The Jews of the Netherlands had a long and distinguished history. Having first settled in the country in the
12th Century and thereafter been expelled, they had returned to dwell in the province of
Holland in the late 16th Century,
subsequently enjoying high levels both of tolerance and of security. The first returnees were Portuguese Marranos
(Jews forcibly converted to Christianity who secretly remained Jews), who were now encouraged to practice their
Judaism. Later, Ashkenazi Jews began to settle in the country. The Jews of the Netherlands enjoyed economic
and social integration in a manner that was to be unknown to other European Jews for hundreds of years. It was
during this period that the philosopher
Baruch Spinoza, one of the
creators of the concept of human rights, was born and lived in
Amsterdam. In
1796,
under the influence of the occupying French Revolutionary forces, Jews were granted full civil rights, subsequently
becoming prominent in all sectors of Dutch society. By the eve of the German occupation, the Jewish population
numbered 140,000, or 1.6% of the total inhabitants of the country, a figure that had been swollen by 30,000 refugees
who had fled from Germany, Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Among them were
Otto Frank of
Frankfurt am Main, his wife
Edith and his daughters
Margot and
Anne.
The Jews had settled mainly in urban areas; 75,000 lived in
Amsterdam alone, including the
Franks.
 |
| Seyss-Inquart |
 |
| Jodebree Street * |
On the night of
9-10 May 1940, German troops invaded the Netherlands. Following the
barbaric aerial bombardment of
Rotterdam, and fearing a similar fate for
other of the country's cities, the Dutch army capitulated on
14 May 1940.
Panic stricken Jews attempted to escape from the country. Some made their way southward through France, to
eventually find sanctuary in Spain, Portugal or Switzerland. 200 others, including 80 children were evacuated to
Britain. A German civil administration was installed under SS supervision. At its head was
Reichskommissar
(
Reich Commissioner) Dr
Arthur Seyss-Inquart, with 5 commissioners-general
serving under him. Among them were
Friedrich Wimmer (administration and justice)
and
Hans Albin Rauter (commissioner-general for public safety and
HSSPF).
These men were to be among the principal perpetrators of the annihilation of Dutch Jewry.
 |
| Rauter * |
Although the Dutch government had fled to Britain, they left behind an efficiently functioning civil service, which
initially operated side by side with the German administration. However,
Seyss-Inquart enjoyed absolute power. He acted, not upon instructions
from
Berlin, but on his own initiative. He soon made his intentions clear.
As he later wrote, "The Jews for us are not
Dutchmen. They are those enemies with whom we can come neither to an armistice nor to a peace." It did not take
long for anti-Jewish legislation to be enacted. On
31 July 1940, "shechita" (the ritual
slaughtering of animals)
was abolished. A decree of
20 October 1940 required the registration of businesses
operated by Jews, or in which Jews had financial interests. On
21 November 1940, all Jewish
civil servants were effectively dismissed. Another decree issued on
10 January 1941 required all Jews to
register with local branches of the census office. A Jew was defined as any
person with two Jewish grandparents.
The census revealed a total of 159,806 persons considered to be Jewish, of whom 19,561 were the offspring of mixed
marriages.
 |
| Amsterdam, Jewish Quarter * |
Following the pattern established in Germany, other discriminatory measures quickly followed. Among many other
restrictions, in the
summer of 1941 Jews were barred from public places; a curfew was
imposed from 8.00 p.m. to 6.00 a.m. and shopping was only permitted between 3.00 p.m. and 5 p.m. Jews were only
allowed to use public transportation if they held a special permit, and then only if space was available. Jews were
barred from public assemblies, museums, libraries, public markets as well as the stock exchange, and were excluded
from joining the compulsory trade unions for journalists, actors and musicians. In
August 1941, Jewish students were removed from
public schools and universities. In the same month, all Jewish assets, including bank deposits, cash, claims, securities
and valuables were blocked. A maximum sum of 250 guilders a month was available to a Jewish owner for private
use. Finally, with effect from
3 May 1942, every Jew aged 6 and over was
ordered to wear a yellow star on their left breast, with the word "
Jood"
inscribed on it in black ink. These yellow stars had been manufactured in the
Lodz Ghetto. Although there were
no ghettos as such in Holland, the areas in which Jews were permitted to reside were restricted
See
"Het Parool" (The slogan / pass word / parole) was
an underground newspaper, founded by the Dutch resistance.
