Changed Relations
The Gentile Attitude Towards Jews in the
Netherlands During and Right After World War
Two
Gerben Post 6054900
Contents
Introduction 2.
Chapter 1. Before the War
- Gentile-Jewish Relations Before 1930 15.
- The 1930s 18.
Chapter 2. Gentile Solidarity?
- The War 23.
- Tensions Rise 25.
- The Strike of February 1941 28.
- The Star 31.
Chapter 3. Helpers, Collaborators, and Bystanders
- Going into Hiding 37.
- Co-Perpetrators 41.
- The Silent Majority 46.
Chapter 4. The Free Netherlands
- The Allies Have Arrived 49.
- Back on Dutch Soil 52.
- The Old Neighbourhood 55.
Chapter 5. Changed Relations
- Collective Guilt 58.
- Restitution and Bewariërs 61.
- Silence 64.
Conclusion 67.
Introduction
“Of the Jews in our country, only a few thousand remained of whom it is said they will not be able to maintain the Jewish race. One hundred and six thousand Jews have passed the camp of Westerbork on their journey to the gas chambers in the East.”1
Almost a year had past after the liberation of the Netherlands when teacher, writer and former resistance fighter Anne de Vries wrote his article ‘Het opgejaagde volk’ – the hunted people – in March 1946. The article was written in first person plural, as if the author expressed what everyone had on their minds. Nevertheless, as De Vries’ son wrote 64 years later, De Vries confronted his readers with a shocking insight: they had been accomplices to the murder of more than one hundred thousand of their Jewish fellow countrymen: “Can we, like the Germans, excuse ourselves with a: Wir haben es nicht gewusst? […] We knew it: only a swift defeat of the German tyrants could have saved the Jews. One should not have doubted the intentions of the Germans.”2 When De Vries wrote the article, he had lost his positive stance towards
the compassion of the Dutch people. He had come to realise that the majority of the population of the Netherlands had not cared for the fate of the Dutch Jews at all.3 “Let
us honestly confess and bluntly put down in writing, because only the truth has a chance to set us free: we did not like the Jews. Despite the fact that we were in daily contact with them and did business with them, we were almost all […] anti-Semites.”4
De Vries seemed to imply that the reason so many of the Dutch Jews had perished during the war, was the fact that the majority of the gentile population had always been anti-Semitic. However, not everyone agreed with De Vries on this. In the decades following the end of the Second World War, several authors wrote about the relations between Jews and gentiles in the Netherlands during the war and after the liberation and there is a strong consensus amongst these authors about the fact that there had been an increase of anti-Semitism during this period. They do not, however, all agree with each other on the reasons why anti-Semitism had grown over the course
1 De Vries, A., ‘Het opgejaagde volk’ in Gesprek met de doden. Nederland kort na de
bevrijding (Kampen, 2010) 75.
2 De Vries, A., ‘Het opgejaagde volk’,75-76. 3 De Vries, A., Gesprek met de doden, 12-13. 4 De Vries, A., ‘Het opgejaagde volk’, 76.
of only five years of occupation. Before the war the Jews had been assimilated and integrated into Dutch society and anti-Semitism did not seem to play an important role for them, nor for their gentile fellow countrymen.5 After the war had broken out
in the Netherlands and the first anti-Jewish measures had been implemented, there first seemed to have been quite some gentile solidarity towards the Jews but this gradually decreased over the course of the occupation.6 When the war drew to an end,
anti-Semitism, according to these historians, had increased immensely. The empathy non-Jews seemed to have had for the Jews, seemed to have disappeared.7 There are
two periods that need to be discussed when one takes a closer look at the increase in anti-Semitism: in the first place the years of occupation and how different historians have different opinions about why this increase took place, and in the second place the period after the war had ended and the reasons why anti-Semitism seemed to have reached its peak.
Increased anti-Semitism during the years of occupation
Already in 1950, a mere five years after the war had ended, Dutch legal expert and Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg published his Kroniek der Jodenvervolging – chronicles of the persecution of the Jews. Herzberg wrote that the Netherlands had been witness to an increase of anti-Semitism among the Dutch people during the German occupation, even though there had been Dutchmen who had aided their Jewish fellow countrymen. According to Herzberg, cases were known in which Jews had gone in hiding and hosts and guests had made each other’s lives a living hell. After the war many assumed that the foul behaviour of Jewish guests had contributed
5 Herzberg, A., Kroniek der Jodenvervolging (Amsterdam, 1950) 328; Presser, J.,
Ondergang. De vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom, 1940-1945 (Den Haag, 1965) 126; Hondius, D., Terugkeer. Antisemitisme in Nederland rond de bevrijding (Amersfoort, 1998) 210-211.
6 Herzberg, Kroniek, 109-110; Presser, Ondergang, 80, 94-95, 228; Van der Boom,
B., ‘Ordinary Dutchmen and the Holocaust. A Summary of Findings’ in The Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940-1945 (Amsterdam, 2012) 37-38; Friedländer, S., Nazi Germany and the Jews. The Years of Extermination, 1939-1945, 401.
7 Herzberg, Kroniek, 245-246; De Jong, L., Het koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de
Tweede Wereldoorlog, Vol 12 (Den Haag, 1988) 120; Hondius, Terugkeer, 89-90, 98-99; Gans, E., ‘”They have Forgotten to Gas You.” Post-1945 Antisemitism in the Netherlands’ in Thamyris/Intersecting, No. 27 (2014) 71; Gans, E., Gojse nijd & Joods narcisme. Over de verhouding tussen Joden en niet-Joden in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1994) 33-34.
to the increase of anti-Semitism.8 However, Herzberg explains, any cohabitation
raises tensions between host and guest. But now, a Jew who had misbehaved during his time in hiding was not only judged on his behaviour while in hiding but also on the fact that he was Jewish.9 The persecution of the Jews, Herzberg argues, had made
the Jewish problem into a reality. There had been a time when being Jewish in the Netherlands was merely a nuance in Dutch citizenship, Jews and gentiles had not been that much different from each other. During the war this had radically changed, albeit because of a common enemy. The way the Nazis treated the Jews had not increased sympathy for the persecuted group, merely empathy that, according to Herzberg, had nothing to do with sympathy. Herzberg calls empathy the twin brother or even the father of aversion.10
In 1965, Dutch historian Jacques Presser published the second important chronicles about the persecution of the Dutch Jews, Ondergang – downfall. He asked himself the question whether one could conclude that if the Nazis persecuted the Jews and the gentiles of the Netherlands hated the Nazis, these gentiles must have helped the Jews or must have felt sympathy for them. Unfortunately, Presser answers this question, the relations between people, individuals or groups, cannot be explained or unravelled by mathematics. The most ideal situation would have been if every Dutchman had resisted the Nazis but already soon after the occupation of the country that had proved not to be the case. Before the war, Presser explains, there had been a certain degree of tolerance for a long time and the Jews had fairly easily accepted some symptoms of anti-Semitism and open enmity had been rare. When the Nazis came, many had hardly noticed the implementation of the first anti-Jewish measures but when they finally did, they felt sorry for the Jews but were happy about not being Jewish themselves and after some time people simply got used to the fact that the Jews were the ones that were struck hardest by the occupiers. Besides that, everyone had their own problems. Yet, according to Presser, there had been many gentiles who had resisted the persecution of the Jews, often endangering their own lives by doing so.11
Dutch Professor Lou de Jong argues that as of 1942 an increase of anti-Semitism had become noticeable. As of that year not only those who believed in the
