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Moshe-Mordechai van Zuiden
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What ratio of the Jews were the Dutch able to save in the Holocaust, 26% or 10%?

Anyhow, it’s the tallest Jewish death rate in Nazi-occupied Western Europe

As an introduction, let’s be clear that what follows will not make anybody happy. It doesn’t contain much new research. It rather recalculates what is known already. What’s new is more empathy for Jews Without Stars (JWS).

When wondering about the success of a fire brigade, you consider how many fires happened and how well they were handled, not how many could have happened. Also, to study how many Dutch Jews survived the Holocaust, I plead for looking at the Jews who were actually saved, for a moment excluding those who escaped or were never persecuted.

Well-Known

It’s well known that a whopping 75% of all Dutch Jews were murdered by the Nazis in broad cooperation with Dutch civil servants and far too little resistance, discouraged by the Queen and government in exile in London.

In neighboring Belgium, ‘only’ 35%-65% were deported. (Yet, Belgium is an incomparable hornet’s nest: Especially Antwerp Jews were decimated, 90% of the Jews had no Belgian nationality, among the Flemish, thrice the percentage (75%) were murdered, far fewer mixed marriages, and some were not killed but the Nazis put them to work in Northern France.) Yet, the Dutch facts may be even worse than the 75% popularized until today …

Most survivors of the persecution of Jews in the Netherlands were intermarried. The Nazis considered these Jews, and all their children, also suitable to be exterminated. However, the occupier did not touch them. They could keep their jobs, did not need to wear a yellow star, etc.

Initially, the Nazis assumed that the Dutch fellow Aryans would welcome the German occupation and quickly warm to the idea that ‘alien elements’ (Jews) should be removed as fast as possible. This was a miscalculation. It wasn’t that most Dutch felt so close and cozy to Jews and Gypsies, but it is a calm People that doesn’t like shouting, violence, or blatant hatred.

The occupier did not want to upset the ‘Aryan’ families the mixed-married Jews had married into, so they secretly planned to persecute the ‘partly-‘ Jewish and intermarried Jews in 1947, after deporting the ‘full’ Jews. (The same treacherous policy was employed inside Nazi Germany itself until the beginning of 1945.) Yet, Liberation caught up with that plan, and the mixed-married Dutch Jews and their offspring ‘were never persecuted’ (read on).

‘Never Persecuted’

Now, the expression ‘were never persecuted’ must be nuanced. Many of the intermarried Jews (and their families) were as scared as all the other Jews. Some of them committed suicide when the Nazis invaded. Many of them were anxiously waiting for the other boot to drop. And they were right. That was the Nazi plan. Living terrified for your life for years on end can’t mean you didn’t go through genocide, just because you survived. When the ‘fully’ Jewish were gone, many of the others went into hiding.

So, many intermarried Jews went into hiding for not believing the Nazis. That was no picnic for them or their hosts and resembles persecution.

Some intermarried Jews agreed to voluntary castration to get the assurance they would not be persecuted. You can’t call that ‘not persecuted.’

When stress or cultural differences translated into more spousal discord, a divorce could kill the Jewish partner. So much for being safe.

They saw their fellow-Jewish family, friends, and communities ransacked by the Nazis and their willing Dutch aides. Can you call that ‘not persecuted’?

Also, intermarried Jews who frustrated the occupation or angered the Nazis were more severely handled than Aryan Resistance men and women. Then, their Aryan in-laws could not say they were innocently persecuted.

Jewish women who married Gentile men still had Jewish children for Jewish Law. It can be assumed that some of those families were still members of Jewish Communities and, as members, in more danger of Nazi persecution.

Some Jewish women married Nazis or Nazi collaborators. Is that safety?

So, let’s not proclaim the lives of intermarried Jews in the Netherlands 1940-1945 easy and worry-free. Let’s call it: they lived on the threshold of death, of being mass murdered, with one foot in the grave.

