The Persecution of the Jews
in Eindhoven
The role the mayor played in the
implementation of the anti-Jewish
measures
Michelle Hagoort 5984610
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Supervisor: prof. dr. J. Houwink ten Cate March 2016
Content
1. Introduction...2
2. Civil Service Administration...14
2.1 Division of power...14
2.2 Local Government...20
2.3 Anti-Jewish measures...25
2.4 Persecution of the Jews in Limburg and Meppel...33
3. Eindhoven during wartime...38
3.1 Jewish Eindhoven: Largest Jewish community in South-Netherlands...38
3.2 Government during wartime...43
3.3 Aftermath of the war...48
4. The role of the municipality in executing anti-Jewish measures...52
4.1 Anti-Jewish measures under mayor Verdijk...52
4.2 Anti-Jewish measures under mayor Pulles...65
5. Conclusion...68
6. Bibliography...73
6.1 Resources...73
6.2 Literature...74
1. Introduction
‘Mayor in wartime’
This frequently used expression originates from the Second World War period. It is used in various ways after the war, for example for the brilliant role of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City after the attacks of the 11th of September 2001.1 In post-war language the expression indicates the under pressure position of a mayorin wartime. It often refers to the out of necessity choice for the lesser evil. When administrators and politicians are in a difficult position they often use the expression nowadays. Using the phrase in a discussion gives the conversation a specific tendency.2
According to several historians the Second World War should not be used as the benchmark between good and bad, although opinions differ widely.3 However, the society has created a culture of remembrance in which the suffering of the occupation and the dictatorship of the past needs to serve as a lesson and inspiration. The position of mayor gives it an extra dimension; he is a well-known person carrying responsibilities for the society. The mayor had to survive between the occupation government and his own society.4
After the war the role of the mayor was a point of discussion, especially in
combination with the purification debate. The policy of the mayors, civil servants and other administrators was highly criticized due to cowardice, compliance and collaboration with the occupier. It was hard to set up a perfect purification, the political reconstruction and the administrative continuity gained priority. After a couple of years the urge for purification was gone.5 Twenty years after the end of the war mayor J.J.G. Boot of Hilversum (Wisch en Terborg during the war) published a book with notes about his period as ‘mayor in wartime’.6 He explained the official search to the correct attitude towards the occupying force. The former director of the RIOD (Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, now NIOD, Instituut
voor oorlogs-, holocaust-, en genocide studies, Institute for War-, Holocaust and Genocide studies) dr. L. de Jong, provided the book with a short recommendation. According to De
1 Peter Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd. Besturen onder Duitse bezetting (Amsterdam 2006), 11. 2 Ibidem.
3 Ibidem, 12. 4 Ibidem. 5 Ibidem, 13.
Jong the ‘problem of conscience’ of the mayor during the national-socialist occupation was nowhere better explained than in the book by Boot. The book gave the position of the mayor in wartime historical value.7
At the start of the occupation the mayor was just one of the players in the local administration, next to the council members, aldermen and civil servants. As envoy of the central government and chairman of the council, the mayor is the most familiar face of the local administration. The position of mayor changed in the course of the twentieth century, from patriarchal leader to collegial manager. Almost half of all the municipalities had Jewish inhabitants during the Second World War. Comparing the numbers of surviving Jews in the different municipalities shows a wide variation. Some of the explanations for the differences in between the municipalities are also valid for the differences on international level.
Research to the explanation of the local differences can provide an insight in the background of the international differences.8
The historiography of the Second World War in the Netherlands is dominated since the 1990’s by the question why so many Jews have been deported from the occupied Dutch territories. It is investigated why almost 75 % of the Jews were deported from Dutch
territories during the war while the Dutch population was not anti-Semitic.9 However, within the Netherlands there are large differences in deportation rates. For example, in the province of Noord-Holland (Amsterdam) the deportation rate is 76%. In the province of Noord-Brabant (Eindhoven) this percentage is 40%.10 Comparative studies are important in international Holocaust research. Some questions can only be answered by a comparison. Therefore smaller parts of the country or smaller administrative units should be the subject of investigation. According to several investigations, there is a wide variation in survival chances between different municipalities with different mayors.11
Post-war Dutch history research about the persecution of Jews is influenced by the ‘Big three’; De Jong, mr. Abel J. Herzberg and dr. J. Presser.12 Herzberg (1893-1989)
published his Kroniek der Jodenvervolging, 1940-1945 in 1950. It described the history of the 7 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 12.
8 Henk Flap & Marnix Croes, ed., Wat toeval leek te zijn maar niet was, de organisatie van de Jodenvervolging in Nederland, (Amsterdam 2001) 2-3.
9 Ibidem, 2. 10 Ibidem, 40.
11 Ibidem, 3.
12 Loe de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog V. Maart ’41-juni ’42: eerste helft (Den Haag 1974); Abel J. Herzberg, Kroniek der Jodenvervolging (Arnhem/Amsterdam 1950); and J. Presser, Ondergang I + II (‘s-Gravenhage 1965).
Dutch Jews during the national-socialist occupation, and it was part of the 4-part work
Onderdrukking en Verzet. The final chapter of the chronicle, ‘de Balans’ (‘the Balance’), is
the first analysis in which the deportation percentages in different occupied areas was compared. Although the author noticed the fact that the deportation rate in the Netherlands was very high, it did not lead to any discussion.13
Ondergang (1965) (English title: Ashes in the wind) was written by Jacob Presser
(1899-1970) and was commissioned by the RIOD. In 1961 the young American political scientist Raul Hilberg published his famous work The Destruction of the European Jews. This was the first comparative and summarising research about the destruction of the Jews on the continent of Europe. Hilberg described the persecution of the Jews as a phased process of registration, exclusion and robbery to arrest, deprivation of freedom and extermination. The most important Dutch Holocaust historians, first Presser and later on De Jong, used this framework.14 Presser’s book is highly anecdotic with a moralistic and emotional character.15 He was the first historian who thought and wrote about the guilt and complicity of Dutch people and the Dutch authorities.16
De Jong wrote a 14-part, 29 books standard Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de
Tweede Wereldoorlog. De Jong, a Jew in his thirties when the war started, fled in the early
days of the war to London. Over there he was able to continue his job as a journalist for the Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer. He became one of the reporters, and later on director, for the Dutch war-radio station Radio Oranje. At the end of the war, he came up with the idea of documenting the war events in a yet to establish state institute. In May 1945 the
Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (RIOD) started with De Jong as its leader. In 1955
De Jong received the assignment from the Minister of Education and Science to write an academic history of the Second World War. Initially 15 years were indicated to complete the enormous amount of work. However, he published the last part written by himself in 1988. The final part, an anthology of press reactions, came out in 1991. It took more than 30 years
13 Herzberg, Kroniek der Jodenvervolging, 36.
14 Raul Hilberg, The destruction of the European Jews, (London 1961), 20; Presser, Ondergang I+II, 23. ; and De Jong, Koninkrijk I, 452.
