1945 (Stanford: UP, 1963), v-vi.
when the period of concerted reconstruction was successfully completed did the astonishing coherence and national consensus over memory come to an end and was replaced by a more differentiated remembrance’.74
In the 1980s yet another phase in the approach to the war was put forward by Hans Blom. In his inaugural lecture at the University of Amsterdam (1983), he argued that the war still was unrightfully approached from a political moralistic dichotomy of goed (good) versus fout (bad) exclusively. He advocated an approach to the war in which moral judgments would be suppressed as much as possible, for example by more systematically analysing the contemporary mood of Dutch citizens, or by placing the history of the occupation in an international context.75 We might question whether the premise behind Blom’s thesis was entirely valid, taken into consideration that already since the late 1960s more attention had been paid in scholarly works to the more complex situation of the war. As Abram de Swaan has indicated in the same year Blom held his inaugural speech, Dutch society should recognise that the role of the Dutch population at large was one of carefulness and reservedness. In general, De Swaan argued, people were striving for a life that would be more or less bearable and honourable. A part of the price they had to pay for this, was that they had to witness their fellow Jewish citizens being deported and interned on a daily basis.76 De Swaan clearly acknowledged that the role of Dutch citizens could not be headed under either the term goed or fout, but underlined that this notion should be understood more broadly in the public sphere as well.
Whereas scholars showed awareness of the more complex image of the attitude of the Dutch citizens during the war, the goed versus fout dichotomy was still most visible in the public sphere. Therefore, the impact of Blom’s speech was large – much larger than he had anticipated. As Dutch historian Niek van Sas has indicated, the intense response to Blom’s speech – visible in newspapers like Het
74 Lagrou, “Victims of Genocide and National Memory: Belgium, France and the Netherlands 1945-1965” in: Past and Present Vol. 154 (1997), 205.
75 Hans Blom, In de bam van goed en fout, 20- 22.
76 Abram de Swaan, “De maatschappelijke verwerking van oorlogsverledens” in: J. Dane (ed.) Keerzijde van bevrijding: opstellen over de maatschappelijke, psychosociale en medische aspecten van de problematiek van oorlogsgetroffenen (Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1984), 54-66, here: 62.
Vrije Volk – can be explained by the fact that the myth of resistance somehow still had the social function of a national memory.77 Despite the fact that the image of the Dutch heroic nation was already challenged in the late 1960s, the attitude of the majority of the people generally was still not thoroughly reflected upon. From the 1980s onwards, the term ‘accommodation’ used to describe the attitude of the majority of the citizens came in vogue, following the Dutch historian Ernst Kossmann who had already introduced the term in 1977,78 which radically differed from the heroic image that had prevailed until then. Rather than the black versus white frame that had characterised post-war writings, there was now more room for ambivalence and ambiguity,
A few weeks before Blom had held his speech, Dutch historian Jan Bank had also centred his inaugural speech at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam around the Dutch historiography of the Second World War. The different phases he identified in the approaches to the war led to the conclusion that research on the subject was still in its infancy. A renewed interest in the war, initiated by historians who had not (consciously) lived through the period, was supposed to change the course of historiography throughout the 1980 in his view. Room was made for, and interest increased in, individual memories of the war.79 Increasingly, the government in particular was blamed for having ignored the victims of the war.80 After almost four decades, the time was ripe for singling out particular groups, such as organised resistance groups. This becomes most visible in the government’s introduction of a decoration: the commemorative resistance cross, which was ultimately awarded to about 15.500 resistance fighters.81 This increased attention for personal stories, not only of resistance fighters, but also individuals who had suffered severely under the Nazi occupation was the final
77 Niek van Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland: van oude orde naar moderniteit 1750-1900 (Amsterdam: University Press, 2004), 41-66, here: 53.
78 Ernst Kossman, “De Tweede Wereldoorlog: accommodatie en collaboratie” in: Winkler Prins geschiedenis der Nederlanden: De Lage Landen van 1780-1970 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1977), 272.