8 Herzberg, Kroniek, 319. 9 Ibid, 320.
10 Ibid, 328.
Nazi ideology had turned against the Jews but also many who were anti-German or anti-national-socialism, people of whom one would expect to have felt a certain degree of solidarity with their Jewish fellow countrymen. Anti-Jewish propaganda had meant that those who had disliked and distrusted the Jews were strengthened in their beliefs, but now, according to De Jong, also those who belonged to the somewhat shallow part of the population were affected. And there was, De Jong continues, another reason for the growing gap between Jews and gentiles: a lack of courage to help the persecuted group. This had resulted in a situation where many were prone to believe stories about Jews who had done wrong in the past, as if they were trying to convince themselves that the Jews were not worthy of helping.12 Also,
De Jong argues, the more the Jews were persecuted and deported, the more anti-Semitism had increased.13
The first to dedicate a whole study to the subject of post-war anti-Semitism in the Netherlands, was Dutch historian Dienke Hondius who in 1990 published Terugkeer – return – with a revised version in 1998. Hondius states that in the early thirties already, the Dutch press reported about the anti-Jewish measures that had been implemented in Nazi-Germany. This and the fact that the Netherlands suddenly had to deal with large groups of German-Jewish refugees had caused for the Jewish part of the population to become more visible than it had been before. Even though Dutch anti-Semitism had always lingered and could be described as mild and informal, some prejudices about Jews had been widely considered as facts. The relations between Jews and gentiles seemed to get sharper edges than before.14 During the war, Hondius
continues, Dutch anti-Semitism was still present. Even though the Netherlands was not a country with many virulent Jew haters, the Jews were, in the eyes of many gentiles, quite different from the rest of the population.15 Important for a smooth
operation when the deportations of the Jews started was, according to Hondius, not the fact that anti-Semitism was wide spread but the fact that many people simply did not care too much.16
12 De Jong, L., Het koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, Vol. 7
(Den Haag, 1976) 416-417.
13 De Jong, Het koninkrijk, Vol. 7, 422. 14 Hondius, Terugkeer, 205, 210-211, 213. 15 Ibid, 40.
In 2001, Dutch historian Chris van der Heijden published his research under the title Grijs Verleden – grey past. In it, he attacks the Netherlands’ national myth of having collectively resisted the Nazis and shown collective solidarity with the Jews. Van der Heijden proves reality was very much different: most people were neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ but ‘grey’. The general trend had been accommodation. Historian Philo Bregstein is of the opinion that ‘accommodation’ is just an elegant word for collaboration. There had been a general collaboration with the Germans with a few rare heroic exceptions of resistance. Recent comparative studies of the Holocaust in various European countries all concluded that the Netherlands had always been one of the least anti-Semitic countries of the continent. Nevertheless, it has the highest percentage of perished Jews in Western Europe. Historians have found many different explanations for this: the small country was too densely populated; the Dutch are an obedient people, with a mentality that resembled the Germans’; and the Nazi regime functioned so well because the Dutch government had left the country at the outbreak of the war. However, Bregstein argues, the more convincing explanation is that Jews had been well-integrated. They had suffered little from anti-Semitism and had been “lulled into sleep towards Nazi danger”, as Presser had already described it. The gentiles must have done so as well.17
In 2012, Dutch historian Bart van der Boom published his heavily criticised Wij weten niets van hun lot – we know nothing of their fate – in which he claims the Dutch population had no idea of what was happening in Poland. Otherwise, Van der Boom argues, more Dutchmen would have resisted against the persecution of the Jews. The Dutch rejected the persecution of the Jews because, according to Van der Boom, the Netherlands had been a tolerant nation for centuries: Jews were civilians with the same rights, no matter what one thought of them. Anti-Jewish sentiments, he argues, went hand in hand with the anti-Jewish measures that had been implemented by the Nazis. Van der Boom based his conclusions on 164 diaries: the majority of the Dutch did not agree with the way in which the Jews were treated. Van der Boom is thus of the opinion that the propaganda and the anti-Jewish measures were the root of the increase of anti-Semitism.18 In 2013, historians Evelien Gans en Remco Ensel
reacted to Van der Boom’s conclusions. According to them Van der Boom used a
17 Bregstein, Ph., ‘Jacob Presser (1899-1970) Between History and Literature’ in
Dutch Crossing, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2012).
‘what if’ method of historical research when he explains that the ‘normal’ Dutchman cannot be blamed for not having helped the persecuted Jews because he had no idea of what happened to them. Besides that, Van der Boom does not write about Dutch anti-Semitism as a serious factor, even though quite a few diarists mention this. Anti-Semitism, according to Gans and Ensel, was not the most important reason for the Dutch gentiles to not help the Jews, but a very motivated and virulent SS-regime in the Netherlands, together with legalism en the fact that people tended to simply obey the law. Gans and Ensel also criticise other Dutch historical research because more often than not it tends to set aside anti-Semitism as irrelevant. Van der Boom is, in their view, a fine example of this. The fact that anti-Semitism increased during the years of occupation, was played down by Van der Boom, since, according to him, this has not been sufficiently proven. Gans and Ensel strongly disagree.
Post-war anti-Semitism
In the final chapter of his chronicles, ‘Balans’ – assessment –, Herzberg discusses the return of the Jews into Dutch society. In it, Herzberg explains that from the moment people no longer had to be afraid their anti-Semitic sentiments would help the Nazis, they more openly expressed these feelings. One should not think, Herzberg continues, that the post-war anti-Semitism had its roots in the German ‘infection’, it had already been an indigenous phenomenon; the Nazis did not bring it to the Netherlands. One of the characteristics of the Nazis was not their anti-Semitism per se, but the fact that they persecuted Jews, in short: the way they put their anti-Semitism into practice. According to Herzberg, public anti-Semitism had increased because there had been an increase of an inner discontent of the Dutch population. Their problems grew and their anti-Semitism grew with them, as if they were saying that the Jews were the reason the rest of the population had gone through extreme hardships. The reasons why they did not grow proportionally can be explained by the fact that the Jewish minority had become much more visible. This is what happened during the German occupation, Herberg argues, and it was not a result of Nazi-propaganda, but of the persecution itself.19
Presser explains that the roots of post-war anti-Semitism were desperately sought in the ‘German infection’. Extensive study, however, has proven that there was a different source for the increase of anti-Semitism: “Proprium ingenii humani est
odisse quem laeseris” - it belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured. Presser is of the opinion that the Jews kept painfully reminding those who felt they had failed at, or even had renounced protecting the Jews. This resulted in a generalising defamation of the Jews.20 Thus, Presser agrees with Herzberg that the
persecution of the Jews had caused the increase in anti-Semitism, even though they disagree on the reasons for this.