15 Presser, Ondergang I (‘s-Gravenhage 1965), 23.
16 Ivo Schöffer,’Een geschiedenis van de vervolging der Joden in Nederland 1940-1945’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 79 (1966), 38-63.
to complete the total series. De Jong incorporated the persecution of the Jews in the general Second World War history in this series.17
The idea that not only the intention of the occupier determined the outcome of the persecution of the Jews was strengthened by the increasing awareness of the difference in the persecution rates in Western Europe. The basic layout of the involved perpetrators, bystanders and victims opened the possibility to blame not only the occupiers for the persecution.18 Holocaust historians are often divided in their opinion about the intention and the organisation. Intentionalism implies that every single action can be derived from Adolf Hitler’s philosophy, and that he planned everything on forehand. Nearly none of the scholars agreed with this point of view. Many scholars like Raul Hilberg and Christopher Browning believe that there are many more actors from the lower ranks within the bureaucracy which affected the process of the persecution of the Jews. This is called functionalism or
structuralism.19
As Herman van Rens described in his book Vervolgd in Limburg, it is essential to research the Holocaust from different perspectives.20 He distinguishes three different kinds of studies. First of all the social-psychological studies, they can provide insight why individuals became part of the regime in a specific situation. Besides, international, interregional and interlocal comparative research is of great importance. Finally, a lot can be learned from local or regional studies. In those studies the practical implementation of the persecution of the Jews is investigated. These three kinds of studies have determined the scope of Holocaust studies in the last decades.21
In post-war the Netherlands, several questions were raised about the number of Jews who had been deported out of the occupied country in comparison to other Western-European countries. In 1950 this question was explicitly raised by Herzberg, but it was not included in Dutch War Historiography until 1985. A.J. van der Leeuw wrote an article about it in the New
Israëlietisch Weekblad.22 He concluded that the number of deported Jews was higher in the Netherlands because there was no ‘favourable factor’. No good hiding places existed in
17 Herman van Rens, Vervolgd in Limburg, Joden en Sinti in Nederlands-Limburg tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Hilversum 2013) 15.
18 Flap & Croes, ed., Wat toeval leek te zijn maar niet was, 1.
19 Flap & Croes, ed., Wat toeval leek te zijn maar niet was, 1-2.
20 Van Rens, Vervolgd in Limburg, 18.
21 Ibidem.
22 A.J. van der Leeuw, ‘Meer slachtoffers dan elders in West-Europa’, Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad, 15 November 1985.
inhospitable areas in the Netherlands. The country did not have borders with neutral countries and the fast military defeat in May1940 resulted in few possibilities to flee abroad. Other factors were that the Dutch administrators had lost all their influence and that the Jewish community had no experience with persecutions and had too much faith in the government.23
In 1987, the question was raised again by J.C.H. Blom. He systematically compared the differences on the level of victims, bystanders and perpetrators in five Western-European countries. This article provided ‘hesitant and cautious’ answers. The Netherlands had a relatively united and skilled occupation administration, and the people cooperated quite well and with respect for the new authority. In addition to this, the Jewish community was highly integrated in the Dutch society and showed a cooperative attitude because they felt safe in this country.24 The discussion still continues more than 25 years after the article of Blom. The frameworks he created are still used. On a regional scale questions were raised as well. How can the difference between a city where more Jews were hiding and between a city where almost all Jews were killed be explained? Was the reason the effort of the occupiers, the degree of cooperation of the victims or the attitude of the bystanders? 25
One of the most detailed researches on a regional level in the Netherlands is the research done by Marnix Croes and Peter Tammes, Gif laten wij niet voortbestaan.26 They conducted a comparative research to investigate the difference in survival rates between Jews in Dutch municipalities. Their research is based on social variables. A statistical relation was found between the chance of survival of the Jews and the radicalness and activity of the
Aussenstelle of the Sicherheitspolizei in which region the Jews lived. More mixed marriages
in the communities increased the survival rate. The survival rate increased also when there were more baptised Jews. The most sensational relation was found between the survival chance of Jews and the religious belief of the non-Jews. Surprisingly, the chance of survival for the Jews was higher in municipalities with a high percentage of Roman Catholics, smaller in municipalities with a large percentage of Orthodox, while no relation was found with the percentage of Dutch Reformed. This was an unexpected result, according to the scholarly
23 Van der Leeuw, ‘Meer slachtoffers dan elders in West-Europa’.
24 J.C.H. Blom, ‘De Vervolging van de joden in Nederland in internationaal vergelijkend perspectief’, De Gids 150 (1987) 494-507.
25 Van Rens, Vervolgd in Limburg, 21.
26 Marnix Croes & Peter Tammes, Gif laten wij niet voortbestaan. Een onderzoek naar de overlevingskansen in de Nederlandse gemeenten1940-1945 (Amsterdam 1999).
literature the Protestant people played a bigger role in the rescuing of the Jews in the Netherlands.27
Sociologist Peter Tammes investigated the differences in the survival chance of the Jews in Dutch municipalities with a Dutch National Socialist Movement (National
Socialistische Beweging, NSB) mayor and in municipalities without an NSB mayor. In Wat
toeval leek te zijn, maar niet was. De organisatie van de Jodenvervolging in Nederland,
edited by Henk Flap and Marnix Croes, Tammes published an article about the Dutch mayors, called ‘Nederlandse burgemeesters en de vervolging van joden.’28 The article is part of a research program about the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands called: ‘Daders, omstanders en slachtoffers. Deportatie- en sterftekansen van in Nederland woonachtige joden tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog’. Tammes concluded that two things were important for the appointment of an NSB mayor; the number of inhabitants of the specific municipality and the number of Jews in that municipality. There were not enough NSB-members to appoint an NSB mayor in every Dutch municipality. The intention of the appointment of an NSB mayor was to introduce the anti-Jewish measures without trouble. In an analysis of the rate and the accuracy of the registration of Jewish inhabitants, Tammes concluded that the new appointed mayors were not better than the others. Although not only the mayor was concerned with the persecution of the Jews, he was held responsible for the implementation of several of the anti-Jewish measures. According to Tammes, the mayors reacted quick and precise regarding to the registration of Jewish inhabitants. On a local level Tammes did found differences between Jews living under a NSB mayor and under a non-NSB mayor. For Jews who lived in
municipalities where an NSB mayor was installed, the individual survival chance decreased. The number of months a NSB mayor was active showed also an unexpected relation for Jews not living in Amsterdam. The longer a Jew lived under the rule of a NSB mayor the higher the chance for survival.29
In the thesis by Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland,
Frankrijk en België 1940-1945, Overeenkomsten, verschillen en oorzaken, the authors
explained the difference in the number of Jews deported in the three countries. Before the thesis by Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, academics used only fragmentary comparisons
27 Van Rens, Vervolgd in Limburg, 21.
28 Peter Tammes, ‘Nederlandse burgemeesters en de vervolging van joden’, in: Henk Flap & Marnix Croes ed., Wat toeval leek te zijn maar niet was, de organisatie van de Jodenvervolging in Nederland, (Amsterdam 2001), 69-94.