In some provinces, no Jews were intermarried. ‘You wouldn’t marry the enemy,’ my mother clarified pre-war life in Groningen. They were also very proud when they could declare that they all had four Jewish grandparents. In dirt-poor Amsterdam, many Jews and non-Jews lived and worked side-by-side, were socialists, and married each other. The Amsterdam working-class language was peppered with Hebrew and not considered Jewish. They were jointly looked down on by middle-class Jews and Gentiles alike.

People with one missing Jewish grandparent were counted as ‘full’ Jews. Clearly, the Nazis were not too nervous to upset the non-Jewish family of one grandparent. But those with two Jewish grandparents were also less safe if they were married to someone with three or four Jewish grandparents. At the end of the day, which ‘racial’ Jews to persecute and which ones not was merely a tactical issue. The Nazis hated all of them equally, and anyone irritating them could have them ‘removed.’

However, things weren’t as absolute as the previous paragraphs portray. A number of Dutch JWS certainly were jailed, deported, sterilized, or beaten.

Having stated clearly how JWS’ lives hanged in the balance, and only the Nazis running out of time saved them, we might still say: Until the end of the War, as a group, they weren’t (yet) picked up, incarcerated, and moved ‘to the East,’ to their untimely deaths for being Jews according to Nazi Law.

The Numbers Broken Down

How many Jews in the Netherlands during WW II were intermarried or had parents who were? This is answered in the ‘Historical Introduction II. Quantitative Data,’ The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, The Netherlands, Volume one (of two), issued 20 years ago by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel. On pages XXX – XXXIX, we find all the numbers by historian Bert Jan Flim. (The book also describes his family’s leading and diverse resistance work, pages 247-8.)

At the census of 1930, 111,899 persons were registered as Jews. Obviously, before the Nazi ‘racial’ Laws, this referred to their religion or community.

NB: You need to go by Nazi Law, not Halachah, Jewish Law, when you want to calculate how many Jews were targeted and how many were murdered or escaped. Nazi Laws determined who was at risk. If you still want to know how many Halachic Jews were saved or murdered, you have not grasped yet that Halachic and non-Halachic Jews were equally hated.

The term ‘Dutch Jews’ is a bit confusing since part of the Jewish population around 1940 were refugees from greater Nazi Germany (also Anne Frank). The German refugees may have had a better survival chance (Westerbork).

The Nazi decree of January 10, 1941, for all people ‘of Jewish blood’ in the Netherlands to register wrote in 140,001 ‘full Jews,’ 14,895 ‘half-Jews,’ and 5,990 ‘quarter-Jews.’ Someone with four or three Jewish grandparents was considered a ‘full Jew.’ An estimated 989 Jews were not registered in February 1941 because some 300 had died through suicide, some 300 had escaped the country, and 389 were already sent to Mauthausen. The grand total of Jews to be rescued since the beginning of the War was so 139,012.

Flim tallies (page XXXVIII) that of the 140,990 full Jews, including in mixed marriages, only some 36,746 survived, and almost 74% perished, ‘the highest percentage in the whole of [occupied*] Western Europe.’ He adds that 350 ‘half-Jews’ died. Jews surviving in hiding were around 15,196.

* In Germany and Austria, the percentages of those murdered who were not able to flee were much higher.

A New Calculation

But if we exclude the intermarried, ‘half-,’ and ‘quarter-‘ JWS, we get to 161,875 total Jews minus 8,500 in mixed marriages minus 14,895 ‘half-Jews’ minus 5,990 ‘quarter-Jews’ equals 132,490 Jews at acute risk.

Actively saved in hiding were 14,496 star-wearing, not-intermarried Jews with 3 or 4 Jewish grandparents. This is 10.9%, not 26%, of 132,490.

Jewish-German refugees in the Netherlands reportedly had a better chance to survive because they were less naïve and quicker to flee or go into hiding. They were also better at negotiating with the German Nazis because of their common language and cultural background. Then, the percentage of saved Dutch Jews must have been even lower than 10.9%.

