THE DUTCH, THE GERMANS, & THE JEWS
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Jan Herman Brinks examines the Dutch myth of resistance and finds collaboration with the Nazis went right to the top.
CAREFUL READERS of the compelling diary of Anne Frank might notice that her hiding place was betrayed to the Nazis by Dutch neighbours, without drawing wider conclusions about the behaviour of Dutch people during the occupation by the Third Reich.
In the light of recent revelations of Dutch complicity in the acquisition of Jewish money, artworks and other treasure by the Nazis, contemporary Dutch historians are engaged in a wholesale revision of the relationship between the Netherlands and the Hitler regime.
This introspection has been overdue for a long time. Contrary to popular belief, a far from harmless rapprochement between the Dutch and Nazi Germany had already taken place during the inter-war period. At the root of this was a virulent anticommunism that had penetrated deeply into the Dutch elite. In 1917 the Bolsheviks had annulled all foreign debts. However, in the Netherlands it was not the authorities or banks that had to suffer, but almost exclusively private individuals who had invested heavily in the Tsarist empire. The then astronomical sum of 1 billion guilders was at stake; more than the sum total of annual Dutch expenditure. Anger about these financial losses may have contributed to the fact that the Dutch bourgeoisie was initially susceptible to Hitler's anti-Bolshevism, and condoned his antisemitism for a long time.
After 1935, close Dutch-German collaboration was apparent in the arrest of 'Marxist and Jewish elements'. The immediate cause of this collaboration was the Dutch government's fear of a stream of refugees from the German Saar, which had decided by plebiscite, on January 13th 1935, to unite with the German Reich. Many left-wing and Jewish Germans who had taken refuge there after Hitler came to power in 1933 now decided to flee.
On January 16th 1935, three days after the ballot in the Saar, the attorney-general of Amsterdam, A. Baron van Harinxma thoe Slooten, argued, at the instigation of the Gestapo, in a confidential letter to the minister of Justice,J.R.H. van Schaik:
'In my opinion the establishment of concentration camps where all undesir able communist elements could be sheltered who, in spite of the actions already taken by Your Excellency, will yet enter the Netherlands from the Saar and who are highly dangerous, not only with regard to internal peace but also because of less pleasant complications abroad, seems inescapably necessary.'
In March 1935 the Fortress Honswijk south of Utrecht was fitted up for this purpose.
Among the Dutch authorities, especially among senior police officials, there were quite a few who had already offered their services to the Nazis in the interwar years. They saw Hitler as the most reliable defence against the 'Red peril'. The police commissioner of Amsterdam, K.H. Broekhoff, for example, personally reported in 1935 to the Gestapo in Berlin that the Dutch Minister of Defence would co-operate in the mutual fight against 'Communist and Marxist machinations'. Under the pen-name of 'David', Broekhoff took care of the exchange of information through which 250 German 'illegals' who had fled to the Netherlands immediately after the occupation in May 1940 were arrested by the Nazi Security Police. Rotterdam's chief commissioner of police, L. Einthoven, also figured, together with seventeen other Dutch police officers considered to be pro-German, in a list of names drawn up by the Gestapo.
This pro-German atmosphere also affected the Dutch media. According to the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl, who then worked as a journalist for the Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant, this very influential newspaper sacked its Jewish foreign editor and acting editor-in-chief, Marcus van Blankenstein, as early as 1936 because he took too critical and close a look at developments in Germany. In the opinion of the owners, whose interests were bound up with Rotterdam's port barons, it was better to avoid harming the interests of the state and the economy. So that was why incurring Germany's displeasure had to be avoided.
At the wedding of the future Queen, Princess Juliana, to the German-born Bernhard zur LippeBiesterfeld in January 1937, it became clear just how closely associated the Dutch elite was with Nazi Germany. Prince Bernhard, who, with his brother, had been a member of the Reiter-SS, the mounted section of the Nazi elite unit - was surrounded by friends who were active National Socialists. During a prewedding gala at the Building of the Arts and Sciences in The Hague, the Horst Wessel Lied, the Nazi anthem, was sung. Many of the guests, among them Duke Adolf von Mecklenburg, who was standing next to the bride, paid their respects with the Nazi salute.
