Accepted, But Not As They Came
By: Allison J. Van Tilborgh
Tags: Politics, Spirituality, History, Judaism, Religion

Accepted, But Not As They Came

How religious persecution manifested amongst Dutch Jews

Westerbork, Holland, Jews waving to deportees on a train to Auschwitz. Wikimedia Commons.

Jewish Emancipation in Holland

During the 18th and 19th centuries, European Jews found themselves at the crossroads of being full citizens with citizenship rights and retaining a distinctly Jewish identity (Brasz 2016). Retroactively, scholars are able to name this period the Emancipation, which was largely spurred by the Enlightenment ideals of the present European culture. There was, of course, a catch. Jews were able to exercise their new rights to property and voting (amongst others) only so long as they identified as nationals first, and practicing Jews second (Brasz 2001; Knippenberg 2001).

In countries such as the Netherlands, the term ‘Jew’ or ‘Jood,’ thus, began to take on a derogatory meaning. Dutch Jews began to identify themselves as Dutch Citizens practicing the Israelite faith tradition — that is, Dutch first, Jews second (Brasz 2001). Not everyone, of course, was happy about this shift, some calling their Judaism a petrified version of its former self (Brasz 2016). More ‘reformed’ versions of Judaism emerged in the Netherlands to accommodate a new Dutch lifestyle that Jews could fully participate in. Jews were slowly assimilating (Brasz 2016).

The 15th century the Netherlands was home to no documented Jews (Knippenberg 2001). Their sizable Jewish population (at one point representing 13% of the Amsterdam population) emerged from two subgroups: the Sephardi and the Ashkenazi. The minority Sephardi Jews in the Netherlands arrived with the Spanish acquisition of Southern Netherlands and remained after the subsequent wars that returned these lands to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The majority Ashkenazi Jews arrived in the very Christian-dominated Netherlands from countries such as Germany, Poland, and Russia, since these lands were known to exercise high levels of religious toleration, especially in sects such as finance and the arts where Jews began to flourish.

At its peak in the period of 1859–1869, Jews in the Netherlands reached it’s highest population percentage, accounting for 2.2% of the Dutch population (Knippenberg 2001). By this point, their faith played very little part in their daily lives as Dutch nationals. They were, as one put it, a “[Dutch] in the streets, and a Jew in the home” (Verbeek 2013).

The Dutch of Israelite Faith

In 1930, there were a documented 65,523 religious Jews in the Netherlands (Knippenberg 2001). In a census taken in 1947, this number dropped to 5,269. The huge drop-off can, of course, be attributed to the Shoah (or the Holocaust in vernacular American English), which took the lives of an unprecedented 75% of Dutch Jews including religious, ethnic, and cultural Jews (Brasz 2001; Brasz 2016; Dobkowski 2016).

For over a century now, Dutch Jews experienced increasing rates of full assimilation, considering themselves to be Dutch first and a practitioner of the ‘Israelite faith’ second (Brasz 2001). The tensions leading up to World War II shed light on the differences between all religious groups, notably the Protestant and Catholic majorities and the Jewish minority (Braun 2016). The South Netherlands was home to predominantly Catholic villages (a product of Spanish Catholicism), while the North Netherlands was home to predominantly Protestant villages (mostly Calvinist, known as Dutch Reformed) (Knippenberg 2001).

Although they took a majority position, the opposite minority (Protestant minority in Catholic majority and vice versa) were more likely to help Jews as the tensions rose across Europe (Braun 2016). The majority groups in these regions, alternatively, were much more likely to hand over the Jews in their communities to SS officers during the Second World War. Jews never were able to adopt the title of a ‘pillar’ (zuil) in Dutch society like Catholicism and Protestantism became, which made them extremely vulnerable (Knippenberg 2001).

In the 1940s, Jews were no longer viewed civilly as Dutch Citizens. The Nazi regime first pointed out the secret identities of these Jews (not entirely Dutch), branding them as limiting their rights. They were unable to purchase property and handed uniforms with yellow stars to signify their status as low-class individuals (Rietveld-van Wingerden 2008). Each day served as a reminder that the identity that they grew their whole lives with — that of Dutchness — was false.

It wasn’t long before Dutch citizens were rounded up, with the assistance of majority religions groups (Protestants in the North and Catholics in the South), and sent to one of five camps: Amersfoort, Oomen, Schoorl, Vught or Westerbork (Braun 2016). The Portuguese-Israelite Sephardi population had diminished from 400 to a mere 8 Jews hailing from two communities (Knippenberg 2001). Only one of every four Dutch Jews were to survive through 1945.

Dazed and disenchanted, many of these Jews rebuked their Jewish faith after the conclusion of this war. Their identities had been shattered between two worlds: neither fully Dutch or Jew. 15% of the survivors fled to the United States and Canada in the immediate years following the war (Brasz 2001). Only a tiny subgroup (565) of Dutch Jews made the decision to move to Israel immediately following 1948; they sought not to invigorate their Jewish identities but to restructure them completely (Brasz 2001).

Dutch Jews mostly focused their energies on trying to assimilate back into a world that had changed drastically, as well as one embedding oneself in an economy that was starting to look bright. Financial positions started to become comfy. A large portion became secularized, although not all did.

Dutch plaque in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Wikimedia Commons.