between countries. Griffioen and Zeller have used different planning principles to make a balanced, historiographic comparison. They looked at chronology and periodization, classification in occupiers, surroundings, Jewish inhabitant groups, and uniformly created comparison characteristics for each period, each group and each level.30 Investigated in the thesis are the differences in percentages of the persecuted Jews, between the countries and within the countries. Griffioen and Zeller concluded that the high percentage of victims in the Netherlands was caused by the almost unlimited authority of the German police about the organisation and execution of the deportations. A second cause was the belated rise of the resistance organisations in the Netherlands. Thirdly, the important role of the Jewish council in the Netherlands had its effect on the deportation rate. For a long time, the Jews hold on to legal escape possibilities but in the end these were part of the deportation system.31
Peter Romijn investigated the role of the local authorities during the occupation in his book Burgemeesters in oorlogstijd, Besturen onder Duitse bezetting.32 He described very detailed what dilemmas the mayors in wartime had to deal with. In his conclusion, Romijn stated that Secretary-General of the Department of Internal Affairs dr. mr. K.J. Frederiks and ‘his’ mayors made a fundamental mistake by thinking that staying in position would prevent worse. The mayors made decisions based on what they thought they could oversee on that moment. The first anti-Jewish measures involved a principal and radical break with law and order, but at the same time they were interpreted as tolerable, temporary and secondary towards the need to preserve the relation with the occupier. The Dutch mayors thought they had to do their job in a way that was in line with their responsibility. During the occupation, the mayors found themselves in a more and more difficult position. They understood the German occupation politics too slow and too late. Under the directions of Frederiks they refused to develop a collective strategy which could endanger their position. They became part of the occupying force; they were used to control, Nazifying and to exploit the
community. Taking care of daily business became the enemy of taking care for the principle. The heavy-handed lesson the Dutch mayors learned during 1940-1945 was that the German occupation and the National Socialism made it impossible to hold to the concept ‘save what can be saved’ without losing respect and self-respect. It became hard to keep up as mayor without help of the society. Only the mayors with good relations between the resistance
30 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 637. 31 Ibidem.
movements and the temporary communal administrations were able to survive the official transitions. All mayors, NSB or not, experienced that the legitimacy of their position was at risk all the time. 33
Research on a regional level is the work of T.J. Rinsema Joden in Meppel,
1940-1945.34 Rinsema described the ups and downs of the Jewish community in a middle-sized city
after the outbreak of the war. The Jewish community in Meppel was very much integrated in the society. At the end of the war approximately 90% of the Meppel Jews were killed. This is a very high percentage compared to the average percentage in the Netherlands. Rinsema tried to find an answer for this high percentage. One of the reasons is the razzia which took place in the night between the 2nd and 3rd of October (Yom Kippur, Jewish holiday) in the labour camps. All the Jews living in the camps were transported to camp Westerbork. Most of the Jews came out of the Northern and Eastern part of the Netherlands. More than 200 Meppel Jews were transported.35 Rinsema provides a very detailed description of the path the Meppel Jews had to cover and which measures had been taken against them.
Van Rens investigated the persecution of the Jews and Sinti during the Second World War in the Dutch province Limburg in his book Vervolgd in Limburg. In Limburg 48,8% of the Jews survived. This percentage is higher than the average survival rate in the
Netherlands.36 Van Rens investigated this difference and concluded among others things that the society played an important role in the difference between survival rates. A society of
enablement, providing support to the victims of persecution, seems to have flourished
primarily in small, safe communities in which the members and their leaders knew and trusted each other. He stated that everybody is born equally, but that society creates a person. Van Rens stated that the chance to survive was the highest for children under the age of 10 in Limburg. The society took really good care of the young Jewish children. In addition, the fact that Limburg was predominantly Catholic was positive for the survival chances of the Jew. The way the Jews have been deported in Limburg was different from most other provinces. The reason for this is the fact that the whole province of Limburg belonged to the same
Aussenstelle.37
33 Peter Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd. Besturen onder Duitse bezetting (Amsterdam 2006), 673.
34 T.J. Rinsema, Joden in Meppel, 1940-1945 (Zutphen 2004). 35 Ibidem,252.
36 Van Rens, Vervolgd in Limburg, 352.
The concept of society of enablement was introduced by the author Ervin Staub. He was a psychology professor in Massachusetts and wrote two books about genocide. In one of them he emphasizes the concept of altruism heroic helpers. In the other he went looking for the causes of the antonym: the origins of genocide and other group violence.38 Van Rens explained in his book that the attitude towards other people is totally determined by the society. ‘Others’ are extremely important for the behaviour of people. Leaders of a specific group are important, they can be followed. Help can be extended and can be contagious. Basically that is the society of enablement. People take over the behaviour of other people and their ideology will be influenced. It becomes easier to cooperate in groups of religious and political minorities. It is plausible that empathy arose earlier within these groups than with other treated groups. A society, in which resistance against the measures of a criminal
government became the standard, was not an adequate condition to save a lot of Jews. It was a necessary condition.39
To do research on a regional level, it is important to select a region/city with a substantial number of Jewish inhabitants. In Amsterdam, the number of Jews was much higher than the number of Jews living in other parts of the country. In 1939 the number of Jews in Amsterdam was about 75,000 people, 10 % of the population of the city. In the province of Noord-Brabant, the city of Eindhoven had the biggest Jewish community. Approximately 560 Jews lived in Eindhoven around 1940 that is 0.5% of the population. During the war, Eindhoven accepted several groups of Jewish refugees. The percentage of Jews in the population increased to almost 1 %. In the beginning of the twentieth century Eindhoven was a middle-sized city and was known for its textile industry and the light bulb factory Philips.40
Due to the relatively low percentage of Jews, the persecution of the Jews in Eindhoven is not a much researched subject. Especially the role of the mayor and the municipality during the war is a grey area. This is one of the reasons why I chose this as subject for my thesis. In 1992 Frans Dekkers published the book B&W Rond de Tweede Wereldoorlog in
Groot-Eindhoven.41 He described the wartime period in Eindhoven from the perspective of the
municipality. He was inspired by the inhabitants, and felt an urge to write down their stories. 38 Ervin Staub, Positive social behaviour and morality (New York/London 1978-1979). Ervin Staub, The Roots of evil. The origins of genocide and other group violence (Cambridge 1989), 267.
39 Van Rens, Vervolgd in Limburg, 363-370.
40 Projectgroep Struikelstenen Eindhoven, Ze waren onze buren, de verhalen achter de namen op de struikelstenen, self-published (Eindhoven 2014), 12.
Therefore the book is interesting, but it has not a real academic value. Dekkers is not an historian and has only written about Eindhoven. Phocas Kroon wrote a small book about the persecution of the Jews in Eindhoven, De Joodse gemeenschap van Eindhoven, 1940-1945.42
Intentionally Kroon wanted to make a documentary film, but while searching for information he realised he did not know much about the persecution of the Jews in Eindhoven. He found out that there was not published a research about the subject before, and decided to start with an archive study himself.43 Both authors, Dekker and Kroon did not conduct research to role of the municipality/mayor in the deportation and persecution of the Jews in Eindhoven.