The pro-German attitude of the Dutch authorities and elites was also confirmed by the German diplomat Wolfgang zu Putlitz, who, in 1938, after four years in London, was assigned to the post of Counseller in The Hague. In his autobiography he writes:
In England I had never come across officials in leading agencies who expressed their sympathy for the new Germanism as enthusiastically as in the Netherlands...The National Socialists of Mr. Mussert had supporters in almost all ministries and even among the royal household... There were Chiefs of Police who, summarily...deported German emigrants at any time of day or night, and handed them over to the Gestapo...I have never heard that the Dutch government asked for a single document concerning such arbitrary acts, which were known to us by the dozen.
According to zu Putlitz the Dutch government
even willingly gave its approval, when, later on, these Dutch involved, who had shown a flagrant disregard for the law, were., solemnly awarded the order of the German eagle second- or third-class, which had been created by Hitler.
Again after the Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938 it became obvious how apprehensive the Dutch authorities were of 'complications abroad'. Now, for the first time in the history of the Netherlands the government decided that the Dutch state would not take care of refugees. Instead the Dutch Jews themselves had to take pity on several thousand Jewish refugees from Germany. This was a radical break with the past; during the First World War, almost one million Belgians who fled the war in their own country found shelter in the neutral Netherlands. Now, even when the Dutch Jews wanted to help Jewish fugitives from Germany, they were often not permitted to do so.
On the eve of the Second World War, only 7,000 refugees were allowed to enter the country. Most, among whom were complete families, were considered to be 'undesirable aliens' and were simply sent back to Germany at the frontier, or upon arrival at Schiphol airport from where they were about to leave tot Britain or America. On November 15th, 1938, the Dutch prime minister Dr. H. Colijn explained this policy before parliament:
There is another reason why we cannot admit tens and tens of thousands to the Netherlands. I say this in the interest of our Dutch Jews themselves. These days not a single people is free from antisemitism; traces of this can also be found in our country and if we were to admit here an unlimited stream of fugitives from abroad, the necessary consequence of this would be that the feeling in our own country with regard to the Jews would swing in an unfavourable way.. were we to say at the moment: we will admit 50,000 people and were it to turn out that the others keep their doors locked, we would be at a loss what to do about those 50,000 people, and this for ever...
Aid from private individuals like Gertrude WijsmullerMeijer who during the war helped hundreds of Jewish children escape from Germany, was flatly condemned by the Dutch authorities. A press release from the Dutch government exactly a week after the Kristallnacht ended with the words:
The behaviour of Dutch people who transfer Jewish children by car or by train to the Netherlands has to be disapproved of. Such a disorderly arrival of refugees naturally cannot be tolerated. Only an orderly flow is permissible and that to a very limited extent.
Initial plans to establish a camp for German refugees in the municipality of Ermelo met with objections from, among others, Queen Wilhelmina, who considered the twelve kilometres that would separate her country residence Het Loo from German asylum-seekers not to be far enough. In 1939, after her intervention, the plan was abandoned and Camp Westerbork was established near the German border, which, by May 1940, sheltered 750 Jewish refugees from Germany.
But Dutch appeasement policy was in vain. On the night of May 9/ 10th, 1940, German troops invaded the country. Rotterdam was bombed and a five-year occupation followed which saw the murder of approximately three-quarters of Dutch Jews, the execution of numerous hostages, and a vast national trauma.
Among the ruling classes, however, many quickly adapted to the circumstances. Soon after the German occupation, Dr Colijn, who had headed four 'crisis governments', published his book On the Borderline of Two Worlds, in which he criticised democracy and recommended acceptance of German domination:
Europe and Germany; Germany and Europe, this will be a relationship to be reckoned with from now until any humanly forseeable future. One must forget any preference one may have for one thing or another: normally one's influence on the course of things is next to nothing, but in this particular case it is literally nothing.
