The Holocaust in the Netherlands

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See also: History of the Jews in the Netherlands
Monument at Westerbork: Each stone represents one person who had stayed at Westerbork and was murdered in a Nazi camp

The Holocaust in the Netherlands was organized by Nazi Germany in occupied Netherlands as part of the Holocaust across Europe during the Second World War. The Nazi occupation in 1940 immediately began disrupting the norms of Dutch society, separating Dutch Jews in multiple ways from the general Dutch population. The Nazis used existing Dutch civil administration as well as the Dutch Jewish Council "as an invaluable means to their end".[1] In 1939, there were some 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands, among them some 24,000 to 25,000 German-Jewish refugees who had fled from Germany in the 1930s (other sources claim that some 34,000 Jewish refugees entered the Netherlands between 1933 and 1940, mostly from Germany and Austria).[2][3]: 69  Some 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust. The 1947 census reported 14,346 Jews, or 10% of the pre-war population. This further decrease is attributed to massive emigration of Jews to the then British Mandate of Palestine (present-day Israel).

Background on Dutch Jews

Yellow Star of David that Dutch Jews were forced to wear
Jewish woman wearing a yellow Star of David during the razzia of 20 June 1943 [nl]

During the late nineteenth century and into the 1930s, Dutch Jews had increasingly secularized and integrated into large Dutch society. Many were no longer observant religiously or followed Jewish cultural practices. As Dutch society formed segments or "pillars" in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Jews were not a separate pillar, but rather affiliated with existing pillars. Many Jews no longer lived in the informal "Jewish Quarter". The Dutch tradition of religious tolerance, dating from the 17th century when Jews began settling in the Netherlands, especially Amsterdam, was extended with Jewish emancipation making them full citizens. The extent to which Dutch Jews were assimilated and felt accepted has been identified as a special vulnerability the German invasion and occupation of the Netherlands in 1940. Dutch Jews were not alert to the mortal threat of Nazi ideology and zealous implementation of policy to eliminate Jews, the Final Solution. The Netherlands had been a destination for German refugees, both Jews and non-Jews, fleeing the Nazi regime, most famously, the family of Anne Frank. Dutch Jews did not likewise flee the Netherlands with the Nazi invasion, unlike the Dutch royals. Dutch Jews, long with the general Dutch population, took a wait and see attitude toward the occupation. The Nazis pursued different policies in the occupation toward the general Dutch population, but implemented their systematic aim of eliminating Jews. The response of the Jewish leadership in the Netherlands was to "pursue a policy of compromise [with the occupation] that was more Dutch than Jewish, thereby co-operating reluctantly in successive small steps (in the hopes of avoiding 'a worse fate'... [T]he segmented Dutch society regarded the problems of the Jews as a Jewish matter (barring a few exceptions)."[4]

Overview

In 1945, only about 35,000 Jews of the Netherlands were alive. The exact number of "full Jews" who survived the Holocaust is estimated to be 34,379 (of whom 8,500 were part of mixed marriages, and thus spared deportation and possible murder in the Nazi concentration camps). The number of "half Jews" who survived in the Netherlands at the end of the Second World War in 1945 is estimated to have been 14,545; the number of "quarter Jews" was 5,990.[5] Some 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population was killed in the Holocaust, an unusually high percentage compared to other occupied countries in western Europe.[6][7][8]

Factors of the larger death toll included the relatively intact governmental apparatus after the royal family and government fled to London. The Netherlands was not under a military regime. It was the most densely inhabited country of Western Europe, making it difficult for the relatively large number of Jews to go into hiding. Most Jews in Amsterdam were poor, which limited their options for fleeing or hiding. The country did not have much open space or forest for people to flee to. Also, the civil administration had detailed records of the numbers of Jews, and their addresses. The average citizen of the Netherlands was unaware of the operation of "death camps" for most of the occupation. All Dutch citizens were required to "register" for work in Germany.[9] Initially, Dutch society recognized German persecution of the Jews, they conducted the first act of mass civil disobedience in Nazi-occupied Europe: the Februaristaking ("February strike"), to show their support for Jewish citizens.