 |
| Members of the Jewish Council * |
 |
Joodsche Raad
Main Building |
In
December 1940, the Jews themselves decided to set up a body representing all
of the various Jewish communities.
The
Joodse Coördinatiecommissie (Jewish Coordinating Committee) was chaired by
Lodewijk Ernst Visser, who had been appointed Chief Justice of the Dutch
Supreme Court in
1939. Following the German invasion he had been dismissed from this
position in
May 1940. On
12 February 1941, following
clashes between Jews and Dutch Nazis, mainly in the old Jewish section of
Amsterdam,
Stadtkommissar Böhmcker,
Seyss-Inquart's representative, ordered the formation of a Jewish Council
("
Joodsche Raad") in the city. A diamond merchant,
Abraham Asscher
and a classics
professor,
David Cohen, became co-chairmen of the new body, with
Cohen in effective day-to-day control of affairs.
Visser strongly believed that the Dutch administration had a constitutional
obligation to protect all Dutch citizens, including Jews. When in
July 1942, the letter
"J" was added to the
identity cards of Jews,
Visser refused to accept a card so stamped. He
was completely opposed to Jews wearing the yellow star and later protested against the forcible evacuation of Jews
from various areas of Holland. Whilst
Visser passionately believed in
non-cooperation with the Germans,
Cohen argued that the Jews had no
choice but to cooperate, since the Germans now ruled the country. There followed a brief but acrimonious conflict
between the two Jewish organisations before in
October 1941, the Council's authority
was extended to all of the
Netherlands and the Coordinating Committee was disbanded.
Visser continued
to promote a policy of non-collaboration, until he was warned that if he persevered in doing so, he would be sent to a
concentration camp. 3 days after receiving a letter to this effect,
Visser
suffered a heart attack and died.
 |
Guarding an Amstel Bridge
on the occasion of a Round-up
* |
 |
German Police and Police Van
in the Netherlands |
Following another violent incident in
Amsterdam between Jews and German police,
on
22 February 1941, 389 young Jews were arrested and sent to
KZ Buchenwald, where fifty of them died within three months. The remainder
were deported to
KZ Mauthausen. In protest at the brutal German behaviour,
the Dutch population declared a general strike in
Amsterdam on
25 February 1941. The entire transport system, large factories and public services
came to a standstill.
After spreading to other cities, the strike was eventually suppressed three days later. To penalize the Dutch for their
behaviour, the Germans imposed fines on 3 cities: 15 million guilders on
Amsterdam,
2.5 million guilders on
Hilversum, 0.5 million guilders on
Zaandam. The strike was to have fatal consequences for Holland's Jews. The
Dutch realised that it had not produced any meaningful results, since the Germans refused to make any
concessions concerning their treatment of the Jews. For their part, the Germans, recognizing that there was
no support for their anti-Semitic policies among the Dutch population, decided to adopt a more radical posture
regarding the "Jewish Question".
In
spring 1941, a
Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central
Office for Jewish Emigration)
was set up. Officially under
Willy Lages, head of the SD in
Amsterdam, it was administered on a daily basis by
Ferdinand Aus der Fünten. A branch office of the
RSHA department IV B 4, headed by
Adolf Eichmann, the
Zentralstelle's
purpose was to round up and deport the Jews. It operated with a staff of 20 Germans and 100
Dutch employees. Two men seasoned in the murder of Jews in Eastern Europe were to subsequently take up office
in Holland.
