Deportations of Jews from Holland

Deportations of Jews continued from Holland to Auschwitz and to other camps almost 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 numbers 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 government did not pursue the charges against them. However, a tribunal acting on behalf of the Jewish community found each man guilty, and they were barred from participating in any Jewish communal activity. In 1950, the government annulled the sentence against Cohen, 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.

Amsterdam, November 1942. Meeting of the executive board of the Jewish Council. f.l.t.r. Meyer de Vries, J. Brandon, the chairmen A. Asscher and Prof. D. Cohen, A. van der Laan. Image bank WW2 / NIOD, Joh. the hare.

On 3 September 1944, the final train destined for Auschwitz left Holland, containing 1,019 Jews. Five hundred forty-nine were gassed on arrival. More than 56,500 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.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 perished. Probably another 2,000 were either killed, committed suicide, or died of privation in Holland. 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?

They survived the weeklong trip in open railway cars.

It is a difficult question to answer. Many reasons have been proposed, but none of them are 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 German administration was victimizing the Jews, they were cut off from established support systems. All of these factors probably contributed towards a lethal result.

Fritz Pfeffer

It must equally be said that those Dutch Jews who survived in Holland did so because of the bravery and compassion of their fellow non-Jewish Dutch neighbors. Anne Frank, her family, and the others hidden in the annex at 263 Prinsengracht were only able to endure their confinement for more than two years due to such a humanitarian commitment. Yet, in the end, the Franks were also almost certainly betrayed by a Dutch citizen. Of the eight who had sheltered together in the annex, 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 sometime before 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.

Edith and Otto Frank.

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 sometime in mid or late March 1945; suffering from typhus and having fallen from her bunk, Margot died. Anne, also infected with typhus and lonely at her sister's death, died a few days later. She was not yet 16 years of age. 2-3 weeks after the British Army liberated Bergen-Belsen.

Seuss-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 five 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 for many Dutch citizens. Naumann was condemned to death by a US military tribunal and executed in 1951. A British court had similarly sentenced Schöngarth to death in the 1946 Jewish transport of Westerbork Dutch Jews. A second camp was established at Vught, in the southern part of the country, in January 1943, and several Dutch Jews were directly transported there. By April 1943, Jews had been prohibited from living anywhere in the Netherlands other than Amsterdam, Westerbork, or Vught.

Seuss-Inquart after his execution.

On 26 June 1942, 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 labor camps in Germany. He was to report the following morning with the number he could process daily. Haggling over numbers ensued between the Joodsche Raad and the Zentralstelle in the next days, until on the 14th of 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 the vehicle, 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 materialize. The invasion would begin just in time. It did not. The Communists would spirit away all those who went to the station. They failed to do so."

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.

Round-up of Dutch Jews

The "labor camps" in Germany, were of course, fictitious. The first 2,000, mainly German Jews, were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they arrived on the 17th of July 1942. One thousand two hundred fifty-one 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.

Auschwitz-Birkenau.

By 24 September 1942, Rauter reported to Heinrich Himmler that 20,000 Jews had been deported from Holland to Auschwitz and that preparations were in hand to expel the remaining 120,000. The collection place for the Jews of Amsterdam was the Dutch Theatre, renamed in October 1941, to the Joodsche Schouwburg, where it could hold more than 1,000 people.

Westerbork became the main transit camp for deportations. Commanded until September 1942 by Sturmbannführer Deppner, the center 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, known officially as KL Herzogenbusch and had initially 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.

Barracks at Westerbork transit camp after liberation.

Except for two means of transport that went directly to Auschwitz, the Nazis directed trains from Vught via Westerbork. Given police shortages, security for both camps was provided by the Dutch SS Guard Battalion Northwest members. 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 destruction 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.

This image from the collection shows Jews being loaded onto a deportation train in Westerbork, the Netherlands.

A survivor, Selma Wijnberg, testified:

“Westerbork became the main transit camp for deportations. Commanded until September 1942 by Sturmbannführer Deppner, the center 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, known officially as KL Herzogenbusch and had initially 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. Except for two means of transport that went directly to Auschwitz, they directed trains from Vught via Westerbork. Given police shortages, security for both camps was provided by the Dutch SS Guard Battalion Northwest members.