According to De Jong, the anti-Semitism that had gained strength during the occupation kept manifesting itself for some time after the war had ended. He believes there are three main elements to explain why the non-Jews had so little understanding and warmth for the returning Jews after the liberation of Europe. Firstly, the extreme hardships, atrocities and terrors the Jews had had to endure were too incomprehensible for any normal person. Second, many Dutchmen felt their own experiences had been so shocking that they could not conceive others’ experiences, let alone realise that their own experiences may have been less horrific than those of the Jews. And thirdly, Dutch society had never before been confronted with large groups of people who had, as it were, returned from the land of the dead.21
During the war there had been a general indifference with the fate of the Jews, and after the war this had turned into insensibility and aggressiveness. In the summer of 1945 after the war had ended, according to Hondius, old prejudices were often heard once again, and now gentiles were afraid that returning Jews would take over jobs and positions. Besides that, apart from some positive experiences of returning Jews, now there suddenly were openly aggressive anti-Semitic remarks towards the Jews, and especially the warning that the Jews ought to be thankful. Hondius speaks of a certain recrudescence of anti-Semitism since after a couple of months it seemed to decrease again. The fact that it was a recrudescence, according to Hondius, means that there is a certain continuity of the anti-Semitism as described above. Hondius firmly believes that the increase of anti-Semitism after the war was the result of the systematically implemented differences between Jews and gentiles. The Nazis had isolated the Jews and they had taught the gentiles to think in terms of ‘Jew’, ‘half-Jew’ or ‘Aryan’. Where Herzberg believes that the increase of anti-Semitism was not caused by propaganda but by the persecutions, Hondius clearly does not agree with him on this point. She does, however, agree with Presser on the fact that a certain
20 Presser, Ondergang, 518.
feeling of guilt towards the Jews might have been another source of anti-Semitic attitudes.22
British historian Bob Moore, tends to base his findings on Hondius’ theories. During the war the gentile population of the Netherlands saw the Jews as a threat to their life style because of the racial politics of the Nazis. After the war, many seemed to be unable to accept what had happened to the Jews and that the Jewish experiences had been much worse than their own. This acceptance problem contributed to the continuation and even increase of pre-war anti-Semitism.23
In 2000, historian Pieter Lagrou tried to explain what accounted for the place of Jewish victims in post-war national commemorations. To him the preliminary questions of anti-Semitism are important in this case. Lagrou asks himself first of all if anti-Semitism did occur after the liberation of the Netherlands. If this question were to obtain a positive answer it would, according to Lagrou, be “a powerful confirmation of the very feeble impact of the discovery of the genocide,” the realisation of what had happened to the Jews did not seem to have very much impact on the rest of the population. The second question Lagrou asks himself is “whether the marginality of the Jewish experience in national memory is the result of anti-Semitism and of anti-anti-Semitism alone.” These two questions are, as Lagrou puts it, mirror images of each other: “whereas the first question asks whether the place of anti-Semitism in post-war society was a result of the genocide, the second question asks whether the place of genocide in post-war society was a result of anti-Semitism.”
Many authors, according to Lagou, seem to think this first question is unthinkable: how could one remain anti-Semitic after having seen what the Nazi-ideology had resulted into? Yet, it would be naïve to think that anti-Semitism had disappeared after the liberation, since it had always been present, latently as well as openly. Both forms of anti-Semitism had made the Holocaust possible. Anti-Semitism seemed to have had increased. People started to discuss the lack of Jewish resistance and there was a growing feeling that the Jews must have done something wrong, otherwise they would not have been treated the way they had. According to Lagrou, the realisation of what had happened to the Jews did not eliminate an ongoing traditional anti-Semitism. This seems to answer Lagrou’s first question. The second
22 Hondius, Terugkeer, 205, 210-211, 213.
23 Moore, B., Slachtoffers en overlevenden. De Nazi-Vervolging van de Joden in
question, however, is harder to answer. Post-war anti-Semitism is often underestimated by historians, Lagrou argues. Nevertheless, he believes, this is not the reason why the Jews were pushed to the margins, because the anti-Semitic attitude of those who were busy thinking about which place the Jews should hold in the national memory was hardly ever discussed.24
In 2001, Dutch historian Boris de Munnick wrote the article ‘Na de zogenaamde bevrijding’ – after the so-called liberation – in which he argues, as did De Jong, that gentiles could not imagine what the Jews had gone through, but, according to De Munnick, it is not completely certain whether the change in attitude towards the Jews was the result of a conscious rejection of the Jews or the Jewish community. De Munnick is certain that there must have been Dutchmen who were surefooted anti-Semites who were disappointed some of the Jews had returned, but the Dutch people as a whole were not anti-Semitic at all. They were, however, psychologically traumatised, which caused for them to mainly show disinterest, estrangement, and incomprehension towards the Jews.25
In 2002, Dutch historian Evelien Gans strongly emphasised that, even though there was an increase in anti-Semitism after the liberation, one should not think the Netherlands had turned into an anti-Semitic swamp. On the contrary, she argues, two camps were noticeable: those who accused the Jews of cowardice and treacherous behaviour, and those who nailed anti-Semitism to the pillory. Gans quotes the non-Jewish social democrat J.W. Matthijsen who was of the opinion that post-war Dutch anti-Semitism was not the result of Jewish behaviour during the war. Matthijsen too, saw as its main cause the forced separation between Jews and gentiles that had been implemented by the Nazis. The Jews were seen as ’Jews’ once again and this had had fatal effects on their relations. Besides that, the Dutch had started to hate Jews as a result of the extra hardships they had caused for the gentile population and the dangers the Jews had brought upon them. According to Gans, anti-Semitism in post-war Netherlands was stronger and fiercer than before the post-war. However, she doubts
24 Lagrou, P., The Legacy of Nazi Occupation. Patriotic Memory and National
Recovery in Western Europe. 1945-1965 (Cambridge, 2000) 254-257.
25 De Munnick, B., ‘Na de zogenaamde bevrijding. De terugkeer van Joden in de
Nederlandse samenleving’ in H. Piersma, Mensenheugenis. Terugkeer en opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog: Getuigenissen (Amsterdam, 2001) 57, 68-69
whether it is true, as Hondius believes, that the revival of anti-Semitism had been over after a few months.26
Summary
The authors have different opinions about why the relations between Jews and gentiles had worsened during the war. Herzberg argues that one of the main reasons for the increase of anti-Semitism had been the fact that people heard stories of Jews misbehaving in their hiding places. The Jews were now often judged as a group instead of as individuals. Besides that, since the Jews were targeted by the Nazis, they seemed to have become a problem for the whole Dutch population. According to Presser, the reason for the growing gap between Jews and gentiles during the war was the fact that non-Jewish Dutchmen were often mostly happy that they were not Jewish themselves and besides that, everyone had their own problems that seemed to grow over time. De Jong, on the other hand, claims that it was mainly the anti-Jewish propaganda of the Nazis that did its work. Another reason, according to De Jong, was the lack of courage to help the Jews, resulting in gentiles convincing themselves that the Jews must have done something to deserve what they were getting. Hondius partly seems to have based her ideas on Presser when she states that gentiles simply did not care for the Jews and anti-Semitism had always been present in one form or another.