79 Wijnand Mijnhardt, “Dutch perceptions of World War II: the struggle with an unredeemable past” Lecture at Los Angeles, University College (2002), 11-12.
80 Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 556. 81 Van Galen Last, “The Netherlands”, 21.
demythologising blow to the idea of a collective suffering and collective resistance of the Dutch society at large.
Successful Government-led Myth versus Dissenting Voices
As national governments of former occupied countries had to affirm their legitimacy in the face of organised groups of armed citizens and re-establish public order and the constitutional state, the Netherlands was not the only country in which a myth was constructed after the war in order to rebuild the nation. In Belgium and France similar tendencies can be identified. In order to establish a stable post-war order, the governments ‘deliberately constructed a forced national consensus around the myth of a unanimous resistance, at the expense of veterans’ movements and all forms of associate memory’.82 In 1987, the French historian Henry Rousso introduced the term résistancialisme in order to describe and explain the different aspects of the post-war memory in France:
‘By résistencialisme I mean, first, a process that sought to minimise the importance of the Vichy regime and its impact on French society, including its
most negative aspects; second, the construction of an object of memory, the
“Resistance”, whose significance transcended by far the sum of its active parts (the small groups of guerilla partisans who did the actual fighting) and whose existence was embodied chiefly in certain sites and groups, such as the Gaullists and Communists, associated with fully elaborated ideologies; and, third, the identification of this “Resistance” with the nation as a whole, a characteristic feature of the Gaullist version of the myth [..] The Gaullist resistencialist myth did not so much glorify the resistance – and certainly not the résistants – as it celebrated a people in resistance, a people symbolised exclusively by De Gaulle.’83
The myth entailed that France, despite the actions of a few traitors, had liberated itself from the Nazis under the guidance of Charles de Gaulle, a French decorated officer of the First World War and head of the provisional government of the French Republic between 1944 and 1946. De Gaulle had refused to accept his 82 Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 527.
83 Quoted from the English translation The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (Harvard: University Press, 1991), 10; 18.
government’s armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940 and fled to London where he led a government in exile. In this period, he made several appeals to the French population to resist the occupation.84 After the war, De Gaulle was unsuccessfully striving for a collectivisation of the resistance in order to produce a broad consensus on the war period, although he knew that the resisters had been a tiny minority: ‘for him, the truth was best overlooked in the cause of healing the division of the nation and restoring France’s reputation abroad’.85 However, Gaullist memory only represented one facet of the French memory, even when, with the Gaullle’s return to power between 1958 and 1969 it became the State Memory.86
In Belgium, the meaning of the history of the war was immediately questioned after the liberation in September 1944. Similar to the situation in France, rivalling memories can be identified in the post-war period which is most eminently symbolised by the so-called Koningskwestie, which was a political conflict between the Belgian King Leopold III and the Belgian government. King Leopold, who unlike his government had not fled the country after the invasion of the Germans, had retreated as a Prisoner of War in his castle in Laken after the Belgian capitulation. As he was convinced of the idea that Germany would win the war, he wanted to safeguard his position as leader of Belgium. However, Leopold did not receive any jurisdiction over the country during the German occupation. Both during and after the war, his course of action has been severely criticised.87 After the Belgian liberation the government, headed by the Catholic Hubert Pierlot, wanted Leopold to resign which eventually resulted in the Koningscrisis. The country was divided: whereas the political right voted for the return of King Leopold, the left opted for the resignation of the King.88 Eventually, the King resigned. The patriotic lessons of the war had not resulted in a pacification of the everlasting pre-war social oppositions not only between the
84 Jonathan Fenby, “The Man Who Said ‘Non’” in: History Today Vol. 60 No. 6 (2010), 35-41, here: 36.
85 Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 (Oxford: University Press, 2001), 606. 86 Lagrou, “The Politics of Memory”, 537-538.