In 2014 another book was published about Eindhoven during wartime, in cooperation with the project Struikelstenen.44 These are small stones which were placed in the doorsteps in front of houses which have been inhabited by Jews before or during the Second World War. The original name is ‘Stolpersteine’, which means stumble. Most of the victims do not have a grave, and by placing the ‘Stolpersteine’ the people will stay in remembrance. Questions of children from victims and the next generation can be answered and the history can be explained by the placed stones.45
Eindhoven had a change of mayor halfway through the war, like many other
municipalities in the wartime period.46 It is interesting to investigate if the persecution of the Jews has changed after that. As Peter Tammes concluded in his article ‘Nederlandse
burgemeesters en de vervolging van joden’ the NSB mayors were not more precise or better in introducing the anti-Jewish measures. In Eindhoven the percentage of Jews that did not survive the war was lower than in other parts of the Netherlands. In this thesis the reason for this difference will be investigated based in the role of the municipality and the mayor in Eindhoven during the Second World War. The extent of cooperation with the Germans in their anti-Jewish policy will be investigated. The central research question is: What was the role of the municipality /mayor of Eindhoven in the persecution of the Jews during the Second World War? To provide an answer to this question a comparison is made between this
research and two other regional studies; Joden in Meppel 1940-1945 by Rinsema and
Vervolgd in Limburg by Van Rens.
42 Phocas Kroon, De Joodse gemeenschap van Eindhoven 1940-1945, self-published (Eindhoven 2003). 43 Ibidem, 1.
44 Projectgroep Struikelstenen Eindhoven, Ze waren onze buren, de verhalen achter de namen op de struikelstenen, self-published (Eindhoven 2014).
45 www.struikelstenen.nl, Stichting Instandhouding Joods Erfgoed Gooi en Vechtstreek, 11th of January 2016. 46 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 18
This research is limited by three aspects; region, time and theme. The region included in this research is the city of Eindhoven. The time aspect is limited to the period of the Nazi occupation. In general this is the period between 1940 and 1945. Regarding the theme aspect, the focus is on the role the municipality/mayor played in the process of the persecution of the Jews. In order to provide a solid description of that process relevant background information on this theme is provided in the second chapter. This includes information on the civil administration and the course of the Second World War in Eindhoven. In this thesis the specific details of the Philips-Commando and the life of the Eindhoven Jews in camp Vught will not be included, due to the large amount of information about the subject.
The thesis consists five chapters. In this introduction the relevance of the subject and the historiography is discussed. I decided to give in chapter 2 and 3 a broader historical framework to explain what happened with the Dutch administration during the occupation. It is necessary to explain at first what the consequences were for the Dutch government and how the Germans tried to incorporate the Dutch civil servants. Also the effects for the local
government will be discussed. In the third chapter the position of Eindhoven and its
administration during the war is explained. All this is needed to understand the 4th chapter in which exactly is explained in what way the Eindhoven mayors implemented the anti-Jewish measures. Chapter 5 is the conclusion, in which an answer will be given to the research question.
In the first paragraph of the second chapter the question how the German occupier gained control over the Dutch government and the role of the Dutch civil servants is discussed. The second paragraph focuses on the effect of the occupation on the local
government and how these local authorities had to act according to the Germans. Besides, the role of the mayor is described. In the third paragraph the anti-Jewish measures are discussed in chronological order. The question at what moment these measures were introduced and what their effect was is also covered. Final paragraph 4 describes the persecution of the Jews in the province of Limburg and the city of Meppel. In the conclusion a comparison will be made between Eindhoven, Limburg and Meppel.
The third chapter is dedicated to Eindhoven. To give a judgement about the
persecution of the Jews in a specific area, it is important to explain that area and the origin of the inhabitants. In the first paragraph the Jewish community of Eindhoven is discussed, including the development of this community and the effects of the war on it. The position of
the mayor and the change of the mayor is the central theme of the second paragraph. In the third paragraph the aftermath of the war in Eindhoven is discussed.
The fourth chapter is the most important chapter. In order to estimate to what extent the mayor/municipality complied with the policy of the Germans, not only the anti-Jewish measures are discussed, but also some other Germans regulations which had to be
implemented during the war. Primary sources are used for this chapter, which have been collected in the regional historical archive in Eindhoven (RHCe). In the first paragraph the role of mayor Verdijk will be discussed, in the second paragraph the role of mayor Pulles.
In the last chapter of this thesis the findings are compared with the results found in the works by Van Rens and Rinsema. Also the researches of Tammes and Romijn will be
compared with the research of the municipality of Eindhoven. The differences between the city of Eindhoven, the city of Meppel and the province of Limburg are discussed in this conclusion.
2. Civil Service Administration
2.1Division of power
The Germans attacked the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg on the 10th of May 1940, as plan Fall Gelb.47 On the 14th of May 1940, the Germans demanded the surrender of Rotterdam, and although the city surrendered, the Germans bombed the entire city. The day before the bombardment, Queen Wilhelmina and her Cabinet decided to escape in exile to England. The leaving ministers mandated their tasks and Government authority over to Commander in Chief H.G. Winkelman. The
bombardment in Rotterdam was the inducement for Winkelman to capitulate. Due to the already left Queen and cabinet, Winkelman had to make this decision in his own.48 The transfer of authority to Winkelman had the positive consequence that the
government could continue. The highest Dutch civil servants who kept position were the Secretaries-General, who had to take care of implementing the German decrees and gained legislative power.49
On the 16th of May 1940, the German rulers started with setting up a Military Government for the occupied Netherlands and the occupied territories in Belgium, to secure law and order behind the front lines.50 That government stepped in function on the 20th of May under supervision of a Militärbefehlshaber, general of Infantry Alexander Freiherr von Falkenhausen.51
On the 29th of May 1940, the just installed Military Government was replaced by a civil administration. Hitler had ordered to bring the Netherlands under a civil administration because he attached a primacy of politics above the military in the Netherlands.52 The civil administration was ruled by a Reichskommissar, the 47-year-old lawyer Dr. Arthur Seyß-Inquart from Austria. Hitler had chosen for Seyß-Inquart
47 Fall Gelb was the name used by the Germans during the Second World War for the plan of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht to attack the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.
48 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 86.
49 Ibidem.
50 Peter Romijn, ‘Ambitions and Dilemmas of Local Authorities in the German-Occupied Netherlands, 1940-1945’, in Bruno de Wever a.o.., Local Government in Occupied Europe (1939-1945) (Gent 2006) 34.