Van der Heijden asserts that gentiles mainly just accommodated to the new situation but Bregstein tends to call this collaboration. However, the Jews had not been alert enough to the dangers the Nazis brought with them, and the rest of the population might not have seen this either. The Jews simply had been too much integrated into Dutch society. Van der Boom took a more positive stance when he took a look at the attitude of gentile Dutchmen towards the Jews. He strongly defends that people did not know what was happening in the death camps in Poland, otherwise, he was certain, more people would have helped the persecuted Jews. The fact that there was an increase of anti-Semitism, and he agrees with De Jong on this, was to be blamed on the anti-Jewish propaganda and the anti-Jewish measures that were gradually implemented. Gans and Ensel, however, heavily criticise Van der Boom. The accused him of not seeing anti-Semitism as a serious factor in Dutch
26 Gans, E., ‘”Vandaag hebben ze niets – maar morgen bezitten ze weer tien gulden.”
Antisemitische stereotypen in bevrijd Nederland’ in C. Kristel, Polderschouw. Terugkeer en opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Regionale verschillen (Amsterdam, 2002) 316,319, 350, 353.
society, or at least not an important reason for the large number of perished Jews. Besides that, Van der Boom, to their opinion, played down the increase of anti-Semitism in the Netherlands.
Most authors tend to agree on the fact that anti-Semitism had increased in post-war society as well. There is, however, no consensus about the reasons why there was more anti-Semitism after the war had ended. Whereas Herzberg believed that the Nazi-occupation did not ‘bring’ anti-Semitism, but the concept of the persecution of the Jews to the Netherlands, and that this had caused the increase of anti-Semitism, Presser is of the opinion that, even though he believed the persecution of the Jews was the source of the increase, it was more the feeling of shame and guilt of the gentile population that caused for them to express their anti-Semitic sentiments. An argument De Jong stated as well when he discussed the increase of anti-Semitism during the war. Hondius on the other hand, saw a continuation of anti-Semitism. Nazi-policy had intensified and re-enforced old prejudices because they had made the Jews more visible and these preconceptions had not disappeared after the liberation. Moore agrees with Hondius, but he also believes that there is another reason for the increase of anti-Semitism: the fact that it was extremely difficult to accept what had really been done to the Jews: that they had been worse off than the other Dutchmen. Gans agrees with Hondius as well: anti-Semitic prejudices saw a revival and anti-Semitism was stronger after the war because of the separations the Nazis had implemented in Dutch society and apart from that, the Jews had caused for the Dutch to have had a more difficult period than if they had not been persecuted. Nazi racial politics, therefore, had been one of the causes of the increase of anti-Semitism.
Lagrou asks himself the question if anti-Semitism occurred after the war, a question that has received a positive answer from the other historians discussed here. According to Lagrou, an increase of anti-Semitism must have meant that the discovery of what had happened to the deported Jews in the death camps in Poland hardly made an impression on the gentiles. Besides that, the lack of Jewish courage is often discussed apart from the ‘fact’ that the Jews must have done something wrong, as De Jong explains as well. De Munnick on the other hand, believes, and he agrees with De Jong, Hondius and Moore, that for the gentiles there simply had not been room for other people’s sufferings and traumas. There must have been anti-Semites, but the Netherlands had not turned into an anti-Semitic country, an idea Gans supports. He does, however, seem to somewhat downplay the reactions of the gentile
part of the population when he justifies why they reacted to the returning Jews the way they had.
Structure
Historians seem to agree on the fact that the pre-war gentile attitude of tolerance towards the Jews had changed into one of increased anti-Semitism after the Netherlands had been liberated, a shift from integration and assimilation of the Jews into greatly distorted relations between them and the gentiles. At least, that is what it looks like, or was De Vries right when he stated that the majority of the Dutch gentile population simply had never cared for the Jews at all?
This supposed shift in the relations between Jews and gentiles needs to be explained. In five chapters this thesis will try to answer the question whether De Vries was right when he stated the gentiles had never cared for the Jews. The chapters will have a chronological order and to be able to judge whether the relationships between Jews and gentiles in the Netherlands really had changed that dramatically, one needs to have some knowledge about how the situation before the war was. The first chapter will therefore be about the years 1796, the year Jews received civil rights, and 1940, when the Second World War commenced for the Netherlands. The main focus in this chapter will, however, be on the 1930s, when large groups of refugees entered the country from Germany, which caused for the Jewish group in society to become more visible.
Chapters two and three will deal with the Jewish-gentile relations during the war itself. The second chapter will take a closer look at how gentiles reacted to the anti-Jewish measures the Nazis implemented. The student protests at the universities of Delft and Leiden, the famous strike of the Amsterdam labourers in February 1941, and reactions of gentiles to the introduction of the yellow star the Jews were forced to wear as of May 1942 are, by many, considered (great) acts of Dutch solidarity with the persecuted Jews, but was that truly the case? Were these acts examples of deep solidarity of gentiles with the Jews? The third chapter will be divided into three paragraphs, one each for a group within society: helpers, collaborators, and bystanders. The victims, the fourth important group, will not have a separate paragraph since they obviously play an important role in each of the other paragraphs. The roles of collaborators of different sorts are apparent, but what do the roles of helpers and bystanders tell about caring or not-caring for the Jews in Dutch society?
Chapters four and five will be about the liberation of Europe and the Netherlands and about the first period after the war had ended. The fourth chapter will deal with the difficult repatriation and homecoming of Jews and other former prisoners of the Nazis who had spent months or even years in prisons or concentration camps. What was the role of the Dutch government in the way the returning Dutchmen were treated upon arrival and how did Jews perceive their return? Chapter five will focus on the increased anti-Semitism many Jews had to experience after their return to Dutch society. Anti-Semitism had increased but historians’ ideas about the reason for this vary. This chapter will therefore for a large part include gentiles’ reactions to the returning Jews.
This thesis will mainly focus on secondary sources. Most of the aforementioned historians and authors will be included, complemented by others who sometimes have different opinions or ideas. To illustrate the story, fragments of diaries and memoires of survivors will be included, as well as parts of newspaper articles and parts of articles from the Nieuw Isrealietisch Weekblad, a magazine by and for Jews in the Netherlands. The articles from the newspapers that have been chosen are from several newspapers with different backgrounds: the social-democratic resistance paper Het Parool, the (orthodox-) Protestant resistance paper Trouw, the Catholic newspaper De Maasbode, and De Telegraaf, the Dutch newspaper that gradually turned to the side of the occupiers, spreading anti-Jewish propaganda and news articles. Neither solidarity with the Jews, nor anti-Semitism or (not-)caring for the Jews can be measured, for apparent reasons, since the majority of those ‘involved’ have long passed away. They cannot be put into numbers or percentages and therefore it is extremely difficult to give a definite answer to the question how many Dutchmen were anti-Semitic or solidary with the Jews. This thesis will, however, hopefully give a better idea about whether or not it can be said that the Dutch gentiles did or did not care for the Jews.