Erich Naumann was appointed commander of the Security Police
in
September 1943, to be succeeded by
Karl
Schöngarth in
June 1944. The
Joodsche Raad had been made subordinate to
the
Zentralstelle, and in
late 1941, forced-labour
camps were set up for which the
Joodsche Raad had to supply workers.
Beginning in
January 1942, Jews were removed from the provinces and concentrated in
the main in
Amsterdam. A camp had
been established in
1939 at
Westerbork, in the northeast of Holland for the detention of illegal
immigrants. Now,
stateless Jews were interned there as well as some Dutch Jews. A second camp was established at
Vught, in the south of the country and a number of Dutch
Jews were directly transported there. By
April 1943,
Jews had been prohibited from living anywhere in the Netherlands, other than in
Amsterdam,
Westerbork or
Vught.
 |
| Waiting at Polderweg Station * |
 |
| Train Destination Sign |
On
26 June 1942, on a day and at a time when the Sabbath had already begun,
Cohen was summoned to the
Zentralstelle to meet with
Aus der Fünten and his deputy,
Karl Wörlein.
Cohen was
informed that entire Jewish families would be placed under police supervision and sent to labour camps in Germany.
He was to report the following morning with the number of Jews the
Joodsche Raad could process daily. Haggling
over numbers ensued between the
Joodsche Raad and the
Zentralstelle in the following days, until on
14 July, the Germans seized 700 Jews as hostages and threatened to deport them to
KZ Mauthausen unless 4,000
Jews immediately presented themselves for transport to work camps in the
Reich. The next day the first
deportees were on a transport and most of the hostages were released.
An observer of these events commented:
"
Rumour had it that the British would smash Central Station to
smithereens. They did not come. There would be a strike of railway workers. It did not materialise. The invasion
would begin just in time. It did not. The Communists would spirit away all those who went to the station
(Polderweg Station). They failed to do so."
 |
| Letter from June 1942 |
It was the serving of a deportation notice on her sister
Margot on
5 July 1942 that forced the family of
Anne Frank
to go into hiding, a course followed by many Dutch Jews.
The "labour camps" in Germany, were of course fictitious. The first 2,000, mainly German Jews, were sent to
Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they arrived on
17 July 1942. 1,251 men, and 300 women were tattooed and admitted
to the camp. The remaining 449 deportees, including all children, the elderly and the sick, were gassed.
Trains began regular departures for the East. By
24 September 1942,
Rauter was able to report to
Heinrich Himmler that 20,000 Jews had been deported from Holland to
Auschwitz, and that preparations were in hand to deport the remaining 120,000.
The collection place for the Jews of
Amsterdam was the Dutch Theatre, renamed in
October 1941,
Joodsche Schouwburg, where more than 1,000 people could be held.
Westerbork became the main transit camp for the deportations. Commanded until
September 1942 by
Sturmbannführer Deppner, the camp was subsequently
under the command of
Obersturmführer Dischner and
finally, from the
end of 1942 until 1944 that of
Obersturmführer
Gemmeker. The first commandant of
Vught, which was known officially as KL
Herzogenbusch and had originally been established as a
Schutzhaftlager for Dutch political prisoners, was
Hauptsturmführer
Chmielewski. He was succeeded in turn by
SS-Sturmbannführer Adam Grünewald and
SS-Hauptsturmführer Hans Hüttig. With the exception of two
transports which went directly to
Auschwitz, trains from
Vught were directed via
Westerbork. In view
of police
shortages, security for both camps was provided by members of the Dutch SS Guard Battalion Northwest. From
6 August 1942 a Dutch police battalion commanded by
Sybren
Tulp was deployed to seize Jews in
Amsterdam. To a great extent,
the German scheme for the annihilation of the Jews was aided by the
cooperation of Dutch citizens; with few exceptions, the municipal administration, the railway workers and the
police all contributed towards the roundups and deportations.