So of the Dutch Jews actively persecuted by the Nazis until 1945, almost 90% were slain. Far more than the number 75% regularly mentioned.

Curiously, one category of Jews is missing in the statistics: ‘Full’ Jews who survived in their own homes. My grandmother’s sister in Maastricht lived alone in her small home in poverty. She got financial aid from the Jewish community and the Church. No one took the trouble to round her up.

Also missing are numbers on other assaults on Jewish continuity: Jews who survived but sterilized. Small Jewish orphans raised as non-Jews, with their adoptive parents refusing to return them to Jewish families. Jews returning from betrayal and deportation. Jews who survived by hiding, which seemed to say: You want to survive? Hide! Jews who left the Netherlands because they couldn’t bear to be with a People that failed them. And mixed-married Jews. None are great groups for building a vibrant Jewish community.

Not only the Dutch 75% was way off. It’s claimed that one-third of Jews in Germany survived, but also that two-thirds fled the country. Yet, by 09-1943, 98% of the Jews inside Germany were intermarried. That means almost all targeted Jews who stayed were murdered, not two-thirds. This agrees with a source that claims that of the half a million Jews in Germany in 1933, in the end, only a shocking 1900 Jews survived in hiding, 0.38%.

Saved?

Can we claim not (yet) persecuted Jews were saved? Can we save someone from drowning who’s not in the water? Teaching someone to swim may protect against future drowning, but could we call that saving someone from drowning? Not 26% was saved, but a mere 10% of the Dutch Jews.

The Dutch collectively have a habit of passivity. They don’t value heroism. While the Frisians have a saying, ‘Better dead than slave,’ the rest of the Dutch have as motto, ‘Better shy than dead.’

Just now, some Dutch police personnel have ‘moral objections’ protecting Jews against Antisemitism. The key problem is that no one fired them at all!

The Dutch historians I contacted didn’t want to touch this with a flagpole. I’m used to being seen as an enfant terrible. One gets used to it.

A Dutch short movie from after the Nazi occupation. No mention of Jews:

About the Author
MM is a prolific and creative writer and thinker, previously a daily blog contributor to the TOI. He often makes his readers laugh, mad, or assume he's nuts—close to perfect blogging. He's proud that his analytical short comments are removed both from left-wing and right-wing news sites. None of his content is generated by the new bore on the block, AI. * As a frontier thinker, he sees things many don't yet. He's half a prophet. Half. Let's not exaggerate. Or not at all because he doesn't claim G^d talks to him. He gives him good ideas—that's all. MM doesn't believe that people observe and think in a vacuum. He, therefore, wanted a broad bio that readers interested can track a bit what (lack of) backgrounds, experiences, and educations contribute to his visions. * This year, he will prioritize getting his unpublished books published rather than just blog posts. Next year, he hopes to focus on activism against human extinction. To find less-recent posts on a subject XXX among his over 2000 archived ones, go to the right-top corner of a Times of Israel page, click on the search icon and search "zuiden, XXX". One can find a second, wilder blog, to which one may subscribe too, here: https://mmvanzuiden.wordpress.com/ or by clicking on the globe icon next to his picture on top. * Like most of his readers, he believes in being friendly, respectful, and loyal. However, if you think those are his absolute top priorities, you might end up disappointed. His first loyalty is to the truth. He will try to stay within the limits of democratic and Jewish law, but he won't lie to support opinions or people when don't deserve that. (Yet, we all make honest mistakes, which is just fine and does not justify losing support.) He admits that he sometimes exaggerates to make a point, which could have him come across as nasty, while in actuality, he's quite a lovely person to interact with. He holds - how Dutch - that a strong opinion doesn't imply intolerance of other views. * Sometimes he's misunderstood because his wide and diverse field of vision seldomly fits any specialist's box. But that's exactly what some love about him. He has written a lot about Psychology (including Sexuality and Abuse), Medicine (including physical immortality), Science (including basic statistics), Politics (Israel, the US, and the Netherlands, Activism - more than leftwing or rightwing, he hopes to highlight reality), Oppression and Liberation (intersectionally, for young people, the elderly, non-Whites, women, workers, Jews, LGBTQIA+, foreigners and anyone else who's dehumanized or exploited), Integrity, Philosophy, Jews (Judaism, Zionism, Holocaust and Jewish Liberation), the Climate Crisis, Ecology and Veganism, Affairs from the news, or the Torah Portion of the Week, or new insights that suddenly befell him. * Chronologically, his most influential teachers are his parents, Nico (natan) van Zuiden and Betty (beisye) Nieweg, Wim Kan, Mozart, Harvey Jackins, Marshal Rosenberg, Reb Shlomo Carlebach, and, lehavdil bein chayim lechayim, Rabbi Dr. Natan Lopes Cardozo, Rav Zev Leff, and Rav Meir Lubin. This short list doesn't mean to disrespect others who taught him a lot or a little. One of his rabbis calls him Mr. Innovation [Ish haChidushim]. Yet, his originalities seem to root deeply in traditional Judaism, though they may grow in unexpected directions. In fact, he claims he's modernizing nothing. Rather, mainly basing himself on the basic Hebrew Torah text, he tries to rediscover classical Jewish thought almost lost in thousands of years of stifling Gentile domination and Jewish assimilation. (He pleads for a close reading of the Torah instead of going by rough assumptions of what it would probably mean and before fleeing to Commentaries.) This, in all aspects of life, but prominently in the areas of Free Will, Activism, Homosexuality for men, and Redemption. * He hopes that his words will inspire and inform, and disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. He aims to bring a fresh perspective rather than harp on the obvious and familiar. When he can, he loves to write encyclopedic overviews. He doesn't expect his readers to agree. Rather, original minds should be disputed. In short, his main political positions are among others: anti-Trumpism, for Zionism, Intersectionality, non-violence, anti those who abuse democratic liberties, anti the fake ME peace process, for original-Orthodoxy, pro-Science, pro-Free Will, anti-blaming-the-victim, and for down-to-earth, classical optimism, and happiness. Read his blog on how he attempts to bridge any tensions between those ideas or fields. * He is a fetal survivor of the pharmaceutical industry (https://diethylstilbestrol.co.uk/studies/des-and-psychological-health/), born in 1953 to his parents who were Dutch-Jewish Holocaust survivors who met in the largest concentration camp in the Netherlands, Westerbork. He grew up a humble listener. It took him decades to become a speaker too, and decades more to admit to being a genius. But his humility was his to keep. And so was his honesty. Bullies and con artists almost instantaneously envy and hate him. He hopes to bring new things and not just preach to the choir. * He holds a BA in medicine (University of Amsterdam) – is half a doctor. He practices Re-evaluation Co-counseling since 1977, is not an official teacher anymore, and became a friendly, powerful therapist. He became a social activist, became religious, made Aliyah, and raised three wonderful kids. Previously, for decades, he was known to the Jerusalem Post readers as a frequent letter writer. For a couple of years, he was active in hasbara to the Dutch-speaking public. He wrote an unpublished tome about Jewish Free Will. He's a strict vegan since 2008. He's an Orthodox Jew but not a rabbi. * His writing has been made possible by an allowance for second-generation Holocaust survivors from the Netherlands. It has been his dream since he was 38 to try to make a difference by teaching through writing. He had three times 9-out-of-10 for Dutch at his high school finals but is spending his days communicating in English and Hebrew - how ironic. G-d must have a fine sense of humor. In case you wonder - yes, he is a bit dyslectic. If you're a native English speaker and wonder why you should read from people whose English is only their second language, consider the advantage of having an original peek outside of your cultural bubble. * To send any personal reaction to him, scroll to the top of the blog post and click Contact Me. * His newest books you may find here: https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AMoshe-Mordechai%2FMaurits+van+Zuiden&s=relevancerank&text=Moshe-Mordechai%2FMaurits+van+Zuiden&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1
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