Chapter 1. Before the War
Gentile-Jewish Relations Before 1930
“The National Assembly acknowledges the principle that the Batavian Civil System is independent of any religious belief, and that the so-called Jews in the Netherlands not only belong to the nation’s people, but are as well postulated in perfect equality to all other citizens, with regard to civil rights and duties.”27
Inspired by the revolutionary ideas that had led to the foundation of the French Republic in 1789, in 1795 the Batavian Republic was created on Dutch territory. The church and the state were now separated from each other, which, in 1796, led to the Jews acquiring the same civil rights as their gentile fellow Dutchmen.28 The first King
of the Netherlands, Louis Napoleon who had been placed in the Netherlands to rule the country according to his brother’s, the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte’s wishes, was deeply moved by the extreme poverty in which many Jews lived, especially in Amsterdam. Nevertheless, despite efforts of the King, social discrimination of the Jews did not disappear.29 Evelien Gans states that one could
compare the Jewish communities of before their emancipation as a closed off kettle in which, for centuries long, all kinds of gasses had been cooking under high pressure. The emancipation took the pressure off the kettle and released an enormous amount of energy. Jewish tradition had always known a strong emphasis on studying and this had made the Jewish group as a whole – or at least the male Jews - the most learned of Europe. After the emancipation, schools and universities opened their doors to the Jews and suddenly public, political and other offices and professions were no longer forbidden territory for them. The Jews acquired high positions in journalism, education, and in administrative services, as well as within the arts and sciences.30
The poverty of part of the Jewish community and the difficult improvement of the socio-economic position of the poor Jews were the reasons why gentiles did not feel ill at ease towards the Jews at first. According to Dutch historian Renate
Fuks-27 Groninger Courant, 8 February 1796.
28 Fuks-Mansfeld, R.G., ‘Verlichting en Emancipatie Omstreeks 1750-1814’ in J.C.H.
Blom a.o., Geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1995) 191.
29 Fuks-Mansfeld, ‘Verlichting en Emancipatie’, 194. 30 Gans, Gojse Nijd, 22-23.
Mansfeld, the common attitude towards the Jews was one of condescension and distance. Post-World War II researchers have often described this as anti-Semitic. However, Fuks-Mansfeld argues, one should ask oneself if it is correct to use this term for the Dutch attitude towards the Jews in the nineteenth century with the knowledge we now have of what happened at the end of the first half of the twentieth.31
In the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century the Jewish community remained a clearly recognisable minority in Dutch society. This distinguishability was fed by stereotypes about typical ‘Jewish behaviour’, language, and Jewish appearance. The anti-Jewish ideas and prejudices knew many forms and gradations. Dutch historians J.C.H. Blom and J.J. Cahen distinguish three forms of keeping distance, discrimination, and anti-Semitism that sometimes overlap. The first form, according to Blom and Cahen, is primarily anti-Judaic and is mainly found in Christian circles. However, there was a secularised variant as well. This form was particularly against every form of religion, especially the ‘archaic’ and ‘backward’ Judaism. For the Christians, their anti-Judaic sentiments came from a certain frustration about the fact that the Chosen People from the Old Testament refused to accept Jesus Christ as their saviour and besides that, especially for Catholics, the Jews were seen as the murderers of Christ.
The second form Blom and Cahen distinguish had a social character. The Jews were seen as a people with certain pleasant and certain unpleasant features from which they could not easily disengage themselves such as the usurer Jew, the modern version of the capitalist, or the dangerous Bolshevik. In both cases distrust was the key word. One had to be careful when doing business with the Jews. The third form is anti-Semitic of nature. Referring to the Jews as a separate people now carried the semi-scientific element of race. With social-Darwinist terminology one could describe the inferiority of the ‘Jewish race,’ and this turned out to be the basis of a more thoroughgoing anti-Semitism, one that could take political forms.32
The nineteenth century gave birth to what Gans describes as a pseudo-scientific, racist anti-Semitism. This can best be described as racial theories that link
31 Fuks-Mansfeld, R.G., ‘Moeizame Aanpassing’ in J.C.H. Blom, a.o., Geschiedenis
van de Joden in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1995) 240-241.
32 Blom, J.C.H. and J.J. Cahen, ‘Joodse Nederlanders, Nederlandse Joden en Joden in
Nederland’ in J.C.H. Blom, a.o., Geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1995) 284.
the Jews to modernity. “It was felt that ‘the Jew’, the former pariah, seemed to profit from the new trends in economic, political and cultural life, which had to be conquered by non-Jews as well and to which the less fortunate fell victim.” Besides that, Gans explains that “racist anti-Semitism left the Jew without the escape of conversion. Being a Jew was now considered something biological, a virus passed on from generation to generation.”33 Stereotypes, according to Gans, always tell their
own story. The list of stereotypes with which the Jews were confronted is very extensive. The Jews were seen as the murderers of God, liars, cowards, traitors, usurers, cunning traders, conspirators, capitalist bankers, rich, brutal Bolshevists, brilliant scientists, political lobbyists, parasites, arrogant victims, and as the almighty Jew, among others.34 Gans explains that the ambivalent feelings towards the Jews and
Judaism made their entrance with the birth of Christianity and she describes Christianity as the unwanted child of Judaism, screaming for recognition of the group from which its origins sprang, but never receiving it. Christianity could never deny its Jewish roots and was, frustratingly, condemned to Judaism.35
The fact that the Jews were treated as a special case in society was not only religious of character, but socio-economic as well. Because the Jews had spread across the world in the first centuries after the birth of Christ, they had built large international trade networks that were attractive for princes and bishops who granted them certain privileges and protection in return for the prosperity the Jews brought to their regions. Besides that, the Jews were not enslaved to the rulers like the rest of the population usually was and this turned out to be a source of resentment.36 Contrary to
Christians Jews had been exempted from the ban on trading in money and asking interest and again they received certain privileges like the right to receive and sell stolen goods as pawnbrokers, hence the stereotypes of the rich or the greedy Jew.37
Stereotypes always have certain roots from which they grow which, of course, does not mean that they are necessarily true.
During the first half of the twentieth century, approximately 100.000 Jews resided in the Netherlands, mainly as a result of a strong growth in numbers in the second half of the previous century. However, after 1920, their percentage within the
33 Gans, ‘”They Have Forgotten’, 74. 34 Gans, Gojse Nijd, 14.
35 Ibid, 15-16. 36 Ibid, 16. 37 Ibid, 18.
Dutch population started to decrease due to a lower birth rate than that of their fellow Dutchmen. Fewer Jews were born and the group as a whole was aging. This development went hand in hand with the urbanisation of the group. Mid-nineteenth century, large parts of the Jewish population had moved to the countryside but after 1880 the number of municipalities with Jewish members decreased to approximately four hundred. Now, more than half of the Jewish population in the Netherlands lived in its capital Amsterdam, comprising roughly ten percent of its citizens, opposed to a mere two percent of the Dutch population as a whole.38
The 1930s
Dutch Professor of history Ido de Haan explains that Dutch Jewry was not a close community during the 1930s. Most Jews acknowledged their Jewish identity, even though they were not actively involved in their being Jewish.39 On 30 November
1940, Het Parool wrote: “In our country no one ever thought about whether someone’s ancestors had lived on the banks of the Jordan River, wearing a camel skin, or in the Rhine Valley wearing that of a bear. The fact that people had lived together for centuries and therefore had a common history, lived on the same soil, and spoke the same language, was enough. We do not know Dutch Jews, only Jewish Dutchmen.”40 However, according to De Haan, the Jews were often regarded as
members of a different group. Besides being geographically and administratively identifiable because the Jews were registered in the several Jewish congregations and, during the 1930s, they were seen as a different group as a whole by the non-Jews and that was not only because of the National Socialist regime in Germany. Finally, as a reaction to the many German Jews seeking refuge in the Netherlands, the Dutch government made clear that the Jews were a separate group and they held the Dutch Jews responsible for the intake and care of their German counterparts.41
When Adolf Hitler was appointed as the new chancellor of the German Reich in January 1933, the Dutch Jews had little else on their minds than the consequences this might have for them.42 Some people expected a new war to break out some time 38 Haan, de, I., Na de ondergang. De herinnering aan de Jodenvervolging in
Nederland 1945-1995 (Den Haag, 1997) 61.