According to the Dutch historian, Louis de Jong, the Netherlands also maintained their tradition of trade during the occupation. He says they possibly preserved this national feature too thoroughly. Dutch trade and industry probably lost touch with the goal of winning the war against the Germans, de Jong argues, because, until the end of 1943, the Dutch fulfilled 84.4 per cent of German orders - more even than the French, who achieved 70 per cent. According to de Jong, this punctilious discharge of business duties was not absolutely necessary.
In contrast to some Germans, like the Reichskommissar for the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, who was hanged at Nuremburg, most of the Dutch collaborators escaped punishment after the war. At the end of 1944 Queen Wilhelmina's son-in-law Prince Bernhard, thought that purging collaborators in trade and industry was unnecessary. According to the Prince, business would know who had behaved 'unpatriotically' and would clean up its own house. Of 32,232 cases of reported economic collaboration, 61 per cent were ignored. The Public Prosecutor only retained an interest in 5,957 cases (18 per cent), of which only 500 to 700 were brought before a special court of justice or a tribunal.
Pressure was exerted up to government level to shield suspected industrialist collaborators from punishment. From beginning to end, economic and political interests thoroughly influenced the administration of justice. The Foreign Minister, D.U. Stikker, for example, who was a member of the Central Council for purging trade and industry, staved off the imminent punishment of his friend M.H. van Damme, director of the Werkspoor company, then Holland's biggest machine factory. It was van Damme who in 1936 had introduced Prince Bernhard into influential trade and commerce circles, and since then he and the Prince had been close friends. Rotterdam's former chief commissioner of police, L. Einthoven, who had collaborated with the Nazis before and during the war, became head of the Bureau of National Security, precursor of the secret service, the Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst. He also played an important role in purging procedures, which may explain why many collaborators got off scot-free.
Immediately after the war, when the country was liberated, the relationship of the Dutch with the Germans reached an all-time low. Anti-German resentment and orgies of hate against real and alleged collaborators - and their children - were commonplace. But this did not prevent the Dutch economy from intensifying trade relations with Germany at the earliest opportunity.
Nevertheless, many Dutch people now regarded themselves as the epitome of virtue and innocence, while every German was considered a villain. The allies consciously tried to make use of this feeling. The American anthropologist Ruth Benedict was requested by the Office of War Information in Washington to write a memorandum about the Dutch. On the basis of her paper a pamphlet was composed, by which American soldiers could aquire a basic knowledge of the Netherlands to avoid friction with the population.
In her Note on Dutch Behaviour Benedict points out that 'Dutch selfconfidence typically expresses itself, especially among the Calvinist majority, in [the] extreme conviction of having Right on its side'. With regard to 'America's ignorance of Dutch history and glory' she remarks:
Except in what corresponds to our last years of high school Dutch schools teach practically no history besides that of Holland. Most Dutchmen therefore will be shocked at American ignorance. They should be told that Americans have lived across an ocean in a figurative as well as in a literal sense...The sense of superiority which Dutch readers will get from this should be a valuable asset, for the Dutch, in contrast to many typical Germans, act with marked consideration and kindness when they feel themselves superior.
This dialectic of moral superiority, however, was rather flimsy. Anne Frank, for example, was styled as a moral standard bearer of the nation, and in the myth of resistance against the Germans she was illuminated in fairy lights. However, it is a fact that this Jewish girl from Frankfurt-am-Main, not only went into hiding in the Dutch capital but was also betrayed by the Dutch.
The facts that most Dutch Jews, in spite of a sympathy strike in February 1941, received only scant support from the non-Jewish population, and that many Jews were also betrayed by the Dutch, were played down or hushed up. When Simon Wiesenthal explained on Dutch television that the Dutch really could not have done more for the Jews than they actually did (for few Dutch houses had cellars in which to hide Jews), many people must have heaved a sigh of relief. However, it remains true that tens of thousands of non-Jewish Dutchmen were able to avoid forced labour in Germany by going underground in the Netherlands.
