The Dutch Holocaust myth

Had you wandered into an Ashkelon beach hotel a few weeks ago and seen hundreds of elderly men and women, all of them speaking Dutch, you probably wouldn't have guessed that their very existence is a miracle. Almost all of them were hidden by gentile families during the Holocaust.

Among those attending the gathering - organized by the Elah Organization, which provides social and psychological support to Dutch Jews in Israel - was Jerusalemite Rita Jacobs. A retired librarian, she and her sister were hidden by two different gentile families in Heemstede.

"I will be eternally grateful to those families, and to the one that sheltered my parents. But I am still disturbed about what I might call the Dutch Holocaust myth, according to which the Dutch were all dedicated anti-Nazis. To be sure, there were Dutchmen who fought the Germans and/or hid Jews, and at great risk to their own lives. But they were a small minority. Most Dutch people collaborated with the Germans, and there were even some who joined German military units. As a result, more than 70 percent of the country's 130,000 Jews were murdered, a higher percentage than anywhere else in Western Europe," Jacobs notes.

She paused for a moment before adding: "To be fair, I'm not sure how Jews would have reacted if the shoe had been on the other foot, if we had been asked to risk our lives in order to provide refuge for persecuted gentiles.

"In any case, once the war was over, no one talked about what had happened to us during the 1942-1945 period. That subject was taboo, except for survivors of the death camps. And even on those occasions when mention was made of relatives who had perished in Sobibor or Auschwitz, it was simply said, 'They didn't come back.'"
Jacobs and the other participants in the Ashkelon meeting didn't go there to relive the horrors of the past, although the topic inevitably came up in private conversations and in some of the workshops. The main purpose of the get-together was to show how such things as music, drama, exercises and meditation could help these Holocaust survivors enjoy life in the years that remain to them.

According to Gideon Peiper, chairman of Elah, "the security and economic situation here is making it increasingly difficult for members of the Dutch community to cope. And this is true not only for the survivors themselves, but also for their children and grandchildren."

In order to reach the second and third generation, Elah has special programs for them in the cities and also invited them to the Ashkelon meeting. That is the reason that it was in Hebrew as well as in Dutch.

Jacobs, of course, can manage in both languages, though she has a special affection for Dutch culture and Dutch foods. The attitudes of contemporary Dutchmen, however, are another matter. "I find it unbelievable," she says, "that gentile friends with whom I have been in contact since university days now openly express their hostility toward Israel, adding, of course, that they are not anti-Semitic. Maybe not, but their attitude reminds me of the period when the average Dutchmen simply looked aside when Jewish friends and neighbors were under attack."

Nechemia Meyers is a freelance writer in Rehovot, Israel.

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