39 Haan, de, Na de ondergang, 62.
40 Het Parool, nr. 15, 30 November 1940, 1. 41 Haan, de, Na de ondergang, 62.
42 Michman, J. a.o., Pinkas. Geschiedenis van de Joodse gemeenschap in Nederland
in the near future whereas others did not expect too much trouble. Hitler’s Nazi-regime put its domestic enemies under great pressure from the moment it seized power and soon after, the first anti-Jewish measures were installed. This resulted in approximately 5.000 Jews fleeing to the neighbouring country of the Netherlands that same year – although many more fled to other countries as well - where a serious refugee problem arose. Apart from the fact that the Dutch government had doubts about whether these refugees were truly asylum seekers – their lives in Germany were miserable but they were not in danger – there was also the potential problem of these refugees being a threat to the Dutch labour market. Therefore, in March 1934, the government decided that the socio-economic situation of the Dutch population was far more important than a refugee policy on humanitarian grounds.43 The Comité voor
Bijzondere Joodse Belangen (Committee for Extraordinary Jewish Interests) was called into life to solve the two main problems of the refugee situation. Firstly it sought an appropriate answer for the persecution of the Jews in Germany, and secondly it aimed to arrange the intake of the German refugees. Founders of the committee were Professor David Cohen and Abraham Asscher, the two future chairmen of the notorious Amsterdam Jewish Council. Between 1933 and 1940, the committee received more than six million guilders in funds, a third of which came from abroad, mainly from the American Joint Distribution Committee with which the committee kept close ties. The Dutch government acted rigorously against each illegal asylum seeker that was caught at the border. Large groups of refugees were mercilessly sent back to where they came from.44
Because of the news about anti-Jewish measures that reached the Netherlands from Germany and the thousands of refugees, the Jewish community became much more visible in the 1930s. This explained why, according to Hondius, the relations between the Jews and the non-Jews got more strained and anti-Semitism increased. Some prejudices had been too strong, Hondius argues, and this caused for more distance between the two groups.45 The estimates of how many Jewish refugees
entered the Netherlands between 1933 and 1939 vary. Historian Martin Bossenbroek proposes the number was something between 20.000 and 40.000,46 whereas Dutch 43 Bossenbroek, M., De meelstreep. Terugkeer en opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog
(Amsterdam, 2001) 32-34.
44 Michman, Pinkas, 153, 155, 167. 45 Hondius, Terugkeer, 205.
historian Erik Somers claims it must have been little over 22.500.47 Hondius believed
the number of refugees should be sought between 23.000 and 24.000 Jews who stayed in the Netherlands for more than two weeks, many of whom settled in Amsterdam, and approximately 11.000 Jewish refugees who stayed in the Netherlands less than a week, before leaving for countries such as the United States or the United Kingdom.48
The Reichskristallnacht of November 9, 1938 caused for the Dutch government to interfere more actively with the German refugees.49 The Dutch people had angrily
protested against the way in which the Dutch government treated the German refugees. The Queen, her son in law Prince Bernhard, and several ministers received telegrams in which the senders urged them to open the borders. Several institutions and companies – non-Jewish ones as well – organised benefits to collect money for the Jewish refugees and the Jewish Refugee Committee received almost two million guilders from private gifts. The government decided to slightly open the borders to admit a limited number of refugees but now public opinion began to stir: why were the Netherlands now so meagrely admitting people who needed a safe haven when they had admitted hundreds of thousands of Belgian refugees during the Great War some twenty years before? Government policy, however, did not change.50 The
government did order the construction of a special camp for the newly arriving German Jews, a large camp in the province of Drenthe in the north east of the country, called Westerbork. During the war, when the persecution and deportation of the Jews had begun, Westerbork served as a transit camp from which the Jews were later sent to their deaths in Poland. Ironically, the building costs of this camp was forced upon the Jewish community.51
According to Gans, the image of the Jew as ‘the other’ gained strength during the 1930s. This was caused by the anti-Jewish policies in Germany that made its way to the Netherlands, the economic depression, and the large stream of German Jewish refugees that struck the country. Nazi policy against the Jews that resulted in many cases of violence against the Jews and their persecution, was heavily denounced but at the same time, Dutch newspapers more than once spoke of the ‘fact’ that the German
47 Somers, E., Voorzitter van de Joodse Raad. De herinneringen van David Cohen
(1941-1943) (Zutphen, 2010) 14.
48 Hondius, Terugkeer, 24. 49 Ibid, 37.
50 De Jong, L., Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, Vol. 1:
Voorspel (Den Haag, 1969) 484-486.
Jews had brought their misery upon themselves because of their unbelief, their refusal to assimilate, and their disproportionate presence in the press and the economic and financial worlds.52 It was an open secret that Germany had established several
concentration camps as from 1933, and that the Jews were persecuted. The Dutch press was often filled with news about the events in Germany, the Juden-Boykott of April 1933, the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 and the Reichskristallnacht of November 1938, which often resulted in reactions of disgust and horror. Nevertheless, many saw these tragic happenings only as excesses and did not feel they had to worry much about them.53 Holocaust survivor Lex van Weren remembers: “I had an uncle
who worked as a chauffeur for the German Refugee Committee. […] When we visited him, or when he visited us, we heard the stories about the persecution of the Jews in Germany. Everything was in the newspapers […] but the average Dutchmen thought: “this does not concern me, […] those Germans have a different mentality, this will never happen here.””54
In the 1930s, an organised anti-Semitism entered the political arena in the Netherlands in the form of the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging, the National Socialist Movement, in short NSB.55 In the Netherlands radical political anti-Semitism
was not a common feature. Even within the NSB, which was founded in 1931, anti-Semitism was initially not on the party program. From the beginning, Jews were seen as second-rate citizens but they could become members if they so desired. The first elections in which the NSB participated were held in 1935. The party won eight percent of the votes. After these elections the NSB radicalised on all points of their political agenda, embracing anti-Semitism in 1936. Nevertheless, this radicalisation did not cause the party to receive more votes. On the contrary, when the next elections were held in 1939, Dutch National-Socialism saw its number of supporters decreased by half.56
Before the war, there had always been a certain degree of tolerance towards the Jews. Never had there been pogroms like in Eastern Europe and the Jews had been able to ignore symptoms of anti-Semitism since open enmity had always been so rare.
52 Gans, ‘”They Have Forgotten”, 76. 53 De Jong, Het Koninkrijk, Vol. 1, 444.
54 Walda, D., Trompettist in Auschwitz. Herinneringen van Lex van Weren
(Amsterdam, 1989) 15.