It is also difficult to maintain that the fate of the Jews who were deported was completely unknown to the Dutch population. Even a young girl like Anne Frank, who lived in hiding, had learned from her non-Jewish helper, Miep Gies, about their ultimate fate, and the child believed it. In a diary note of October 9th, 1942, she writes:
If even in Holland it is this bad, how will they live in the far and barbarian regions where they are being sent? We assume that most of them will be killed. The English radio speaks of gassing. Maybe that is after all the quickest method of dying.
After Queen Wilhelmina and the cabinet fled the country, the Dutch civil service actively participated in the preparations for the elimination of Dutch Jews. Several permanent secretaries agreed to the so-called 'declarations of Aryan origin'. It was Dutch policemen who arrested the Jews. And it was Dutch field security officers who guarded them in the Westerbork transit camp, from which they were deported to their death by Dutch railway personnel.
Many Dutch policemen turned out to be loyal henchmen of the German occupiers. On September 24th 1942, the Commissioner General of the Security Forces in the Netherlands and the Higher Chief of the SS and Police, Hans Rauter, informed his superior Heinrich Himmler in a secret letter about the expulsion of the Jews in the Netherlands:
The new... Dutch police do an excellent job in the Jewish question and arrest the Jews by the hundreds day and night. In doing so the only risk that occurs is the fact that in places some policemen step out of line and enrich themselves out of Jewish property.
Himmler's comment at the top of this report was a crisp 'very good'.
The role of the Dutch railways too is a controversial one. In 1944 at the instance of the Allies a railway strike took place in the Netherlands. On September 17th, 1945, the first anniversary of this strike was commemorated. During a grand commemoration in The Hague the Minister of Transport and Energy, T.S.G.J.M. van Schaik, argued in front of the assembled railway personnel:
I understand the struggle you have waged in your hearts when your trains carried off the stolen riches of the Netherlands, when our boys were moved across the border by your trains, or, even worse, to the concentration camps. You did your duty, knowing that in that stage of the war your refusal would have had consequences even far worse for the Dutch people than what has happened now. Your work served the welfare of the Dutch people but was to the advantage of the enemy at the same time.
This 'advantage of the enemy' also implied that the Dutch Jews were deported with the help of the Dutch railways. However, according to the government and the railways an earlier strike which might have impeded the deportations was out of the question: 'Going out on strike', said van Schaik, 'was a matter of balancing advantages and disadvantages, of choosing the lesser of two evils. For the time being the advantage of continuing to run was greater than the disadvantage; the evil attached to the continuation of the company was less than its suspension'.
In other words, during the war the economic interests could not be risked even when the 'lesser evil' implied that the Dutch Jews were sent to their death. The words of Van Schaik, who did not mention the fate of the Jews at all, were not criticised in the Netherlands but they may shed light on Adolf Eichmann's reported remark that the transports in the Netherlands greased the wheels so perfectly that it was a treat for the eye.
Immediately after the war there was no feeling of guilt among the Dutch authorities or most citizens towards the Dutch Jews. The surviving Jews were not helped by the authorities, but got aid from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. After the war the Dutch government considered the surviving Dutch Jews to be 'Dutchmen like all Dutchmen'. For the authorities Jewishness had no special meaning. This insensitivity led to excesses. In two prison camps in Valkenburg and Sittard 170 German Jews were detained amidst captured SS members and collaborators. Before the war these German Jews had been granted asylum in the Netherlands. During the war they were deported to BergenBelsen and after their liberation they returned to the Netherlands where they were detained as 'Germans'.
In the first twenty years after the war most Dutch people gave hardly any thought to the fate of their Jewish fellow-countrymen. Their attention was entirely fixed on the resistance against the Germans and the occupation in general. This was the time when the myth of the Netherlands as a 'country of resistance' developed; a myth that was willingly received abroad. There was more attention paid to the non-Jewish Dutch resistance fighters who had been detained in the concentration camps than to the Jews who had been killed there.