87 Jan Velaers and Herman van Goethem, Leopold III: De Koning, het Land, de Oorlog (Tielt: Lannoo, 1994), 902-903.
political right and left but also between the Flemings and Walloons.89 As the country was divided it became impossible to establish one, national heroic memory of the war.
Although in each country attempts were made to universalise the memory the war, this was thus least successful in Belgium and France. In Lagrou’s view, the ‘memorialist project’ could succeed so well in the Netherlands, because the ‘heritage of the occupation presented less disruptive issues [in the Netherlands] than in for example France and Belgium.90 In contrast to the other two countries, the Queen and the government had been united in exile. Also, the collective victimisation of the civil population particularly during the last winter of occupation led to a homogenised war experience and had united groups in their aim to take care of practical issues after the German surrender. Another key factor was that the Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB), which had been engaged in ideological collaboration, had no pre-war constituency in the Netherlands. As a result, ideological collaboration could be criminalised and ‘treated as a problem of deviant social and political behaviour extraneous to the domestic social tissue’.91 In addition, as Lagrou argues, as a result of consistent policy of memory in which next to the existence of Stichting 1940-1945, all forms of recognition for veterans were forbidden, the myth could flourish without too many problems.92
The Dutch State succeeded in side-tracking all kinds of veterans’ associations and rejected separate laws in which social assistance to particular groups would be given. It also refused to award medals to those who had actively fought against the Nazis, or to publicly honour them in any other possible way. In addition, by applying a homogeneous monuments policy in which everyone was supposed to be able to recognise itself, it consciously and actively contributed to the myth that Dutch society had almost exclusively existed of ‘resisters’, Lagrou has argued.93
89 Ibid, 996.
90 Lagrou, “The politics of memory”, 534. 91 Ibid., 535
92 Ibid.
In Belgium and France political confrontations led to the successful proliferation of milieux de mémoire in which next to the stories of illegal workers, individual groups successfully asked attention for their stories as well. Exemplary thereof are for example those who had returned form Arbeitseinsatz in Germany, a group with a complicated story that did not easily fit in the idea of a heroic nation as they had worked for the German war industry. In France and Belgium, both this group and the survivors of concentration camps fulfilled a role in the national milieu de mémoire: they underlined the cruelty of the Nazi occupier.94 In the Netherlands, however, these ‘difficult groups’ were entirely ignored. The fact that only in 1973 the victims of the Nazi persecution in the Netherlands were allowed a financial compensation for their suffering through the Wet Uitkering Vervolgingsslachtoffers (WUV) whereas the victims of domestic resistance had already received a pension in 1947 symbolises this. The difference between Belgium and France on the one hand and the Netherlands on the other can according to Lagrou be explained by the fact that the two former countries had a strong tradition of veteran’s organisations (due to the First World War).95
The Dutch State Institution for War Documentation in his view is most emblematic of the idea that the state ensured that all institutions contributed to the myth of resistance:
‘Not unlike Eastern European Academies of Science, [this institution] became the almost exclusive and in any case the dominant source of war historiography and Lou de Jong the personification of the history of the war both in writing and on television. This situation originates in the distinctive war experience of the Dutch people and in the urgency of a national consensus in the barren post-war years, which tilted the balance of power towards the governments of national unity rather than the intermediaries.’96
94 Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 302.
95 Lagrou also mentions the late liberation of the Netherlands and the Hongerwinter as a consequence thereof, which made it difficult to recognize specific groups of ‘martyrs’. Lagrou, “The Politics of Memory”, 535.
