Holocaust Manfred Gerstenfeld Netherlands

THE DUTCH STILL OPPOSING TO APOLOGIZE AFTER ALL THESE YEARS…….

 

Stunning.

This piece was first published at YNET minus the footnotes (available beneath the fold) and republished here with permission of the author. KGS

Dutch Strongly Oppose Apologies to the Jews

By Dr.Manfred Gerstenfeld

A few days ago, a poll found that two-thirds of the Dutch people are opposed to their Prime Minister apologizing to the Jewish community for the misconduct of the wartime government in exile in London. Only 27% of those polled were in favor of such apologies.1

Dutch governments have consistently ignored requests to fully admit the extent of the involvement of the Dutch in the persecution of Jews during the Second World War. Even in the past days, some Dutch historians tried to inflate beyond proportion the importance of a few general remarks on this issue by the current Dutch Queen Beatrix in March 1995 in the Knesset.

She said that there were many Dutch who had resisted the Germans, but they were the exceptions and that “the people of the Netherlands could not prevent the destruction of their Jewish fellow citizens.”2 Later that year on National Memorial Day, she added, “thinking about the Holocaust should fill us with shame.”

This pales next to what French President Jacques Chirac said a few months later: “France committed the irremediable. It broke its word and delivered those it protected to their executioners. We maintain toward them an unforgiveable debt.”3 Two years later, Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was even more explicit and said, “Not even one German soldier was necessary to carry out this disgrace.”4

Afterwards, the Netherlands fell behind in its apologies compared to other countries. When then-Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende came to Israel in 2005 for the opening of Yad Vashem Museum, I raised the issue of apologies in a short conversation. Balkenende asked me for a letter on this issue.5 I only received a formal acknowledgement from his staff for it. Belgium Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt at the same opening repeated his apologies for the collaboration of Belgians which he had already expressed in 2002.6

On that occasion, Balkenende only said that “the deportation of most of Dutch Jewry was a pitch-black chapter in Dutch history and that coldness and indifference toward the Jews had been dominant.” A month later, he admitted that Dutch authorities had collaborated with the occupiers. The emphasis of his words was more on those who took risks for other people than on the many Dutch traitors.

Several Dutch historians claim that wartime history is primarily an issue for historians. None of them explained why they haven’t asked for government apologies to the Jewish community for 65 years. The Dutch apologies issue was raised last week publicly due to statements of former Deputy Prime Ministers Els Borst and Gerrit Zalm in my recent book Judging the Netherlands: The Holocaust Restitution Process 1997-2000.8After the Dutch daily DePers published their quotes on January 4th,9 Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party requested Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologize to the Jewish community. This news went global to hundreds of media, including most major American ones and the official Chinese press agency.10

What happens if the Dutch government follows majority opinion and doesn’t apologize? Most likely, this will lead to more international exposure of Dutch misconduct in many areas. Included will be how the Dutch government in London took a year and a half to inquire about the fate of deported Dutch Jews from the Polish government, which resided in the same building.11 Or how in 1944 Henri Dentz, a Dutch official in London, could not find anyone in the government or even at the Red Cross to read his report which revealed that 90% of deported Dutch Jews had been murdered.12

Much attention will also be focused on Dutch Queen Wilhelmina who regularly spoke to the Dutch people from London via radio for four years. Only three times during that period did she devote attention to the Jews: in total 5 sentences. Before the war, she opposed the establishment of a center for German Jewish refugees in a location which she considered too close to her palace. The distance was twelve kilometers.13

Another issue to mention again is Dutch postwar misconduct during the restitution process. Prime Minister Kok, under pressure, apologized for this in 2000 but added that except for one case, this wrongdoing was not intentional. There are however many more examples of postwar bad intentions toward the Jews.

A very different type of potential exposure concerns the never properly investigated Dutch war crimes during “police actions” in Indonesia in the late 1940’s. More than 100,000 people were killed. The Dutch government has recently apologized to the inhabitants of one village, Rawagede, where all native males were executed without a trial.14 There are however, several similar cases about which little is known such as the mass-murders in South-Sulawesi.15

Current Prime Minister Rutte would be well advised to consider all of this when he decides whether to apologize or not.

1 J. Geerdink, “Twee derde: geen excuus jodenvervolging,” Spits, 7 January 2012, [Dutch]

2 Address by Her Majesty the Queen to the Knesset, 28 March 1995 (Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst).

3 Discours du President de la Republique, M. Jacques Chirac, lors des ceremonies commemorant la grande rafle des 16 et 17 juillet 1942 (Rafle du Vel’d’hiv) Paris, 16 juillet 1995, www.ambafrance-us.org/news/statmnts/1998/wchea/vel2.asp. [in French]

4 Discours du Premier Ministre M. Lionel Jospin, à l’occasion de la ceremonie du Vel’d’hiv Paris 20 Jullet 1997, www.info-france-usa.org/news/statmnts/1998/wchea/vel1.asp. [in French]

5 Letter Manfred Gerstenfeld to Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, 243 march 2005. [Dutch]

6 Statement by Guy Verhofstadt, Embassy of Belgium in Tel Aviv, www.diplomatie.be/telaviv/default.asp?id=43&mnu=43.

7 CIDI, Israël Nieuwsbrief, 30 April 2005. [Dutch]

8 Manfred Gerstenfeld, Judging the Netherlands: The Holocaust Restitution Process 1997-2000, (Jerusalem, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2011)

9 Dirk Jakob Nieuwboer, “Excuses voor Wegkijken,” De Pers, 3 January 2012. [Dutch]

10 See for instance AP “Wilders: Dutch Government Should Apologize for ‘passive attitude’ to WWII deportation of Jews,” Washington Post, 4 January 2012.

11 Dienke Hondius, “A Cold Reception: Holocaust Survivors in the Netherlands and Their Return,” Patterns of Prejudice 28:1 (1994): 0031-322x/47-65, based on quotation from L. de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, vol. 9: Londen (The Hague: Staatsdrukkerij, 1979), 501-503. [Dutch]

12 Report H. Dentz, London, 30 March 1944, 1. [Dutch

13 Anne Boer and Joop Offringa, “Hoe Wilhelmina ‘Westerbork’ in Elspeet voorkomt,” De Stentor, 23 March, 2009 [Dutch].

14 “Excuses aangeboden in Rawagede,” NOS, 9 December 2011. [Dutch]

15 See for instance: Erik Willems, “Toen een zware storm over het land trok, was de massamoord geen nieuws meer,” Volkskrant, 9 December 2011. [Dutch]

4 Responses

  1. I don’t understand why so many oppose this. There have been a few books about the collaboration of the Dutch government with the Nazi’s recently. It is disgusting to read those books. Collaborators at that time were not just ‘opportunists’, they were just as bad (and sometimes worse) as the Nazi’s.

      1. Could be. But a lot of Dutch think they were great hero’s during the war. Apologizing would mean that this was not the case.

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