One theory is that the Germans made use of the administrative organizations and Dutch police:

"In their preparations for the extermination of the Jews living in the Netherlands, the Germans could count on the assistance of the greater part of the Dutch administrative infrastructure. The occupiers had to employ only a relatively limited number of their own personnel; Dutch policemen rounded up the families to be sent to their deaths in Eastern Europe. Trains of the Dutch railways staffed by Dutch employees transported the Jews to camps in the Netherlands which were transit points to Auschwitz, Sobibor, and other death camps." With respect to Dutch collaboration, Eichmann is quoted as saying "The transports run so smoothly that it is a pleasure to see."[10]

This statue in Amsterdam commemorates Anne Frank, who went into hiding with her German-Jewish refugee family during the Second World War. They were found and transported. Her father survived and later published her diary. (She is presumably represented by a stone at Westerbork.)

The best-known Holocaust victims in the Netherlands is Anne Frank. Along with her sister, Margot Frank, she died from typhus in March 1945 in the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. Disease was widespread in the camps because of unsanitary living conditions deliberately created by the German occupiers. Anne Frank's mother, Edith Frank-Holländer, was murdered by starvation in Auschwitz. Her father, Otto Frank, survived the war. Other noted Dutch victims of the Holocaust include Etty Hillesum, whose writings were later published;[11] Abraham Icek Tuschinski, and Edith Stein, who converted to Christianity and is also known as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.

Maurice Frankenhuis built a collection of documents, authored diaries and collected artifacts spanning five decades, from World War I through World War II including hiding, and incarceration in Westerbork and Theresienstadt. His research revealed that he, together with his wife and two daughters may have been the only native Dutch family to survive as a unit.[12]

In contrast to many other countries where all aspects of Jewish communities and culture were eradicated during the Shoah, a remarkably large proportion of rabbinic records survived in Amsterdam, making the history of Dutch Jewry unusually well documented.

Implementation of the Final Solution

Occupation

The neutrality of the Netherlands did not protect it from the Nazi invasion of May 1940. Over the next two years, the German occupiers worked with the existing Dutch bureaucracy to gain control of the administrative system to implement its own policy aims. A key aim was to separate Dutch Jews from their legal protections and Dutch cultural milieu, extinguishing first their rights and then their lives.[13] Rather than leaving the Dutch government independent or setting up a military occupation, the Nazis' plan for the Netherlands involved implementing a civil occupation.[3]: 70  Leaders appointed by the Germans to head the civil administration of the Netherlands were all Nazis with a strong ideological history. Hitler's representative, the Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart, quickly took command of the Dutch administrative system as the Reichskommissar for the occupied Dutch territories.[3]: 70  Hanns Albin Rauter was appointed the Higher SS and Police Chief (HSSPF). Rauter reported directly to Heinrich Himmler.[14]: 57  One of Rauter's first initiatives involved consolidating the Dutch police under the Nazi-controlled Ministry of Justice. Rauter positioned the SS and the police to have full authority over the entire Jewish population of the occupied Netherlands.[14]: 21  This gave the SS and the police the ability to persecute Jews in the Netherlands, and eventually implement the Final Solution.[3]: 71  Rauter had not only the Dutch police, but 4,700 German police personnel at his disposal.[14]: 66  After Germany took control of the Dutch government, 128 cases of suicide by Jews were reported.[15]: 300 

Registration

In November 1941, the Germans forced all Jewish officials and public servants to register with the Dutch authorities. Subsequently, over 2,500 Jews lost their public positions.[15]: 302  Only the forced removal of Dutch Jews from secondary and higher education incited a response from the public.[15]: 303  On 10 January 1941, Seyss-Inquart mandated the registration of Jewish citizens.[16]: 610  This decree included Jewish citizens with one Jewish grandparent. Citizens identified as Jewish had their identification cards marked with a black J.[16]: 610  Carried always, these identification cards were a useful tool for the perpetrator to distinguish who was Jewish. Furthermore, these identification cards were nearly impossible to forge. The birth, death, and marriage records of Jews in the Netherlands were marked to differentiate them from the non-Jewish citizenry.[15]: 304  By 1942, Jews were forced to wear a yellow star on their clothing.[16]: 615 