In many instances, scholarly histories in Lagrou’s view were not more than ‘erudite derivatives’ of political memories.97 In claiming this he has copied Jan Rogier, a Dutch journalist who criticised De Jong already from the publication of the first volume of Het Koninkrijk onwards for being too nationalistic and monarchical and who ironically referred to De Jong as the Rijksgeschiedschrijver: the State Historian.98
This notion of a successful conscious government-led construction of a national myth of resistance has been underlined by other scholars as well. In her research on the feelings of former illegal workers after the war, Petra Drenth has argued that some former illegal workers whom had fulfilled important positions in their groups during the war, were well aware and even actively involved in what she calls the ‘post-war policy of national unity of the government’.99 Prominent members of former illegal organisations were in close contact with government officials, for example members of the Grand Advisory Commission of the Underground (Groote Adviescomité der Illegaliteit, the GAC). This was an advisory body consisting of representatives of illegal social and political organisations formed at the explicit demand of the London cabinet. Eventually, however, they did not play a significant formal political role after the war.100 This close connection between politicians and the GAC, according to Drenth, ensured that Stichting 1940-1945, a Foundation of former illegal workers which was (financially) taking care of disabled veterans, could be established.101
By arguing that government did not only play a crucial role in the construction of the myth of resistance, but also in the active and conscious marginalisation of groups, Lagrou has contributed to a debate on the role of the government in the post-war treatment of certain groups whose story was not useful to the maintenance of the myth, for example Jews. One year after the
97 Ibid., 305.
98 For more information on the criticisms voiced by Jan Rogier, see: De Geschiedschrijver des Rijks en andere socialisten. Nijmegen: Socalistische Uitgeverij, 1979.
99 Petra Drenth, “Illegalen in vredestijd: teleurstelling en successen van verzetsstrijders en politieke gevangenen” in: Hinke Piersma (ed), Mensenheugenis.: Terugkeer en opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Bakker, 2001), 34.
100 Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 29. 101 Drenth, “Illegalen in vredestijd, 34.
publication of The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, the Dutch historian Martin Bossenbroek portrayed a different image of Dutch government’s treatment of these groups after the war. He argued that there was in fact an serious political interest in the suffering of other groups.102 In his book De Meelstreep: Terugkeer en opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (2001), which was part of a project financed by the Dutch government, Bossenbroek has indicated that the treatment of the victims of the war in the Netherlands both on in material as well as in immaterial terms was from the perspective of that particular period of time, not at all inadequate.103 As the country was ruined, the failure of the government to provide (sufficient) support to this larger group of war victims should in his view be seen as something that was beyond the reach of the politicians and not something they consciously avoided to do.
The example he mentions is the functioning of the District Bureaus voor Oorlogsslachtoffers (DBVO) where victims of the war could apply for (financial) compensation for the losses suffered during the war. However, the help provided through these institutions, which were local bodies of the national organised Centraal Bureau Verzorging Oorlogsslachtoffers (CBVO) was limited: many applications were rejected and those who had successfully applied were seriously infringed on in their daily lives. Besides, these local bodies were already abolished in 1947.104 From then onwards, the help provided to the victims of the war (oorlogsgetroffenen), was distributed among ordinary, municipal social services.105 Whereas resistance fighters were allowed a distinctive position through the establishment and continuation (up until this day) of Stichting 1940-1945, the oorlogsgetroffenen were dealt with through ordinary regulations. Although there indeed might have been some help for these victims of the war, the help was limited in quantity, quality and in its duration. Bossenbroek’s notion that there was not a deliberate intention of the government to ignore particular groups in that sense is not illustrated by the examples he has put forward. His claims have received support, however. For example from Dutch historian Bettine Siertsma
102 Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 504. 103 Ibid., 367-380.
104 Ibid., 379.
who has argued in a similar vein that disinterest in the suffering of other groups was far from absolute.106
This notion is taken a step further by both the British historian Tom Lawson and the American historian David Ceserani. Lawson has indicated that the notion of a post-war silence on the suffering of particular groups is misleading: ‘it ignores the many voices that were discussing the murder of Europe’s Jews in the immediate aftermath of the war’.107 The examples he has referred to are the courts and commissions responsible for post-war justice and retribution, and academic disciplines (most notably psychology). The Jewish suffering in these years in his view was embedded in a more universal story of Nazi cruelty.108 Thus, the subject was discussed although in a way that does not conform to our present day conceptions of the Holocaust.