A survivor,
Selma Wijnberg testified:
"
In 1942 I was arrested with my family and interned in
Westerbork. We were 8,000 prisoners, and the German officers in charge announced that
we were going to work in Poland or the Ukraine, and we were to take with us shoes, clothes and food..."
The deportations to
Auschwitz continued throughout the rest of
1942 and
early 1943. On
2 March 1943, the first transport left Holland for
Sobibor, arriving on
5 March 1943.
Himmler had visited the
Aktion Reinhard headquarters as well as the camps at
Sobibor and
Treblinka in
February 1943. It is believed that he was at
Sobibor
itself on
12 February. The camps were virtually idle at
the time of his visit.
Himmler apparently took the decision to direct
transports from Holland to
Sobibor and from the Bulgarian annexed regions of
Macedonia and Thrace to
Treblinka.
He had also decided that in all essentials,
Aktion Reinhard had completed its task.
Sobibor and
Treblinka were to be closed
after the liquidation of these final transports and the destruction of the
physical evidence of the crime had been accomplished.
 |
| Departure from Westerbork* |
Between 5 and 6 March and 23 July 1943,
19 trains containing 34,313 Jews, arrived in
Sobibor from Holland after a journey lasting, on average, three days.
Most of the deportees were transported in cattle cars, some
in passenger wagons. One transport contained 1,266 children. Some
deportees were selected for work details within the camp. A few others were sent to labour camps in the region. The
vast majority were killed within two hours of their arrival. They knew nothing about their destination, or the fate
awaiting them.
Selma Wijnberg wrote:
"(In
Westerbork)
letters were arriving from
Wlodawa confirming that life was pleasant in Poland. Later I knew it was
a lie, as the prisoners were forced to sign printed postcards. The name Sobibor
was never mentioned…In March 1943 we
were on our way to Poland. Many of us hoped to meet our families there again. Sick Jews were treated during the
journey; German nurses distributed medicines to patients. We reached Sobibor
on 9 April...
The men undressed immediately after leaving the train, then were led to Camp No.3. Women passed through an alley
of pine trees, towards a barrack. They took off their clothes and had their hair cut. A German chose 28 women to
work in camp no.2 ... I remember SS man Wolf approaching naked children going
to the gas chambers, giving them sweets, and patting their heads. 'Keep well, children, everything will be
fine', he used to say."
Leon Felhendler, a prisoner in
Sobibor,
wrote about the arrival of transports from Western Europe:
"
These transports were treated entirely differently. They arrived in passenger trains.
The Bahnhofkommando
(platform workers) helped them carry their baggage to a special barrack near the station. The deception was
carried on to such an extent that they were given tickets in order to reclaim their baggage. On the square was a
special table with writing instruments to write letters. They were ordered by the SS men to write that they were in
Wlodawa and to ask the recipients to send them letters to
Wlodawa. Sometimes answers to these letters were indeed sent."
Another survivor,
Ilana Safran, (Ursula Stern-Buchheim),
who survived the uprising in
Sobibor and later joined the partisans, testified:
"
In Vught there were many Jewish families and many children ...
Later we were transferred to Westerbork ... In April 1943
we left for Poland. The journey to Poland was dreadful; the prisoners
from Western countries believed that we were going to labour camps ... When we reached
Sobibor, a selection took place – young girls were placed on one side, the
others, including children, went to the gas chambers."
Sobibor survivor
Thomas Toivi Blatt described
how he had befriended two Dutch fifteen-year old twin girls from
Scheveningen,
who had somehow survived
the initial selection. They asked where they were and which barrack their father and brother were in.
When could they meet their family again?
Blatt was unable to
bring himself to tell them the truth. The next evening, he asked them what they had been told in Holland:
"
They told us we were going to be resettled until the end of the war.
'And you believed it?'
Why not? Even the Dutch guards and the Jewish officials told us so. We received cards from transports leaving before
us."
Blatt forced himself to make them face reality:
"
Listen, you will never see your father or brother again, nor will you ever leave here alive.