51 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 97.
because of his valuable performance during the annexation of Austria in 1938 and his position thereafter as Reichsstatthalter (governor). The assignment he received from Hitler was twofolded, politically and economically. Politically, Seyß-Inquart had the task to maintain order and peace, and to slowly transform the country into a national-socialist society. The ultimate goal was to integrate the Netherlands in the Great German Empire. For the economic aspect, he had to merge the Dutch potential as quietly as possible into the wish of the German war effort.53
The administrative structure of the Reichskommissariat Niederlande was defined in two German decrees. The first one of the 29th of May 1940 made the Dutch governmental structure and civil service subordinate to the occupier. The second from the 3rd of June 1940 dealt with the administrative structure of the Reichskommissariat. In the ‘Führer- decree’ of the 18th of May 1940 it had already been determined that the Reichskommissar was directly subordinated to Hitler. Thereby Seyß-Inquart was allowed to pull all the powers, which had belonged to the Queen, her Cabinet and the Parliament according to the Dutch constitution, to himself. That meant that Seyß-Inquart had legislative power next to executive power. For the execution of his orders he made use of the German police forces. For exert of governance he could make use of the Dutch authorities.54
Seyß-Inquart promised in his acceptance speech to respect Dutch law, “as far as not contrary to German interests”.55 At the same day the Secretaries-General as acting heads of the Dutch ministries of government indicated that they were prepared to remain in place and to take responsibility for the administration’s continuity. Seyß-Inquart had his way and made clear that he would not allow that they teamed up as a shadow government. He organised an Aufsichtsverwaltung in such a way that each Secretary-General and ministry would be controlled by particular German agencies and authorities.56 In total there were eleven Secretary-generals, and as a result of the departure of the cabinet, there legal powers were extended. They were fully
53 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 101.
54 Ibidem, 102.
55 Romijn, ‘Ambitions and Dilemmas of Local Authorities’, 40.
responsible for the daily administration of the country and instead of being a top civil servant, they became almost a Cabinet Minister.57
To supervise the Dutch Secretary-Generals, Seyß-Inquart appointed four
Generalkommissare. The following Generalkommissare were appointed: Dr. Hans
Fischböck for finance and economics, Dr. Dr. Friedrich Johann Wimmer for
administration and justice, Johann-Baptist (Hanns) Albin Rauter for public order and security and Fritz Schmidt for ‘zur besonderen Verwendung’. Schmidt’s major task was promoting the upcoming process of nazification. Besides the Generalkommissare, Seyß-Inquart appointed Beauftragten des Reichskommissars, one in each province and in the cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam. They were representatives of Seyß-Inquart who acted directly at provincial and local level. They were qualified to test all policies and decisions made by Dutch authorities in their area and to undo them when
necessary.58 With this construction, the Germans were able to make use of the Dutch authorities to achieve their own goals.59 To achieve that goal it was also necessary to limit the role of Commander-in-Chief Winkelman. The Dutch had settled too much hope on him, a reason for Seyß-Inquart to decide to minimize his position. Winkelman was ordered to only keep himself busy with the temporary task to demobilize the Dutch army.60
The Dutch civil servants who remained in place after the occupation had a fundamental willingness to cooperate. They were instructed to do so by the Dutch Government in the in 1937 composed Aanwijzingen (translated: Government
Instructions).61 Directly after the Great War, the fear for war on the Dutch territory
was gone. It loomed again in the second half of the 1930’s. The German rearmament and Hitler’s politics of confrontation brought back the threat of war. The Dutch government could not ignore this and asked itself how to prepare for a possible war and occupation. They used their experiences about how to handle in wartime out of the Great War. The experiences with emergency measures, for example the legislation
57 Femke Mooijekind, ‘Het Joodse Kind op de Joodse School’, De scheiding van Joodse en niet-Joodse leerlingen in het Amersfoortse onderwijs in 1941, Masterscriptie UvA, (Amsterdam 2011), 13.
58 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 102.
59 Bart van der Boom, Den Haag in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam 1995) 31.
60 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 122
61 ‘Aanwijzingen betreffende de houding, aan te nemen door de bestuursorganen van het Rijk, de Provinciën, Gemeenten, Waterschappen, Veenschappen en Veenpolders, alsmede door het daarbij in dienst zijnde personeel en door het personeel in dienst bij spoor- en tramwegen in geval van een vijandelijke inval’ , here after referred to as ‘Instructions’.
on the distribution, could be used again. Besides, there was a strong memory of the cruel German occupation regime in Belgium. Therefore, the government based the new rules primarily on the Decrees concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land (WOL, The Hague Convention 1907). The result was the Government
Instructions (from now on: Instructions).62
These Instructions were used to instruct the civil service to pursue international law.63 It was based on international applicable laws about the relation between the occupying force and the internal administration of the occupied country. The
Instructions was the handbook for the civil servants in the case of a hostile attack. The
final draft of the Instructions was available in January 1937 and approved by the cabinet in May of the same year. The Ministry for Internal affairs did not send the
Instructions to the Royal Commissioners until May 1938, although it was ready. At
that time Germany already had occupied Austria. The Royal Commissioners received several copies of the Instructions in May 1938. They were meant for themselves, for the deputies of the Province and for the mayors. Also some high ranking officers at the different levels had access to the confidential document. Publication in any way was forbidden.64
The core of the Instructions was that the civil servants had to remain in place as long as it was deemed in the interest of the inhabitants and not in the interest of the occupiers. Whenever this position turned, the Instructions indicated in a certain way that the civil servants had to quit. The Instructions were generally speaking vaguely worded, left room for interpretation and gave little guidance for a county that was not familiar with an occupation. A lot of lower ranking civil servants were not familiar with the Instructions, on the local level only the mayor had taken notice of it. The higher ranking civil servants tried to do what they thought was good for the Netherlands and for themselves by keeping their position.65
For the lower ranking civil servants still in office, dr. mr. K.J. Frederiks of the Department of the Interior was the main contact in the board of Secretary-Generals. The board had the new German authorities above them.66 The Department of the 62 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 143.
63 Romijn, ‘Ambitions and Dilemmas of Local Authorities’, 34-39.
64 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 55.
65 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 143.
Interior, and local government as a whole, were in the words of Frederiks, “the knot where all threads of government come together.”67 He was aware of the the
importance of his position, and tried to re-establish the situation of normality.68 Frederiks shared the opinion that obedience to the occupier was worth the price with his Secretary-General colleague dr. H.M. Hirschfeld. Both agreed in obedience, also when it possibly led to collaboration in anti-Jewish measures, forced labour and fighting illegality.69
In his first radio speech Minister-President in exile, jhr. mr. D.J. de Geer, called upon the civil servants to remain in position and to cooperate with the German occupation authorities. For the Secretary-Generals it seemed to be the best option to cooperate in the summer of 1940. By cooperating with the Germans, the
administrative continuity maintained and complications (chaos, terror, collapse of economy and food supply) were avoided.70 At that moment they had fear for an increase in power and influence of the Dutch National Socialist Movement (National Socialistische Beweging, NSB) if one did not cooperate with the Germans.71 The German occupier was dependent on the Dutch authorities. According to sociologist Cornelis Lammers, not more than a few thousand Germans were responsible for the day-to-day inspection of the Dutch territory. Besides that, the German Occupation Administration was a complex community of institutions and individuals which did not work together.72 Especially the local government gained benefits from this.