55 Hondius, Terugkeer, 205.
Jews had even been able to join the NSB. Many had gotten used to the Jews and even appreciated them. Nevertheless, there were gentiles who distrusted Jews, which caused for them to be denied certain professions or institutions. But, the existing anti-Semitism had always been bearable for the Jews and had meant little to the non-Jews.57 According to Het Parool in the article of November 1940, the Dutch had
never felt a specific hatred towards the Jews, nor did they cherish a “special love for them.” The Dutch simply did not care about whether someone was a Jew, a Catholic, an atheist, or someone who descended from Huguenots or Spaniards.58 In that sense,
according to Lex van Weren, Hitler had managed to win the war. Before the war he himself had never really experienced anti-Semitism, but after the liberation of the Netherlands a Jew was a Jew and according to many, Jews are a different kind of human. “That idea will last.”59
57 Presser, Ondergang, 126.
58 Het Parool, nr. 15, 30 November 1940, 1. 59 Walda, Trompettist in Auschwitz, 118.
Chapter 2. Three Cases of Solidarity
The War
The German occupation of the Netherlands would last for five years. German troops conquered their small neighbouring country in only a few days. Anti-National-Socialists and several Jews who realised they were in great danger tried to leave as fast as they could. However, since the southern border was no option for leaving the country because of the German attacks on neighbouring country Belgium, the only possibility was the North Sea. Desperate people went to the IJmuiden harbour and other ports, hoping for a place on one of the ships that might take them to safety. The Dutch authorities were not able to organise a structured evacuation but nevertheless approximately 3000 Dutchmen managed to get to England, among them a few hundred Jews.60 In Amsterdam alone 128 cases of suicide were registered among the
terrified Jews. The number of suicides in the whole country probably lies in the hundreds.61 This was a widely known fact at the time.62 Herzberg dares anyone who
does not believe this fact to go to Jewish cemeteries and count the gravestones with 15 and 16 May 1940 as dates of death inscripted on them. One will see large gravestones with the names of complete families on them and, Herzberg states, if the desperate Jews had been more familiar with the techniques of suicide, there would have been many more. These failed suicide attempts were never recorded in statistics. It was as if the Jews thought: “Better that we do it than he.” ‘He’ was Adolf Hitler.63
In the first few months of the occupation, life for the Dutch did not change much, apart from the fact that they now saw German soldiers everywhere in the streets of the cities and villages.64 Holocaust survivor Jules Schelvis expresses his
ideas about this in his memoirs: “The soldiers had apparently received orders to arrange the transition into a totalitarian system as invisibly and quietly as possible. For us little changed in the beginning of the war.”65 Dutch historian Peter Romijn
agrees with Schelvis that the new regime was of the opinion that immediate actions
60 Romijn, P., ‘De oorlog’ (1940-1945)’ in J.C.H. Blom a.o., Geschiedenis van de
Joden in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1995) 313, 315-316.
61 Romijn, ‘De Oorlog’, 316.
62 Van der Boom, ‘Ordinary Dutchmen’ 37. 63 Herzberg, Kroniek, 13-14, 19.
64 Romijn, ‘De oorlog’, 317-318.
65 Jules Schelvis, Binnen de poorten. Herinneringen van Jules Schelvis (Bussum,
against the Jews might hinder their plans and they therefore did their utmost to win the trust of the Dutch population, the Jews included. Several German authorities announced that they were not planning to implement anti-Jewish measures but, when half a year had passed, in November 1940, the German authorities ordered Jews who worked in civil service and Jews who held public offices to register themselves. The Dutch Secretary General, operating on behalf of the Dutch government in exile, stood up against this order. Nevertheless, he did send the forms with which each civil servant had to declare that they, or their spouses, did or did not have Jewish parents or grandparents: the notorious Aryan Declaration.66 Soon after the people with Jewish
blood who held public offices, and after that teachers and Professors were first dismissed from their positions and in 1941 they were fired.
At the Technical University in Delft the dismissal of Professor Dr. D. van Dantzig, Professor Dr. H.I. Waterman and Professor Dr. A.C. Josephus Jitta led to a spontaneous outburst of demonstrations of students, which ultimately led to a general strike. More well-known are the acts of resistance of students from the University of Leiden where Professor Dr. E.M. Meijers and nine others were ordered to leave the university. In this case other Professors took the lead, in particular Professor Rudolph Pabus Cleveringa, dean of the law faculty.67 He was especially struck by the dismissal
of Meijers, whom he had considered a fatherly friend. On Saturday 23 November, some students came to Cleveringa to tell him about the plans of most of the students to go on strike if the Jewish Professors and teachers were indeed to be sent away from their positions. On Tuesday 26 November, Meijers was supposed to give a lecture but Cleveringa decided to go instead of him and devote the first hour to state his protest. After his speech68 a thundering applause could be heard after which the national
anthem was sung. That same afternoon, the student strike of the University of Leiden would be a fait accompli. Students of other universities, among them those of Amsterdam, Utrecht and Groningen, protested against the discharge of their Jewish Professors and lecturers. They did not, however, go on strike.69 It did not help. The
66 Romijn, ‘De oorlog’, 317-318. 67 Presser, Ondergang, 43.
68 This speech was voted ‘Best Speech of the Netherlands’ in January 2015. Source:
www.nos.nl (25 January 2015).
69 De Jong, L., Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, Vol. 4
Jewish civil servants, Professors and judges went home, and the Germans went on with their plans.70
Tensions rise
The anti-Jewish measures that had been implemented by the Nazis between December 1940 and mid-February 1941 were, according to De Jong, a clear sign that the occupiers did not care about the protests of November 1940, and that they planned to follow the path they had chosen for themselves.71 Dutch historian Ben Sijes, who
wrote a study about the Februari strike of 1941, quotes the illegal newspaper De Waarheid of 7 December 1940, which wrote that the persecution of the Jews was a way of distracting the non-Jewish Dutchmen. The paper pointed to the disunity the Nazis wanted to create with their anti-Semitic actions among the Dutch people. It was for that reason, the paper explained, that the battle against anti-Semitism was the main condition to secure the Dutch unity against their common enemy, the Nazi suppressors. In that same month, the illegal newspaper Vrij Nederland urged the Dutch to fiercely resist each German attempt to corrupt the Dutch spirit.72 Het Parool
warned its readers that “the German has the habit to attack the peoples he wants to suppress not only with arms but also with his ideological weapons. One of these weapons is anti-Semitism. He tries to use the presence of Jews to throw an apple of discord into the nation. […] If this scheme works, it is so much easier to rule the arguing groups within the population.”73
The Dutch themselves, Sijes argues, were deeply affected by the first anti-Jewish measures the Nazis had implemented. Who would have thought ever to read signs with the texts ‘forbidden for Jews’ or ‘Jews not wanted’ in their country that had always been so tolerant? Besides that, many knew Jews personally. They worked together, they knew Jewish political leaders, they were friends and sometimes even relatives. Many Dutchmen felt the Nazis wanted to break the bonds people had established with Jews and now suddenly there seemed to be two artificial groups in the Dutch community: Jews and gentiles, and this, Sijes explains, could never have been of Dutch origin.74 The Dutch, Het Parool wrote, did not want disunity within the 70 Herzberg, Kroniek, 63.