This is Sobibor. A death factory... It's true. I'm not crazy. Please believe me. The
smell is from dead bodies piling up for days in the hot sun, waiting to be burned. And the fire you see is burning
them. This is a place that gasses and burns Jews."
The girls did not survive.
Dov Freiberg, who had been a prisoner in
Sobibor since its first days, testified at the trial of
Eichmann about a particularly horrifying incident:
"
There was a captain from Holland, a Jew. He headed an organization, a secret organization ...
some contact was established between this Dutchman and the Ukrainian (guards). They began plotting an
uprising. And then one day in a roll call they took him out, this Dutchman, and began questioning him.
'Who were the ringleaders?' This man withstood tortures and endless blows and he never said a word.
The Germans told him that if he does not speak they would give orders that the Dutch block would be
ordered to Camp III and they will be beheaded in front of his eyes. And he said, 'Anyway you are doing
what you wish, you will not get a word out of me, not a whisper.' And they gave the orders to this Dutch
block to move, all of them, about 70 people, and they were brought to Camp III. On the next day we
learned that the Germans had kept their word. They beheaded the people. Yes, they cut off their heads."
The Dutch captain's name was
Joseph Jacobs. Some sources suggest that there
were 72 Dutch prisoners executed in this incident and that they were gassed. Other sources state that the
prisoners were shot.
Deportations of Jews continued from Holland to
Auschwitz and other camps almost
up until the moment of liberation. On the eve of the Jewish New Year,
29 September 1943,
2,000 Jews, the remnant of the
Amsterdam community, were taken to
Westerbork. Amongst their number were the leaders and senior
staff of the
Joodsche Raad, including
Asscher and
Cohen.
Asscher was
deported to
Bergen-Belsen,
Cohen to
Terezin (Theresienstadt).
Both survived. On their return to the Netherlands, both were charged by the post-war Dutch government with
collaborating with the enemy. After investigation, the charges against them were not pursued. However,
a tribunal acting on behalf of the Jewish community found each man guilty, and they were barred from
participating in any kind of Jewish communal activity. In
1950, the sentence against
Cohen was annulled, but he never again became active in
Jewish public life.
Asscher refused to acknowledge the tribunal's
competence and broke off all ties with the Jewish community. On his death he was buried in a non-Jewish cemetery.
On
3 September 1944, the final train destined for
Auschwitz left Holland, containing 1,019 Jews. 549 were
gassed on arrival. In total, more than 60,000 Dutch Jews were deported to
Auschwitz, of whom a little over 1,000 survived. Of the more than 34,000 who
had been deported to
Sobibor, less than 20 were still alive at the war's end.
Approximately 1,750 Dutch Jews had been deported to
Mauthausen. There was a
single survivor from that camp.
Overall, 107,000 Dutch Jews had been deported, of whom approximately 102,000 had perished. Probably another
2,000 had been killed, committed suicide or died of privation in Holland itself. The death toll represented almost
75% of the pre-war Jewish population, the highest proportion of Jewish fatalities for all of Nazi-occupied
Western Europe. How could this have happened in a country renowned for its alleged tolerance and compassion?
It is a difficult question to answer. Many reasons have been proposed, none of them wholly satisfactory. The
Dutch were unfortunate to be governed by a fanatically Nazi, Austrian dominated administration. That the
Dutch civil service was exceptionally efficient only worsened the situation. The geography of the country, with its
absence of mountains and forests made sheltering Jews difficult. The Jews themselves, concentrated in the
cities, became an easy target. The Jewish leadership pursued a policy with their persecutors bordering on
collaboration. And the stratified nature of Dutch society, divided into columns, or "zuilen", of Catholic, Protestant
and non-denominational communities that maintained self-contained political parties, trade unions, schools,
clubs and medical institutions, unwittingly contributed to the disaster. At the same time that the Jews were being
victimized by the German administration, they were cut off from established support systems. All of these
factors probably contributed towards a lethal result.
 |
| Fritz Pfeffer * |
 |
| Anne Frank * |
It must equally be said that those Dutch Jews who survived in Holland only did so because of the bravery
and compassion of their fellow non-Jewish Dutch neighbours.