The cooperation between the German occupiers and the Dutch authorities was achieved quite easily in the summer of 1940. The Germans acted properly towards the Dutch and did disguise their real intentions. The Dutch government could not foresee the effects of the cooperation at that moment.73 The Dutch civil servants justified their cooperation by stating that it was in the interest of the Dutch population to keep the Dutch government running. They tried to avoid complications and to introduce the measures softly.
67 K. J. Frederiks, Op de bres 1940-1944, (Den Haag 1945) 10.
68 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 123.
69 Van der Boom, Den Haag in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, 31.
70 Ibidem.
71 Ibidem.
72 J.C.H. Blom, ‘Exploitatie en nazificatie: de Nederlandse samenleving onder nationaal-socialistisch bestuur 1940-1945’, Mens en maatschappij (1997) 17-30, there 20.
These are not all measures and decree introduced by the Germans during the war, but the most relevant for this research. After the summer/autumn 1941 several more regulations were introduced which influenced the national government.
2.2Local Government
Local government, with the mayor as its chairman, is the administrative layer that is closest to the citizen. The city hall is the central place in the municipality, especially during the twentieth century. In the wartime period the Netherlands consisted out of 1054 municipalities, the smallest with less than 1000 inhabitants.74 497 of the 1054 Dutch municipalities had Jewish inhabitants at the start of the Second World War. The German occupation changed the political and administrative map of the
Netherlands radically. The occupier gave the position of mayor an extra heavy duty. Before national-socialism the mayor was a democratic legitimate functionary. The
Führer-prinzip required that the mayor became the one headed leader of the local
administration. The role of the mayor as mediator did not disappear, but it changed character. The fact that several pre-war mayors were replaced by national-socialist mayors changed the relationships. The pre-war mayors that kept their positions had to use their informal networks more and more, it was not possible anymore to use only the formal ways. Their role changed during the war. The mayor became a director, civil servant and political person.75 His (all mayors during the war were male) performance made an administrative difference and gained political importance.76
The power of the German invasion confronted the administrators in the
provinces and the municipalities with an unprecedented ordeal. They had to take care of their inhabitants and to mitigate or avert the fatal consequences of the fighting. The ministry of the Interior and the Royal Commissioners of the provinces were preparing what was coming, and most of the mayors had to carry out their work. However not every mayor had to take action on the same level, dependent on their position in the territory. Municipalities close to the frontline had to deal with other, mostly bigger, problems, than municipalities outside the frontline. Those municipalities did not have to deal with the Germans until after the capitulation of the Netherlands.77
74 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 16.
75 Ibidem, 18.
76 Ibidem, 12.
Almost only the mayors knew of the existence of the Instructions.78 The Dutch
mayors were able to explain the Instructions for their own benefit. Most of the time, the local government received German commands via the Secretary-General
Frederiks. This left some room for interpretation. The municipalities were actually indirectly controlled by the Germans.79 The mayors were in the end responsible for the implementation of several measures, for example the registration of the Jews in 1941. That resulted in the fact that the Germans were dependent on the willingness of the Dutch mayors to carry out their politics.80
During the occupation, the management of the municipalities fell under the authority of Generalkommissare Wimmer. In Amsterdam and Rotterdam the
Beauftragte was the most important local manager, whilst in the other municipalities
the mayor had this role.81 He was the chairman of the town council, and he had to adjust the policy of the town council with the national and provincial policy. The mayor was also the chief of the local police force.82 In Nazi-Germany, the mayor was the one-headed manager of the municipality and the Germans used this approach in the occupied areas as well. When the German authorities wanted something to be carried out or controlled, they asked immediately for the mayor.83
In the course of 1940, the occupier introduced several measures which lead to Nazification of the government.84 Nazification of the government implied a bigger German influence in the Dutch machine of government, as well as a more German orientated vision for the Dutch civil servants and mayors. The communist and
revolutionary-socialist parties were forbidden in the summer.85 The civil servants had to declare if they were Jewish in October.86 The mayors played an important role in the introduction and implementation of those measures. Among others, they were responsible for the dismissal of the Jewish civil servants and for the registration of the
78 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 143.
79 Romijn, ‘Ambitions and Dilemmas of Local Authorities’, 50 - 54.
80 Peter Tammes, ‘Nederlandse burgemeesters en de vervolging van joden’, in: Henk Flap & Marnix Croes ed., Wat toeval leek te zijn maar niet was, de organisatie van de Jodenvervolging in Nederland, (Amsterdam 2001) 71.
81 Ibidem, 70.
82 Ibidem.
83 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 103.
84 Tammes, ‘Nederlandse burgemeesters en de vervolging van joden’, 70. 85 De Jong, Koninkrijk V, 130.
Jewish inhabitants in the municipality in 1941.87 The number of mayors who were dismissed or fired during the occupation is influenced by the important role of the mayors; several could not handle the pressure. Already at the end of 1940, eleven mayors were fired. Often they were replaced by mayors who were a member of the NSB (national-socialist movement).
Gerhard Hirschfeld gave in his book Bezeting en Collaboratie. Nederland
tijdens de oorlogsjaren 1940-1945 two hypotheses about the way the Germans had to
deal with the number of Jews in the municipalities. His first hypothesis is to bring as much citizens as possible under national-socialist rule; the mayors in larger
municipalities had to be replaced. According to the national-socialist believe
sustainable mixing of different populations was only possible if they were equivalent and related. Therefor the Jews had to be removed out of the population. The second hypothesis of Hirschfeld is that in municipalities with an absolute larger number of Jews it is likely that the mayor will be replaced sooner.88
In 1941, Reichskommissar Seyß-Inquart enlarged the control of the
commissioners of the provinces and the mayor by implementing the so called leader principle (Führerprinzip). The first step was the appointment of NSB-mayors with the power of a government Commissioner to suppress local disturbance. The official decree entered into force on the 1st of September 1941. The municipal and provincial councils were demoted to an advising role and the mayor became the one headed manager. In the opinion of the Reichskommissariat the mayor was personally
responsible for everything what happened in the municipality. If they wanted to keep the trust from their citizens they had to show that they were willing to deal with the German authority. Otherwise their position was doubtful and the citizens would lose their confidence.89
As a result of these measures, the involved parties (mayors, Commissioners of the province, councillors, and civil servants) had to make the tough decision if they wanted to carry on their tasks under these conditions. The anti-Jewish measures influenced the essential democratic basis of the Dutch society. The Reichkommissar however made it very hard to resign, the measure included that everyone who decided
