When we take a look at the West European countries under German occupation in WW2, think of
Belgium, the Netherlands France, and Luxembourg, we can see that the percentage of Jews deported in the Netherlands
was much highing than in the other countries. Why was this?
Many claim this was due to Dutch anti-semitism and/ or collaboration.
But is this really the case?
In this video you're going to learn:
why so many Dutch Jews were deported during WW2? Keep watching.
Good to have you back on the channel.
If you're new: my name is Stefan; I'm a Dutch history teacher and like to cover history in videos like this.
If you find that interesting as well, consider subscribing and hit that notification bell. And please
share this video with your friends via social media.
After the raid on the Secret Annex on 4 August 1944, eight Jewish people were transported
to the Westerbork transit camp.
From there, the Frank family left the Netherlands early September 1944. To Auschwitz.
By that time, more than 100,000 Dutch Jews had already been deported from the Netherlands, the great
majority to the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Sobibor.
Usually the number of 102,000 victims and 107,000 deportees is maintained.
Of the Nazi-occupied countries in Western Europe, the Netherlands had the most victims
of the persecution of the Jews, both in percentage and in absolute numbers.
How can this be explained?
Dutch historians Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller did elaborate research on the persecution
of Jews in the occupied-Netherlands, Belgium and France.
They made a comparing study.
On May 10, 1940, the German attack on the Netherlands, Belgium and France began.
After the defeat and the beginning of the occupation, the policy of the Germans in these
three countries was in many respects the same: they strived for cooperation with the national
authorities, maintenance of public order, gradual adaptation to Nazi politics and the
most flexible integration possible.
This was the opposite of the part of Poland occupied by the Nazis, where the Polish authorities
were brutally pushed aside from the start, violent action was taken against the population
and economic looting took place.
In France the situation differed from Belgium and the Netherlands. Where
those countries were fully occupied by the Germans a large part of France was not occupied
by Germany.
The French government moved from Paris to the small town of Vichy in the unoccupied
south, the so-called 'free zone'.
Under the new head of government, Marshal Philippe Pétain, democracy and the rule of
law were largely abolished.
The new, authoritarian regime strived for cooperation (collaboration) with the Germans
and was prepared to make a start with the persecution of the Jews, also in the 'free
zone'.
Most anti-Jewish laws and measures in France were then also not issued by the Germans,
but by the French government.
Because the French government was anti-Semitic, and willing to cooperate with
the Germans, they were able to hold its influence on the persecutions. Later they were also able to slow down these persecutions.
The governments of the Netherlands and Belgium went into exile and therefore
the government of the country fell into the hands of the highest officials.
Although there was a difference.
The Netherlands was given a civilian occupation administration that was characterized by a
strong influence of fanatical Nazis and the SS.
They regarded the Dutch as a 'Germanic brother people', which had to be convinced of Nazism.
This was less true for the Belgians (although there was a distinction between Flemish and
Walloons, I'll discuss that in another episode) and not at all for France. In Belgium and in the occupied part of France,
the Germans administration was headed by military commanders.
They stood up for the interests of the army (the Wehrmacht) and they also had their eye on
Great Britain where they were still at war with.
In the Netherlands, Hitler appointed the Austrian Nazi and lawyer Arthur Seyss-Inquart as head
of the occupation administration.
Seyss-Inquart was a fierce anti-Semite and so were his key associates, such as Fritz
Schmidt (Nazi propaganda) and Hanns Rauter (SS and German police).
The first anti-Jewish laws were enacted in all three countries at about the
same time, in October and November 1940, but only in the Netherlands did this provoke open
protests.
Professors, students and members of the church, among others, protested against the dismissal
of Jewish civil servants, including lecturers at universities.
In February 1941, the situation in the Netherlands quickly got out of hand.
The reason were anti-Jewish riots in Amsterdam that were provoked by Dutch Nazis with the
secret support of local German authorities.
After an incident with SS police chief Rauter had about 400 Jewish men arrested and taken
away to a concentration camp as a reprisal.
It resulted in a general protest strike in Amsterdam and its surroundings, that later became known as
the February strike.
The Germans were surprised by this and were only able to suppress the strike, which was
spreading further and further, by force on the second day.
After this, not a month passed without the Jews being affected by new decrees and measures.
They were driven further and further into social isolation and robbed of their possessions.
Partly as a result of the February strike, the occupier tried to avoid open
violence s much as possible. And however you may think this is a good thing it eventually attributed to the fact that many Jews were deported.
In all three countries, an organization was
imposed on the Jewish population, which was then used for their further social exclusion.
In the Netherlands this was the Jewish Council (Joodse Raad) of Amsterdam.
This organization had been established in February 1941 on German orders and in October
of that year it acquired national scope.
In Belgium, this organization was established by the military administration in November
1941, and in France, under German pressure, it was established at about the same time
through a law of the French government.
While these organizations in Belgium and France had quite a lot of room for negotiation, this was
not the case in occupied-Netherlands were eventually the Joodse Raad (Jewish
Council) became fully subordinate the German police.
When the deportations started in all three countries in July 1942, it turned out that
the German police in the Netherlands had almost complete control over this.
This was less true for Belgium and not at all for France.
As a result, the Germans were able to make extensive use of deception when carrying out
the deportations in the Netherlands.
For example, they issued tens of thousands of provisional exemptions (so-called Sperre),
which were later revoked one after the other.