Anne Frank,
her family and the others hidden in the annexe at
263 Prinsengracht were only able to endure their
confinement for more than two years as a result of such a humanitarian commitment. Yet in the end, the
Franks were also almost certainly betrayed by a Dutch citizen.
Of the 8 who had sheltered together in the annexe, only
Otto Frank survived.
Edith Frank died in
Auschwitz on
6 January 1945 from hunger and exhaustion.
Hermann van Pels was gassed at
Auschwitz
on
6 September 1944.
Auguste van Pels was transported to a series of camps –
Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen,
Buchenwald, Theresienstadt and finally to an unconfirmed destination, where she died some time prior
to
8 May 1945.
Peter van Pels left
Auschwitz on
16 January 1945, a participant in a death-march
which eventually arrived at
Mauthausen, where he died on
5 May 1945.
Fritz Pfeffer was sent from
Auschwitz to
Sachsenhausen and thence to
Neuengamme.
He died there on
20 December 1944.
Margot and
Anne Frank were transported from
Auschwitz
to
Bergen-Belsen at the
end of October 1944. Together,
they survived the horrors of that camp until at sometime in mid or
late March 1945,
suffering from typhus and having fallen from her bunk,
Margot died.
Anne, also infected with typhus and desolate at the death of her sister,
died a few days later. She was not yet 16 years of age. 2-3 weeks later the British Army liberated
Bergen-Belsen.
Seyss-Inquart was tried before the International Military Tribunal
at
Nürnberg, found guilty of crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes
against humanity. He was sentenced to
death and hanged in
1946.
Rauter was tried by
a Dutch court and executed in
1949.
Aus der Fünten
was condemned to death in
Holland, a sentence commuted to life imprisonment. He was amnestied in
1989.
Lages was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Dutch court, but released
in
1966. He died 5 years later. Two other men found guilty of war crimes in the Netherlands,
Joseph Johann Kotälla and
Franz Fischer were imprisoned in
Breda
together with
Aus der Fünten and
Lages.
Collectively known as "The Breda Four",
Kotälla died in prison in
1979 and
Fischer was amnestied at the same time as
Aus der Fünten. The release of three of "The Breda Four" was the
cause of outrage and protest on the part of many Dutch citizens.
Naumann
was condemned to death by a US military tribunal and executed in
1951. A British
court had similarly condemned
Schöngarth to death in
1946.
See our page
Transit Camps in the Netherlands!
The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names
(Yad Vashem)
Dutch Jewish Genealogical Research and In Memoriam Database:
Dutch Jewish Genealogical Data Base
Dutch Jewish In Memoriam Data Base
Photos: GFH
*
Sources:
Hilberg, Raul.
The Destruction of the European Jews, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2003
Hilberg, Raul.
Perpetrators Victims Bystanders, Harper Collins, New York, 1993
Gutman, Israel, ed.
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1990
Gilbert, Martin.
The Holocaust – The Jewish Tragedy, William Collins Sons & Co. Limited, London, 1986
Gilbert, Martin.
Atlas of the Holocaust, William Morrow and Company, Inc, New York, 1993
Dawidowicz, Lucy S.
The War Against the Jews, Bantam Books, New York, 1979
Blatt, Thomas Toivi.
From The Ashes Of Sobibor, Northwestern University Press, Evanston Illinois,1997
Arad, Yitzhak.
Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka - The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1987
Lee, Carol Ann.
Roses from the Earth: The Biography of Anne Frank, Penguin Books, London, 2000
Frank, Anne.
The Diary Of A Young Girl – The Definitive Edition, Viking, London, 1997.
Novitch, Miriam, ed.
Sobibor Martyrdom and Revolt, Holocaust Library, New York, 1980
© ARC 2006