87 Tammes, ‘Nederlandse burgemeesters en de vervolging van joden’, 72.
88 Gerhard Hirschfeld, Bezetting en collaboratie. Nederland tijdens de oorlogsjaren 1940-1945.(Haarlem 1991), 33-41.
to resign did not receive redundancy pay nor pension. Nobody decided to quit after this measure. Most of them did not pay much attention to the measure and continued their work as before. Eventually, the decree had little significance. De Jong wrote that the measure was not necessary. The Dutch officials complied with the German measures already before the leader principle was introduced.90
The local authorities were responsible for several of the anti-Jewish measures. In the course of the Second World War the measures against the Jews became more and more aggressive. For some civil servants implementing the measures became a moral dilemma, and as a result they resigned. Despite of personal problems most of the civil servants decided that it was important for the country to stay in position.91 There was a pretty good chance that the position of a civil servant was taken over by a NSB member when he decided to dismiss. In the beginning of the war a small percentage of the local authorities’ staff was a NSB member. Already in the fall of 1941, four out of ten Secretary-Generals were NSB members or pro-German. Seyß-Inquart was cautious with the appointment of new mayors; in the first years of the occupation not many NSB members were deemed suitable for the job.92
By giving crash courses the NSB tried to prepare their members suitable for the job of mayor. From December 1941 onwards, more and more NSB members were installed as mayor.93 In January 1943, 130 of the Dutch mayors were member of the NSB. These mayors ruled over 39% of the population. Nine months later, in October 1943, 248 NSB mayors ruled over 45% of the population. At the end of July 1943 the number was 275. That meant that in total 51,7% of the population lived under a mayor who was an NSB member. At the end of the war the Netherlands counted 327 NSB mayors.94
Tammes came up with a remarkable conclusion about the registration of the Jews in the municipalities. The mayors of the municipalities had to send the registration forms of the Jewish inhabitants to the Rijksinspectie van het
Bevolkingsregister (State Inspection of Civil Registry). Tammes concluded that the
NSB mayors did not handle this task more accurately than other mayors. According
90 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 241, 243, 247, 249.
91 Van der Boom, Den Haag in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, 31.
92 De Jong, Koninkrijk V, 237-238.
93 Romijn, ‘Ambitions and Dilemmas of Local Authorities’, 46.
to the first annual report of the Abteilung niederländische Personalangelegenheiten the Reichskommissar had fired 21 mayors until mid-June 1941. Ten were appointed, and six out of those ten were an NSB member. Secretary-General Frederiks appointed next to Seyß-Inquart 27 mayors. Under them were four NSB members and one member of the National Front (Dutch Fascist Organisation). According to several newspaper reports those numbers are not complete. In mid-June at least 12, maybe 14, NSB mayors were appointed.95 Besides, Tammes concluded that the appointment of an NSB mayor and the duration of his term, did not explain the differences in survival chances between municipalities.96
95 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 335.
2.3 Anti-Jewish measures
The urge to persecute the Jews was the core of the national-socialist ideology. The impulse to start with the deportations arose from Berlin, the centre of power in the Third Reich. In the period between the end of the summer and December 1941 the decision was taken to exterminate the Jews in Europe. Initially, the idea was to start with the extermination of all the Jews in Poland and the Jews in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union.97 Later that year the decision was taken to let the genocide take place within the entire power range of Nazi-Germany.98 The preparations in the Netherlands started in December 1941. In April 1942 the
Reichskommissariat in The Hague was informed about the fact that in the same year
40,000 Jews had to be deported out of the Netherlands.99
In the beginning of the German occupation in the Netherlands the persecution of the Jews was not centrally controlled. Every department took its own measures, dependent on its own targets and out of shared interests. Although the German institutions worked along each other, they had the same vision: total control over all the Jews in the Netherlands, both as a group and as individuals. To achieve these higher goals the Germans started with the anti-Jewish politics immediately after the invasion. The anti-Jewish measures made it possible to reach this goal.100
During the first month's, Generalkommissare Schmidt and Wimmer were the most active in entering anti-Jewish measures. The preparation speed of these
measures was very high; already in August 1940 Schmidt announced, behind closed doors, the first measures against the Jewish population. He made clear that a couple of decrees against the Jews were ready and that they would be carried out in the near future. He announced, behind closed doors, in August 1940 the deprivation of Jewish companies. 101 Seyß-Inquart acted more reticent in the introduction of anti-Jewish measures.
97 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 442.
98 Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution. The Evolution of Nazi Jewish policy1939-1942 (Lincoln/Jeruzalem 2004), 38.
99 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 442.
100 Ibidem, 442-443.
In September and October 1940 the first general regulations were introduced. Already the day after the occupation, the Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (Dutch Press Agency, ANP) received a visit from the cultural attaché of the German Embassy. He imposed the Gleichschaltung, consisting of censure and immediate dismissal of the Jewish employees. Early July 1940 the Jewish inhabitants with a foreign nationality had to register themselves at the local municipality. At the same time, by order of the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) all Jews, communists and inhabitants of a country with which Germany was on war were removed from the
Luchtbeschermingsdienst (Air Protection Services) of the municipality.102 This was a severe measure; the government now had to make a distinction between Jews and non-Jews. Secretary-General Frederiks was informed about this, and sent a weak protest to
Generalkommissionare Wimmer. This protest had no result. From that moment
onwards the distinction between Jews and non-Jews in daily life became much more frequent.103
Late August 1940, Wimmer informed the Dutch Secretary-Generals about the newest measure. It was no longer allowed to employ Jewish people as civil servants and it was no longer allowed to promote Jewish civil servants, not only at the national level but also at the municipalities.104 Seyß-Inquart released a new decree on the 13th of September. 105 The decree declared that Jewish government employees were suspended (4th of November 1940) and in the end fired (21st of February 1941). In the decree the appellation ‘of Jewish blood’ was used instead of the word Jew. In October 1940, every civil servant of the Government had to declare if he or she was Jewish or not. If they were Jewish, they also had to declare if they were full blood or half. In Dutch this declaration was, in the corridors, named Ariërverklaring. On base of this measure the Jewish civil servants were suspended.106 Meanwhile, Seyß-Inquart proclaimed on the 22nd of October 1940 a new decree in which he defined the
definition of being Jewish. He also obliged full registration for businesses with Jewish owners or partly Jewish owners in the same decree.107 The destiny of the companies
102 De Jong, Koninkrijk IV, 755-756.
103 Ibidem.
104 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 209.
105 VO 137/40.
106 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 209.
was in the hands of the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle, an instance of the Generalkommissar für
Finanz und Wirtschaft, Fischböck.108
In several decrees of the fall of 1940 different definitions of being Jewish were used. In the decree about the registration of the Jewish civil servants, a person was considered Jewish when he or she had one or more Jewish grandparents. In the decree of the Wirstschaftprüfstelle the definition of being Jewish is less broadly defined. In that decree someone was being classified as a Jew when he or she had two or more Jewish grandparents. And in the case of two Jewish grandparents, in order to gratify as a Jew, the person had to be a member of a Jewish religious church/community or he or she was married to a Jew. This is the same definition which was used after the
Nuremberg laws (anti-Semitic laws, 1935) in Germany.109
The occupiers acted with caution in the beginning. The rules and decrees had a seemingly temporary or occasional character and affected mostly specific groups within the Jewish community. The temporary and occasional character can be seen in the decree about the Jewish civils servants. Initially they were suspended, later on fired. The specific groups were for example the orthodox Jews, foreign Jews, Jewish civil servants or Jewish businessmen and entrepreneurs. In the fall of 1940, the occupiers worked on a decree in which was determined that all the Jews had to register themselves. The Germans needed the Dutch civil service administration to carry out this new decree. The official decree was issued by Seyß-Inquart on the 10th of January 1941, but it was announced by Generalkommissar Schmidt in August 1940. From November 1940 onwards Secretary-General Frederiks was concerned with the preparations.110
The decree was carried out in the name of Jacobus Lambertus Lentz.111 Lentz was Head of the Rijksinspectie van het Bevolkingsregister (State Inspection of Civil Registry). He was a civil servant working directly under Secretary-General Frederiks. The implementation policy was published in the Nederlandse Staatscourant
(Government Gazette) on the 27th of January 1941. The decree obliged all persons of ‘whole or partly Jewish blood’ to register themselves at the municipality within one
108 De Jong, Koninkrijk IV, 760.
109 De Jong, Koninkrijk IV, 761.
110 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 209.