Zionists and Liberals

The Dutch generation following the survivors of the Shoah viewed their Jewish identity through a different lens depending on what their parents instilled in them (Rietveld‐van Wingerden 2008). Jewish parents who had themselves become secularized, taught their children to shed their ‘Jewish skin’ and liken themselves to the Dutch liberals who proclaimed the Netherlands as a nation of resistance (Brinks 1999). When these children reached adulthood in the 1960s, these children stood at the forefront of efforts combating international war (the Vietnam War) and social discrimination in Israel — a movement in alignment to the American ‘hippies’or world peace movement (Brasz 2001).

Some of the children taken in the Holocaust (including orphans) were encouraged to attend Jewish schooling which emphasized their ethnic roots and provided counseling to help young children make sense of what they had experienced at younger ages. From this young age, “The aim was to create in children a love for Judaism and Israel by lessons in old and new Hebrew, Torah, rituals and history and geography of Israel” (Rietveld‐van Wingerden 2008). Many of them saw no future for themselves in Europe after watching so many of those they knew (or never got to know) slaughtered — knowing it easily could have been them too.

Their education pointed them toward, one day, moving to Israel to start a life there. In the 1960s, masses of Dutch Jews migrated away from the Netherlands to Israel, including many secularized Jews (Rietveld‐van Wingerden 2008). Dutch Jews moved to Israel and the Israeli Dutch Jewish children from the small migrant groups in the previous decades migrated back to the Netherlands. A strong, but unexpected, tie grew between Israel and the Netherlands through migration (Brasz 2001).

Practicing Jewish attitudes ‘at home’ in the Netherlands was changing still. The reformed measures Dutch Judaism was taking continued into the 21st century. For example, in the 1980s (Gen 2 now in their 40s) Dutch Judaism began accepting women as leaders in their councils, and in 2008 (Gen 2 now in their 60s) the first rabbis — most of them women — were ordained on Dutch soil after the Shoah (Brasz 2016). Jewish schools and Synagogues began accepting half-Jewish children through the father’s lineage, doing away with mothers-only limitations prior. What it meant to practice Judaism was changing fundamentally.

The age-old struggled continued between Dutch and Jewish identities. It seemed as though one could not simply be both; they had to choose one or the other. Holland or Zion. Dutch or Jew. Orange (oranje) or Blue.

Rembrandt — Jews in the Synagogue. Wikimedia Commons.

The Apathetic

Anti-Semitism is growing across Europe. The Holocaust survivors from Gen 1 are dying out. Young Jews in the 21st century are intermarrying in the Netherlands at rates as high as 75% (to some, reminiscent of the Dutch Jewish slaughter of WWII). The definition of a Jew today in the Netherlands is quite vague, as the limitations upon what makes a ‘Jew’ decreased.

Judaism has had to adapt in response to varying extreme views of its faith tradition, reinterpreting texts, bending rules, and coping with a new geographical location they have the option to claim as their own (Brasz 2016). Some would consider now to be the best time to ever be a Jew, where Jewish identity holds so little bearing on every day life in Western countries. The assimilation promised to the generation who endured the Holocaust has come, in many ways, to fruition. Oddly, the Jewish response to this freedom has resulted in a certain type of religious and cultural apathy which moves Dutch Jews away from their Jewish identities.

The future of Dutch Jews will be characterized, still, by this dual-tension of what it means to be a Dutch national, and to be a Jew. In a secularized age, the ‘nation’ can represent all things objective, legal, and societally binding while Judaism can represent a dying breed of institutionalized belief. The story of Dutch Jews illustrates a larger contemporary issue that will plague the subsequent generation: what is the role of faith traditions in our future? To what extent will be allow our religious beliefs to infringe in our daily experience? How can we prevent horrors such as the Holocaust not to be forgotten, while simultaneously entering into an age obsessed with the reduction of pain? Is there such a thing as painless remembrance?

Andreas Achenbach — The Jews Quarter in Amsterdam. Wikimedia Commons.

Bibliography

Brinks, Jan Herman. “THE DUTCH, THE GERMANS, & THE JEWS.(Dutch-Nazi Collaboration).” History Today 49.6 (1999): 17–23. Web.

Brasz, Chaya. “After the Shoah: Continuity and Change in the Postwar Jewish Community of the Netherlands.” Jewish History 15.2 (2001): 149–68. Web.

Brasz, Chaya. “Dutch Progressive Jews and Their Unexpected Key Role in Europe.” European Judaism 49.1 (2016): 5–18. Web.

Braun, Robert. “Religious Minorities and Resistance to Genocide: The Collective Rescue of Jews in the Netherlands during the Holocaust.” 110.1 (2016): 127–47. Web.

Dobkowski, Michael. “The Ambiguity of Virtue: Gertrude Van Tijn and the Fate of the Dutch Jews.” Canadian Journal of History 51.1 (2016): 157–59. Web.

Knippenberg, Hans. “Assimilating Jews in Dutch Nation‐building: The Missing ‘pillar’.” Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie 93.2 (2002): 191–207. Web.

Rietveld‐van Wingerden, Marjoke. “Jewish education and identity formation in The Netherlands after the Holocaust.” Journal of Beliefs & Values 29:2 (2008) :185–194. Web.

Van Der Haven, Alexander. “Predestination and Toleration: The Dutch Republic’s Single Judicial Persecution of Jews in Theological Context.” Renaissance Quarterly 71.1 (2018): 165–205. Web.

Verbeek, B. J. E. “”Be a jew at home as well as in the street: Religious world views in a liberal democracy.” Religion beyond its Private Role in Modern Society (2013) 175–190. Web.