Category:Holocaust Children, Netherlands (subject)

Holocaust Children, Netherlands (see Holocaust Children Studies)

Overview

Around 140,000 Jews (1.5% of the Dutch population) lived in the Netherlands when the German occupation began. The great majority of them, approximately 85%, had lived in the country for centuries, and before 1940 it was largely integrated. 15% were refugees from other countries (Germany, Austria, Poland...).

The German invasion of the Netherlands started on 10 May 1940. Although anti-semitism was not widely spread in the Netherlands, racial persecution was particularly harsh as the new government (made by Germans and local fascists, under the leadership of Arthur Seyss-Inquart) was fiercely anti-semitic and considered the Dutch to be a “Germanic brother nation." This did not apply to other Western European countries (like Belgium, France or Italy).

The first anti-Jewish laws and measures were already issued in October and November 1940. However, after some open violence against the Jews in February 1941 resulted in a general strike in protest in Amsterdam and the surrounding area, the Nazi authorities took a more deceptive ("velvet-glove") approach. Every month new regulations and measures were issued against the Jews. They were increasingly driven into social isolation, and stripped of their possessions, until deportations started in 1942. Westerbork was established a s the main transit camp. At the same time, the Nazi authorities issued thousands of provisional exceptions, which aimed to create a false sense of security among Jews, that those who had a job would not be deported. These exceptions were later rescinded one by one. The same applied for Jewish hospitals, orphanages and homes for the elderly: they were deliberately left alone by the German police for months on end, so many people thought they were safe there for the time being. However, from January 1943, they were emptied one after the other.

2,000 Jews managed to leave the country (hiding in Belgium or France or being arrested there). As many as 28,000 of them went into hiding locally, but only half of them successfully. An active movement of resistance developed in the Netherlands only in April-May 1943, when increasing numbers of Dutchmen were forced to go and work in Germany. By that time the majority of Dutch Jews had already been rounded up and transported.

104,000 people, or three quarters of the Dutch Jews were murdered during the Second World War, the highest number in Western European countries, both in terms of percentages and in absolute numbers. 107,000 were the deportees, of whom only 5,000 survived. The total of survivors was 38,000.

Most of the south of the country was liberated in the second half of 1944. The rest, especially the west and north of the country still under occupation, suffered from a famine at the end of 1944, known as the "Hunger Winter". On 5 May 1945, the whole country was finally liberated by the total surrender of all German forces.