The geography of the Netherlands made it impossible for Jews to flee. The country of Holland is less than 20,000 square miles of flatlands.[3]: 71  During the civil occupation, it is estimated that 25,000 Jews in the Netherlands went into hiding. Of these 25,000, a third were caught and deported. Of those who survived, 4,000 were little children.[3]: 72  Some were betrayed by friends, or strangers who agreed to hide them under false pretenses. Others were caught by the police.[3]: 72 

Robbery

Before being deported and murdered, Dutch Jews were systematically robbed of all of their possessions, including businesses, real estate, financial assets, artworks and household possessions.[17] Gerard Aalders, a Dutch researcher at the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, estimated that the Dutch Jewish community was "the most affected by German rapacity".[18] Looting organisations included the Dienststelle Mühlmann, headed by Kajetan Mühlmann under Seyss-Inquart, and the LiRo bank, a Jewish bank called Lippmann & Rosenthal & Co. that had been taken over by Nazis to disguise theft as legal transactions, among others.[19]

Deportations

Dutch Jews at Mauthausen, 26 June 1941[20]
Two Dutch Jews who committed suicide by touching the electric fence in Mauthausen, 1942

When Seyss-Inquart and Rauter gained power over the Dutch administration, there were 140,000 Jews in the country. As many as 80,000 Dutch Jews lived in Amsterdam alone.[16]: 601  The residency status of Jews in the Netherlands was irrelevant to Seyss-Inquart and Rauter. Seyss-Inquart stated "The Jews for us, are not Dutchmen. They are those enemies with whom we can come neither to an armistice nor to a peace".[16]: 601  Rauter sent progress letters to Himmler informing him that "In all of Holland some 120,000 Jews are being readied for departure."[16]: 620  These "departures" that Rauter spoke of were the deportations of Dutch Jews to concentration and extermination camps.

Below are a sample of deportations from The Netherlands to labor and extermination camps.[21]

Year Number From To Survivors
1941-42 1700 Amsterdam Mauthausen
1941-42 100 Amsterdam Buchenwald, Dachau, Neuengamme
15 July 1942 to 23 February 1943 42915 Westerbork Auschwitz 85
20 August to 8 December 1942 3540 ? Various labor camps 181
2 March to 20 July 1943 34313 ? Sobibor 19
24 August 1943 to 3 September 1944 11985 Westerbork Auschwitz 588
15 November 1943 to 3 June 1944 1645 Vught Auschwitz 198
1943-44 4870 Amsterdam and Westerbork Theresienstadt 1950
October 1943 150 Westerbork Buchenwald and Ravensbrück
1944 3751 Westerbork Bergen-Belsen 2050

In all, 107,000 Jews were deported from prisons in Germany and the Netherlands to concentration camps. Of these, only 5,200 survived. In total 102,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis (three-quarters of the pre-war Jewish population of the country).[22] Some were native Dutch, and others were refugees who had sought asylum in the Netherlands.[21]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Holocaust in the Netherlands.