month. The mayor had to send the notification forms accompanied by a specification of the number of all registered to Lentz within 4 weeks, before the 24th of February 1941. Amsterdam had ten weeks to accomplish the notification requirement, due to the scale of the Jewish population.112 It was possible for the municipalities to ask for postponement but Lentz did not officially admit any of them.113 The decree defined the term Jew as widely as possible: those who had just one Jewish grandparent also had to register. But also the ones who had a non-Jewish grandparent who had belonged to a Jewish religious community had to register. When there were doubtful cases, they had to be presented to Wimmers Generalkommissariat. In that case a legal expert had to investigate the case. In June 1941 he had received more than one thousand doubtful cases.114
In January 1941 the Germans started also with limiting the access to public areas for Jews. It started with a prohibition for Jews to visit movie theatres. This was soon followed (11th of February 1941) by a decree that prohibited Jewish students from universities and colleges.115 These limitations of visiting public places
aggravated while the war progressed. During April and May 1941 more limitations were imposed to the freedom of the Jews. They were not allowed to possess radio’s, to visit markets and Jewish doctors were not allowed to treat non-Jewish patients.
Eventually, Jews were not allowed to visit any public place. It was forbidden for them to possess or drive vehicles, the Jews were not allowed to marry non-Jews and it was forbidden to visit non-Jews. It can be concluded that they were exiled from public life.
The implementation of the anti-Semitic Politics in an orderly, administrative way with the help of Seyß-Inquart and Wimmer was one side of the German policy. Also a more aggressive method was used. From August 1940 onwards, the
distribution of anti-Jewish literature was promoted, with the support of Schmidt. The pre-war forbidden Dutch anti-Semitic propaganda magazine De Misthoorn popped up again with German support and was mainly distributed in NSB - circles. From
December 1940 onwards, violence by the members of the Weerafdeling (WA, Dutch variation of the Sturmabteilung of the Nazi Party) took place, supported by Schmidt. It was allowed to act against Jews in public places and on the street. The most intense 112 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 231.
113 Tammes, ‘Nederlandse burgemeesters en de vervolging van Joden’, 82.
114 De Jong, Koninkrijk IV, 874.
violence took place in Amsterdam, were the majority of the Dutch Jews lived. The violent atmosphere was the reason for a temporary sealing off of the Jewish neighbourhood. The Beaufragte for the municipality of Amsterdam, Dr. Hans Böhmcker gave the order to establish the local Judenrat (Jewish Council), on the 13th of February 1941.116
The Jewish Council was of the intermediaries for introducing the German measures against the Dutch Jews. De facto, the Jewish inhabitants were extracted from the authority of their own government. It was originally introduced only for Amsterdam, but in October 1941 the Jewish Council gained nationwide authority. The Council had two chairmen, Abraham Asscher and David Cohen. The Council published from the 11th of April 1941 onwards a weekly magazine, Joodsche
Weekblad, in which it placed official orders from the German police and other
authorities. They were directed only for the Jewish population. 117 Four months after the establishment of the Jewish Council the first transport of Dutch Jews to Mauthausen, via Schoorl and Buchenwald took place. This was a reaction to violent protests against Anti-Jewish measures. In total 427 Jews were transported. The huge February Strike in Amsterdam was a response to this mass arrest.118
The intention of the decision to remove all the Jews out of the Netherlands was to use financial assets of the Jews to pay for the whole operation. This operation was supervised by Generalkommissar für Finanz und Wirtschaft Fischböck.119
Fischböck’s operation did not succeed completely. In June 1941, the second
deportation to Mauthausen took place. In August 1941, almost all Jews were obliged to transfer bank balances over 1000 Dutch Guilders to the Lippmann-Rosenthal Bank, a former Jewish Bank which was taken over by the Germans. The decree is called the first LiRo-decree, 148/1941. The bank was located in Amsterdam, but Jews
throughout the country could transfer their money via their own bank. The banking institutions were obliged to send all their customers a declaration at which they had to indicate if they were Jewish or not. If they did not respond to it, the bank account had to be considered as Jewish and had to be transferred to the LiRo bank.120
116 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 210.
117 Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd, 240.
118 Griffioen & Zeller, Jodenvervolging in Nederland, 210.
119 De Jong, Koninkrijk V, 1016-1017.
In September 1941, the school system was segregated completely. Two different types of schools existed in the Dutch school system; public schools and special education. The public schools were controlled by the municipality and most of the special education schools were controlled by the church. The government therefore had limited influence on the special education schools.121 The introduction of the segregation of the school system was done by Prof. dr. J. van Dam, Secretary-General of the Department of Education, Science and Culture Protection, appointed by Seyß-Inquart. The department fell under the supervision of Generalkommissar Wimmer. Van Dam decided that from the 1st of September 1941 onwards, all Jewish students were only allowed to visit Jewish schools, with Jewish teachers. Van Dam demanded intensive help of the municipalities to reorganise the school system on a short-term. When a municipality (alone or together with neighbouring towns) had at least 50 Jewish students in primary school, a separate school was obligatory. For secondary schools the rules were less strict, however, it needed to be in accordance with the Department. Children from smaller towns had to travel daily to schools in larger cities or they had to search for a boarding house.122
In Amsterdam, Den Haag and Rotterdam the new Jewish schools had to be opened on the 1st of September 1941. For the rest of the country this date was the 1st of October. The letter in which the new decree was published was sent to the
municipalities on the 16th of August 1941. The schools had to send the number of Jewish pupils to the department. In this decree the pupil was Jewish if he or she had three full-Jewish grandparents, or when he or she had two full-Jewish grandparents and a Jewish religious education. The schools had to send data concerning the names, date of birth and addresses to the municipalities. If there were no Jews visiting the school, the school head had to report this to both the Department and the municipality. The municipalities had to check if the information sent by the schools was correct compared with their own data, and had to report this to the Department. The
Secretary-Generals together with the Department decided where the Jewish schools were to be founded. This was communicated to the municipalities on the 28th of
121 Mooijekind, ‘Het Joodse Kind op de Joodse School’, 20.