71 De Jong, L., Het Koninkrijk, Vol. 4, 814-817.
72 Sijes, B.A., De Februaristaking. 25-26 februari 1941 (Amsterdam, 1961) 16-17. 73 Het Parool, nr. 2., 17 February 1941, 1.
Dutch nation. The Dutch should stand strong against the enemy for humanitarian reasons and national unity. The “Jewish brothers should not be left standing in the cold.”75
As of January 1941, De Jong writes, German and Dutch Nazis had received permission to attack Jews on the streets, in cafes and restaurants. In that month and the month that followed, there were fights in several Dutch cities. These acts of violence gradually took on a more anti-Semitic form. On Sunday 9 February, for example, the Amsterdam café Alcazar was stormed and ruined because the owner was among the last to put up a sign that Jews were not wanted in his bar.76 But this was not
a case that stood on its own. In that same week, Jews were violently removed from a tram in Amsterdam and the windows of some bars and cafes with Jewish visitors were smashed to pieces. Whenever a crowd of Jewish and non-Jewish spectators emerged when a scene like described here happened, the police sometimes violently made sure these groups left. When Jews were kicked out of restaurants or cafes, many times gentiles too were hurt or injured.77
According to Presser, there are two things one should realise. In the first place, the Jews did resist. They did not actively confront their enemies but they would not let themselves be defencelessly slaughtered. They wanted to protect themselves and their homes and therefore erected knokploegen - gangs to fight against the oppressors when needed. In the second place, the Jewish labourers from the old Jewish quarter in Amsterdam got the support of non-Jewish Dutchmen from the same social standing. Presser argues that the feeling of not being left all alone must have strengthened their resolutions to battle anyone who would dare to defy them in their own neighbourhood.78
Approximately 28,000 Jews and 24,000 Gentiles lived in the old Jewish neighbourhood. Many members of this last group had family members and friends in other parts of the city. Besides that, each day many Gentile labourers passed this old part of the city centre on their way to work in the Amsterdam harbour and they were not going to abandon the Jews. They arrived in large numbers to resist the provocations of their oppressors. On Tuesday 11 February it came to fights between Jews, their brothers in arms, Dutch Nazis, and German policemen during which a
75 Het Parool, nr. 15, 30 November 1940, 2-3. 76 De Jong, Het Koninkrijk, Vol. 4, 814-817. 77 Sijes, De Februaristaking, 64, 65-67, 72-73, 75. 78 Presser, Ondergang, 80.
Dutch Nazi, Hendrik Koot, was mortally injured.79 According to De Telegraaf one
member of the group of Jews who attacked Koot, set his teeth in Koot’s face like a wild animal.80 This, however, had not been the case. The message was clearly
anti-Jewish propaganda. Koot was buried on Monday 17 February. More than 2,000 uniformed members of the NSB marched through Amsterdam and after the burial an agitated atmosphere was noticeable in the city.81
As a result of one particular incident, tensions rose even more. This time the events took place in the Van Woustraat, in the southern part of Amsterdam. ‘Koco’ was the name of an ice cream parlour that was owned by two German-Jewish immigrants, Alfred Kohn and Ernst Cahn. The parlour was a popular meeting point for Jews and Gentiles and had become one of the targets of the Nazis. Some of the regulars had come up with the idea to form a knokploeg to protect the business and its owners. The owners themselves had placed a metal bottle filled with ammonia in their parlour to spray this on their potential attackers. A few small successes against so-called ‘lone wolves’, Dutch Nazis who acted alone or in small groups, enlarged the self-confidence of the protectors of ‘Koco’. Gradually they started to neglect the secrecy of their group. On February 19, a patrol of the Grüne Polizei, the German police, entered ‘Koco’ and was sprayed with the biting ammonia. Cahn and Kohn and some other members of the knokploeg were arrested. As a reprisal for this incident and the death of Koot in the weekend of 22 and 23 February a large roundup was executed in the Jewish quarter, the first of many.82
During this weekend 425 Jewish men between the ages of 20 and 35 were
dragged from the streets and, after having been humiliated and molested, thrown into a camp. Brutal violence was supplemented with threats and yelling, and ferocious dogs caused wounds and torn clothes. Policemen from the police station of the Jewish quarter, who had been familiar with the population of this neighbourhood for years, were completely shaken and some managed to rescue a few Jews. The Jews who had been rounded up were first sent to a camp in Schoorl, in the northwestern part of the Netherlands, after which they were sent to the concentration camp of Buchenwald and
79 De Jong, Het Koninkrijk, Vol. 4, 181-819. 80 De Telegraaf, 17 February 1941.
81 De Jong, Het koninkrijk, Vol. 4, 826. 82 Presser, Ondergang, 84-85.
De Jong states, contrary to what other historians thought, that the number of arrested Jews was lower, even though he does not provide a correct number. According to him 389 Jewish men were deported to Buchenwald. (Het Koninkrijk, Vol.4, 829)
later to Mauthausen.83 The Grüne Polizei, the German police, made it impossible for
the Amsterdam police to take action. Often they were surrounded by the German policemen, which made them practically powerless.84 Even though the events in the
weekend of 22 and 23 February were directed towards the Jews, numerous gentiles were abused and mistreated by the Nazis as well. Whenever a non-Jew could not identify himself fast enough, Sijes explains, he would be herded to the same place as the Jewish men, to be sent off again after having been beaten and kicked. When a gentile was able to identify himself, however, he frequently too would be kicked anyway.85
Never in its history had Amsterdam experienced a pogrom but now it had and, according to Herzberg, Amsterdam said: “We will not accept this.” The city showed its solidarity because even though it was felt that the Jews were different, they belonged to the city and not to the new oppressors from Berlin and Hamburg. From these days stems a sentence written on a wall in chalk by a boy from the streets of Amsterdam: “Blijf met je Moffenpoten van onze rotjoden af” – Keep your filthy Kraut’s claws off of our stinking Jews.86 According to Van der Boom, this is a fine
example to prove that the Dutch were extremely indignant and enraged about these roundups and a general strike erupted throughout and around Amsterdam to show the Nazis that the Dutch did not accept these kinds of measures and to show their solidarity with the Dutch Jews.87
The February Strike
In the months prior to the big strike, communists and other groups had called out to the Dutch population via pamphlets and the illegal press to stand up against the persecution of the Jews.88 However, there were other reasons why there was a fertile
ground for organising a strike. Food had become much more expensive, fuel had become scarce, and people increasingly started to worry about everyday life. Many unemployed had been forced to work in Germany, some of whom had escaped and now had to live in hiding, without any form of support. To top it all, even people who did have jobs were now threatened to be sent to Germany. Therefore, among many
83 Presser, Ondergang, 86. 84 Herzberg, Kroniek, 109-110. 85 Sijes, De Februaristaking, 108. 86 Herzberg, Kroniek, 109-110.
87 Van der Boom, ‘Ordinary Dutchmen’,37-38. 88 De Jong, Het Koninkrijk, Vol. 4, 848-849, 854.