References

  1. ^ Romijn, Pter, "The Experience of the Jews in the Netherlands during the German Occupation" in Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture, 1500-200. Leiden: Brill 2002, 269
  2. ^ Voolen, Edward van. "Askhenazi Jews in Amsterdam" (PDF). Joods Historisch Museum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 September 2007.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Steven Hess. "Disproportionate Destruction The Annihilation of the Jews in the Netherlands: 1940–1945", in The Netherlands and Nazi Genocide: Papers of the 21st Annual Scholars Conference, edited by G. Jan Colijn and Marcia S. Littell, Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992.
  4. ^ Blom, J.C.H. "Dutch Jews, Jewish Dutchmen, and Jews in the Netherlands" in Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture, 1500-2000. Jonathan I. Israel and Reinier Salverda, eds. Leiden: Brill 2002, 215-223
  5. ^ DEMOS March 2001. Accessed 18 July 2007 (in Dutch) Archived 10 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ JCH Blom (July 1989). "The Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands: A Comparative Western European Perspective" (PDF). European History Quarterly. 19 (3): 333–351. doi:10.1177/026569148901900302. S2CID 143977907..
  7. ^ For more recent publications, see: Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, "Comparison of the Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, France and Belgium, 1940–1945: Similarities, Differences, Causes", in: Peter Romijn et al., The Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945. New Perspectives. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press/Vossius Pers/NIOD, 2012, 55–91. Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller, "Anti-Jewish Policy and Organization of the Deportations in France and the Netherlands, 1940–1944: A Comparative Study", Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20 (3), Winter 2006, 437–473.
  8. ^ Tammes, Peter (1 July 2017). "Surviving the Holocaust: Socio-demographic Differences Among Amsterdam Jews". European Journal of Population. 33 (3): 293–318. doi:10.1007/s10680-016-9403-3. ISSN 0168-6577. PMC 5493707. PMID 28725097.
  9. ^ Ettie Huizing, Wie het geweten heeft, het levensverhaal van Siep Adema, SUN 1994, ISBN 90-6168-425-0
  10. ^ Manfred Gerstenfeld (1999-08-15). "Wartime and Postwar Dutch Attitudes Toward the Jews: Myth and Truth". Jcpa.org. Retrieved 2012-05-01.
  11. ^ Frank, Evelyne. Avec Etty Hillesum : Dans la quête du bonheur, un chemin inattendu. Une lecture d'une vie bouleversée et des lettres de Westerbork, Genève: Labor et Fides, 2002. (ISBN 978-2830910476)
  12. ^ Hill, David (2017). "Maurice Frankenhuis Built a Collection to Remember". American Numismatic Society Magazine. 16 (3): 44.
  13. ^ Romijn, Peter. "The Experience of the Jews in the Netherlands during tge German Occupation" in Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture, 1500-2000. Jonathan I. Israel and Reiner Salverda. Leiden: Brill 2002, 253-271
  14. ^ a b c Romijn, Peter, Bart Van Der Boom, Pim Griffioen, Ron Zeller, Marieke Meeuwenoord, and Johannes Houwink Ten Cate. The Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940–1945: New Perspectives; ed. By Wichert ten Have. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University PR, 2012.
  15. ^ a b c d Romijn. "The War" in The History of Jews in the Netherlands, edited by J.C.H. Bloom, R.G. Fuks-Mansfeld, and I. Schoffer, Uitgeverij Balans, 1996. Translated by The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002. Schoffer, Uitgeverij Balans, 1996. Translated by The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2002.
  16. ^ a b c d e f Hilberg, Raul (2003). The destruction of the European Jews (3rd ed.). New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
  17. ^ "SPOILS OF WAR N 3 1996". 6 March 2001. Archived from the original on 6 March 2001. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  18. ^ "SPOILS OF WAR N 3 1996". 6 March 2001. Archived from the original on 6 March 2001. Retrieved 15 March 2021.
  19. ^ Aalders, Gerard (2004). Nazi looting : the plunder of Dutch Jewry during the Second World War. Berg. ISBN 1-85973-722-6. OCLC 53223516.
  20. ^ Stein, Harry (2007). Buchenwald memorial (ed.). Konzentrationslager Buchenwald 1937-1945. Begleitband zur ständigen historischen Ausstellung (in German) (5th ed.). Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag. pp. 81–83. ISBN 978-3-89244-222-6.
  21. ^ a b Gerhard Hirschfeld, "Niederlande", in Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1991), 165.
  22. ^ Latest holocaust memorial September 20.2021

Further reading

  • Braz, Chaya. "After the Shoah: Continuity and Change in the Post-War Jewish Community of the Netherlands" in Dutch Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture, 1500-2000, Jonathan I. Israel and Reinier Salverda, eds. Leiden: Brill 2002, 273-288.
  • Croes, Marnix. "The Holocaust in the Netherlands and the rate of Jewish survival." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20.3 (2006): 474-499. https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcl022
  • Moore, Bob. Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940-1945. London
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