Many examples can be cited of the callous attitude which Jewish survivors encountered in the Netherlands until well into the Sixties. To take one example: During the war Dutch Jews were forced to surrender their money, stock-holdings, jewellery and works of art to the bank Lippmann Rosenthal & Co for which they received a receipt. The Jewish possessions, however, were bartered away by the bank against rated values that were much too low. After the war some of these goods could not be claimed by their owners or their descendants. In 1968-69 civil servants from the Amsterdam branch office of the Ministry of Finance decided to sell among themselves for a symbolic amount what was left of the booty - valuables like earrings, watches, gold fountain pens and silver cutlery. There was so much interest among the officials of the Ministry that they decided to draw lots. Nobody had the idea of informing the Jewish community.
There are suspicions that many valuables that were stolen from the Dutch Jews remained in the Netherlands. This amounts to tens of thousands of houses, estates, artworks and stocks and shares belonging to war victims like gypsies, homosexuals and Jehovah's Witnesses as well as Jews. Often these possessions fell into the hands of Dutch collaborators.
The restitution of art collections too, did not always work out according to the regulations. After the war paintings that were stolen for the most part from the Netherlands, were stored by the Council of Dutch Art Collection (SNK) which was responsible for tracing the owners or their descendants and returning their property. However, this was only done in a few hundred cases. Today this collection still contains 3,500 paintings. From the correspondence of the SNK it appears that this organisation, immediately after the war, tried to change the laws involved in such a way, that the works of art 'naturally can be taken over by the state...in cases eligible for that purpose'.
Until recently Dutch historians were expected not to question the myth that the Netherlands were a 'country of resistance' against the Germans. When, in an interview in 1993, the Dutch historian Graa Boomsma compared the employment of military forces in the Dutch colony Indonesia after the Second World War with the conduct of the SS, this was enough to have him prosecuted for slander. Ironic indeed, considering the fact that there is circumstantial evidence that many Dutch who served in the German SS were sent after the war for their 'rehabilitation' to Indonesia to maintain colonial order.
After the judges had cleared Boomsma, the public prosecutor's office filed an appeal, which was quite unusual. In May 1994 the international association of writers, PEN, expressed its anxiety about the planned action against Boomsma in a letter to the Dutch Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin. At the beginning of 1995 the suit was again dismissed, but this official action was a clear signal to Dutch historians to tread carefully when assessing the colonial past and the role of the Dutch in the Second World War.
Such taboos belong to the past. The myth of the Dutch who resisted the Germans on a massive scale and suffered because of the fate of their Jewish compatriots, is being rapidly refuted by overwhelming evidence. However, much of this evidence is not new and it looks as if the current, more differentiated view of the Netherlands and their relationship with Nazi Germany also serves contemporary Dutch-German interests.
The current Dutch government is anxious not to disturb relationships with its neighbouring country, not least because of the economic dependency of the Netherlands upon unified Germany. Attempts are therefore being made to improve the image of Germany in the Netherlands and to establish a cordial relationship. These efforts, which are strongly supported by the royal family, are very vigorously pursued. At the beginning of 1995, Dutch newspapers reported that the government of the Social Democratic prime minister Wim Kok was trying to raise half a million guilders to finance a publicity campaign aimed at the development of a 'feeling' expressing 'togetherness-with-the-Germans'. Many Dutch historians, journalists and politicians nowadays support this political line by drawing attention to Dutch complicity in Nazi crimes, while focusing at the same time on Germany's post-war democracy. Whether this will breed solidarity between neighbours in 'Unified Europe' is doubtful. The Dutch Jews, moreover, may find that such a 'feeling' adds insult to injury.
FOR FURTHER READING:
J.H. Brinks, About Mammon and Morals.. Some Remarks on the ambivalent relationship of the Dutch with the Germans (The Mediterranean Quarterly. Vol.8. No.4. 1997). J. Presser The Destruction of the Dutch Jews (Dutton, New York, 1969).
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By Jan Herman Brinks
Jan Herman Brinks is a Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. His book Children of The New Fatherland: Germany's Post-war Right-wing Politics will be published in 1999 by I.B. Tauris.