Ceserani has argued that there has been a ‘comfortable consensus’ on the post-war responses on the Holocaust in which the world quickly lost its interest in the story of persecution.109 Similar to Lawson, he has indicated that for example the Jewish suffering was seen as an example of the cruelty of the Nazis, but not as its essence. Although this might be unthinkable from our current-day perspective, this shows in his view that the subject of persecution was not at all treated as unimportant: ‘on the contrary, it may have been so obvious to them that it did not have to be underlined or highlighted’.110 One of the examples he mentions in the case of the Netherlands is Herzberg’s Kroniek der Jodenvervolging in 1950 which thoroughly discussed the persecution of the Dutch Jews. Although both Ceserani and Lawson do not particularly refer to the role of the government, it is clear that they oppose Lagrou’s view of a successful construction of a myth of resistance in which no attention was paid to the victims of Nazi persecution.
The Dutch historian Dienke Hondius has posited herself in between Lagrou on the one hand and Bossenbroek and Ceserani on the other by indicating
106 Bettine Siertsma, “Kampgetuigenissen. Herinnering in teksten”: in Van Vree and Van der Laarse (eds.), De dynamiek van der herinnering, 106-127, here: 113.
107 Tom Lawson, Debates on the Holocaust (Manchester: University Press, 2010), 19. 108 Ibid.
109 David Ceserani, ‘Introduction’ in: Ceserani and E.J. Sundquist (eds.), After the Holocaust. Challenging the Myth of Silence (New York/London: Routledge, 2012), 1.
that there was a serious failure to recognise the suffering of the Jewish section of the population and a consistent denial of governmental responsibility but also noting that the government as such cannot be accused of antisemitic policies or attitudes as the policies should be viewed in the perspective of that particular period of time.111 More recently, Dutch historians Frank van Vree and Rob van der Laarse have stated in De dynamiek van de herinnering: Nederland en de Tweede Wereldoorlog in een internationale context (2009) similar to Lagrou that the German occupation was remembered as a ‘national history’, in which their was a focus on heroism and the national honour: ‘there was no place for deviant stories or victimisation’.112 In 2010, the Dutch historian Wichert ten Have has also indicated that there was hardly attention for the victims of the war; ‘the small minority that has survived was not supported’.113
Although the Dutch sociologist and anthropologist Rob van Ginkel on the one hand has indicated that indeed the war experiences of other victims than the illegal workers were not sufficiently heroic in order to be included in the dominant story of heroes and martyrs (fusilladed illegal workers and perished soldiers), he has challenged Lagrou’s notion that this was due to a successful government-led policy. Van Ginkel has placed a much larger emphasis on what he calls herinneringsgemeenschappen – communities of memory – in which continuous supplementary or contradictory memories of groups or individuals constantly adapt the way the large majority of a population perceives a particular period. This notion is to a certain extent similar to the theory of ‘collective memory’ that was already introduced by French philosopher and sociologist Maurice Halbwachs in 1925. However, Van Ginkel made some important modifications to this theory. Halbwachs has conducted research on the way collective memory shapes the content of memory while safeguarding the integrity of each individual memory.114 In Halbwachs’ view, our private experiences and
111 Dienke Honduys, “Bitter Homecoming. Return and Reception of Dutch and Stateless jews in the Netherlands, in: David Bankier (ed.), The Jews are Coming Back: the return of Jews to their Countries of Origin after the Second World War New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 129. 112 Van Vree and Van der Laarse, De dynamiek van de herinnering, 7.
113 Wichert ten Have, “De Holocaust” in: M. De Keizer and M. Plomp (eds), Een open zenuw. Hoe wij ons de Tweede Wereldoorlog herinneren (Amsterdam: Bakker, 2010), 238.
114 Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1925).