In this way the German police managed to remove the Jewish population part by part, without
sparking much protests.
Adolf Eichmann, who organized the deportations of the Jews throughout Europe from Berlin,
was delighted by the smoothness of the operations in the Netherlands.
From January 1942, more Jewish men had been sent to labor camps in the Netherlands.
After the start of the deportations in July, the initial impression was that they did not
need to go to Poland, because they were already employed in the Netherlands.
But at the beginning of October 1942, these men and their families, totaling more than
12,000 people, were rounded up in one large operation and almost all were taken away to
Auschwitz that same month.
The same was true for Jewish hospitals and orphanages and homes for the elderly: they
were deliberately left alone for months by the German police, leading many to believe
they were safe there for the time being.
From January 1943, however, these were evacuated one after the other.
And also with inmates in the labor camps in the Netherlands, they were an easy prey because they had already
been incarcerated.
In Belgium, the German police only used brutal raids and mass arrests.
Therefore many Belgian Jews realized they had to go into hiding or
to blend in with the non-Jewish population with false identity papers.
See many Belgian Jews had an Eastern European background. And they, or their ancestors, had experienced
much anti-Semitism in their native country. So when the occupation authorities imposed anti-semitic laws,
they realized that things were going from bad to worse. However
the Dutch Jews were much more assimilated. They and there ancestors never had the experience of anti-semitic laws.
So when these laws were carried out in occupied-Netherlands many believed it would turn out fine. It wouldn't be that bad.
Jews in Belgium they knew that things were going from bad to much, much worse.
Eggert Reeder, head of the military administration in Belgium, reported to Berlin in December
1942: 'The Jews still in the country are hiding, so that the later planned execution of further
transports will be very difficult.'
While the Dutch and Belgian governments had less say in the anti-Jewish policy of the
occupying forces in the course of 1941, the Vichy government in France continued to play
an important role.
This especially applied to the deportations.
Thanks to the French government, the Germans were initially able to deport more Jews than
would have been the case if they had to do it alone.
In France, two out of three Jews deported were arrested
by the country's regular police; in the Netherlands this was one in four and in Belgium
one in six.
The difference in the percentage of victims between the Netherlands and Belgium can therefore
be partly explained by a larger share of the Dutch police in the round-ups.
From October 1942, the French government refused to continue with the large-scale roundup of
Jews.
This was mainly due to the fierce protests of churches, especially in the 'free zone'.
Behind the scenes American pressure on the French government also played a role, as did
the refusal on the French side to round up Jews with French citizenship in large numbers
- in addition to immigrants and refugees - and, later, the unfavorable course of the war.
All this caused long interruptions of the deportations in France.
In short, the opportunistic role of the Vichy government initially aggravated the situation
of the Jews in France, but due to the protests, changing circumstances and the meanwhile rising
resistance, fewer French Jews than Dutch Jews would eventually be deported.
Let's take a look at people in hiding. In both Belgium and
France organized resistance a hiding networks started much earlier in Belgium and France than it did in the Netherlands.
This was due to the fact that in October 1942 the German authorities in Belgium and France announced the forced deportation of Belgian and French men.
An important reason was the introduction of general and compulsory employment for many
Belgians and French in the German factories in October 1942.
This measure caused a shock effect. Therefore
many people went into hiding.
And Jews who at that moment wanted to go into hiding had
also this possibility.
There was always treason and traitors who betrayed people in hiding. In
some cases they got a reward for that.
In the Netherlands, the violent suppression of the February strike in 1941 had a deterrent
effect for a long time.
Networks in hiding only emerged after the major strikes of April and May 1943, when
the compulsory employment of Dutch men in Germany was further increased in this country. But by that time
most of the Dutch Jews had already been arrested and deported.
Do notice that the landscape of both Belgium and especially France, which was much bigger,
provided more possibilities to hide.
I read that personal data in the Netherlands was put onto so-called punch cards quite early
on.
An American researcher Edwin Black wrote a book of how IT concern IBM collaborated with
Germany and it also attributed to the fact that so many Dutch Jews were deported.
Historians (such as computer historian Gerard Alberts) reject the direct connection that
Black points out between the efficient population administration during the occupation and the
large number of Jews deported in the Netherlands.
Many would say that the high rate of deportations was due to Dutch collaborators.
In the Netherlands a relatively high number collaborated. Around ten per cent.
I already mentioned the Dutch police which attributed to the high numbers of Jews being deported.
But it doesn't explain everything.
On top of that, many collaboraters didn't attribute to the deportation of Dutch Jews.
Take for example the 25,000 Dutch men joined the Waffen-SS to fight on the Eastern Front.
They carried out horrible acts over there, but didn't
assist in the deportation of Dutch Jews
Often people are looking for simple answers.
Many will say: so many Dutch Jews were deported because the Dutch
couldn't care less. They collaborated by the masses.
Just scroll down the comment section and you'll see what I mean.
The reality is more complex. It were different factors that attributed
to the fact so many Dutch Jews were deported. And the high percentage of deported Jews in the Netherlands also doesn't explain the attitude
of the average Dutchman.
It is very likely that in the Netherlands there was more compassion with
the Jews. And it is interesting to look at what Dutch non-Jews thought of the deportations.
Well that it something I like to explore in future episodes. Don't forget to subscribe.