The Holocaust in the Netherlands

The Holocaust in the Netherlands was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in the German-occupied Netherlands.
In 1939, there were some 140,000 Dutch 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).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.

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).

Overview

The Nazi occupation force estimated the number of (racially) Dutch Jews in 1941 at some 154,000. In the Nazi census, some 121,000 persons declared they were members of the (Ashkenazi) Dutch-Israelite community; 4,300 persons declared they were members of the ( Sephardic) Portuguese-Israelite community. Some 19,000 persons reported having two Jewish grandparents (it is generally believed a proportion of this number had three Jewish grandparents, but declined to state that number, for fear that they would be classified as Jews rather than half-Jews by the Nazi authorities). Some 6,000 persons reported having one Jewish grandparent. Some 2,500 persons who were counted in the census as Jewish were members of a Christian church, mostly Dutch Reformed, Calvinist Reformed or Roman Catholic.

In 1941, most Dutch Jews were living in Amsterdam. The census in 1941 indicates the geographical spread of Dutch Jews at the beginning of World War II (province; number of Jewsthis number is not based on the racial standards of the Nazis, but by how people identified in the census):
* Groningen – 4,682
* Friesland – 851
* Drenthe – 2,498
* Overijssel – 4,345
* Gelderland – 6,663
* Utrecht – 4,147
* North Holland – 87,026 (including 79,410 in Amsterdam)
* South Holland – 25,617
* Zeeland – 174
* North Brabant – 2,320
* Limburg – 1,394
* Total – 139,717

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 a 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 be 14,545; the number of "quarter Jews" was 5,990.DEMOS March 2001
''Accessed 18 July 2007''
Some 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust, an unusually high percentage compared with the other occupied countries in western Europe..

Factors that influenced the greater number of people who were murdered included that the governmental apparatus was relatively intact 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 flight or hiding. The country did not have much open space or woods for people to flee to. Also, the civil administration had detailed records that indicated the numbers of Jews, and where they lived. The average citizen of the Netherlands was unaware of the operation of "death camps" for the majority of the occupation. All Dutch citizens were obligated to "register" and undertake work in Germany. When the Dutch recognised German persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, they conducted the first act of mass civil disobedience in occupied Europe during WWII: 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