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 destruction 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 Ukraine, and we were to take with our 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 and 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 decided to direct transports from Holland to Sobibor and from the Bulgarian annexed regions of Macedonia and Thrace to Treblinka. He had also agreed 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.

Jews entered Westerbork, a transit camp in the northeastern Netherlands, in 1942. The Dutch national railroad deported about 107,000 Jews to Nazi camps. Only 5,100 survived.

Between 5 and 6 March and 23 July 1943, 19 trains containing 34,313 Jews arrived in Sobibor from Holland after three days on average. The first two trains consisted of passenger wagons; after 10 March, the deportees were transported in cattle cars. One transport contained 1,266 children. Some deportees were selected for work details within the camp. Several hundred others were sent to labor 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 Nazis never mentioned the name Sobibor. 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 o 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."

Jews Departing from Muiderpoort Station

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. They carried on the deception to such an extent that they were given tickets 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 at Wlodawa. Sometimes they indeed sent answers to these letters."

Deportation of Amsterdam's Jewish residents from Muiderpoort station, 1943

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 labor 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 kept. 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 the board had told them in Holland:

Toivo Blatt

"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. That 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. That is a place that gasses and burns Jews."

The girls did not survive.

Countless Polish Jews gathered before being executed on the death camp site believed to be Sobibór.

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 a secret organization; they established contact 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 did not speak, they would order the Dutch block to Camp III, and they would 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; they brought all of them, about 70 people, and them 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.

It is still a bone of contention between my parents and myself that I visited the Netherlands. Jews of my parents' age remember that the Dutch citizens in World War II witnessed their fellow Dutch help the Nazis deport the Dutch Jews to concentration camps. Local government officials, law enforcement, railroad employees, and many others in the Dutch population helped deport the Jews to concentration camps with minimal supervision from the Nazis. While many non-Jew Dutch helped their neighbors in hiding from the Nazis, many seemed willing to turn the Jews into the Nazis or even volunteer to join with the Nazis. (Over 20,000 Dutch were in the Waffen SS.)

After the war, Dutch Jews found their possessions looted and their property sold to non-Jew Dutch. To this day, Dutch Jews are still trying to get compensated for what was stolen from them after World War II. Just recently, both the prime minister of the Netherlands and a Dutch railroad company apologized to Jews for the government's and the railroad company's collaboration with the Nazis in sending so many Dutch Jews to their death in concentration camps. So at least some have apologized for some of their sins.

Anyway, would it be at all possible if somebody could explain to me without this thread getting out of control or racist as to why the Dutch Jews were hated and taken to death camps by the Nazi Germans? The Dutch were the fruits of the country of Holland for over 500 years.

Leaving German-Occupied Europe became more and more difficult after the start of World War II and almost impossible as the war progressed.

On my last trip to Holland, I was reading a newspaper article about a brave young lady. It reminded me of Anna Frank's days. Here was a young lady—or at that time, a child born in 1969. The young lady was treated similarly to Anna Frank. Had the Dutch not learned from the past? I can honestly say that the religious education at school merely skimmed the surface. My school never really had much to do with religion in general. My history classes never delved into the whole reason behind the Jewish thing; it was never really discussed in any depth, just reported. I understand the entire master plan of the Nazis, but I was a little baffled that it was still totally out of hand. It is shocking that many Dutch still go along with the same ideology on this sensitive subject. Then, in 1995, something happened to me.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali who lived in Saudi Arabia, then Ethiopia, and eventually settled in Kenya. She sought and obtained political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, under circumstances that later became the center of political controversy. In 2003 she was elected a member of the House of Representatives (the lower house of the Dutch parliament), representing the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis surrounding the potential stripping of her Dutch citizenship led to her resignation from the parliament and indirectly led to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet in 2006. That Integration Minister Rita Verdonk was planning to nullify her Dutch citizenship. For her safety, she had to leave Holland. For more information about this story, read the book Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali.