Requiescant

“We strongly advise you to co-operate in your own interests.” 

–The Jewish Council. 8 Jan 1942 in letters to those Jews 

identified for transport to “Dutch relief camps.”

In a living example of the “rock and a hard place” metaphor, the Jewish Council of Amsterdam was given the impossible responsibility to identify Jews for transport according to the parameters and quotas of the German occupiers. As such, thousands of Jews reported for “unavoidable duty” lest they suffer “worse measures”.

"Jewish Quarter"

It is important to differentiate between the Nazi death camps (Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Mauthausen, etc.) and the labor camps like Drendt in the Netherlands. In early 1942 the Jewish council was issuing what they described as “urgent advice” that failure to comply with the German orders was by far the lesser of two evils. The labor camps, despite evidence of increasing brutality, had yet to earn the reputation they deserve. One Jewish Council member reported that, “all in all, the workers are very satisfied with the conditions and the treatment they receive in the camp.” An inmate wrote in a letter home that the food was “fairly good under the circumstances.”

“We repeat, what you are asked to do is ordinary relief 

work in ordinary Dutch camps under ordinary Dutch instructors” 

–The Jewish Council.

Jews did as they were told.

Did the council know the truth? Did they believe unfulfilled promises that “leave” would be granted to deserving workers? Did they know the alarming mortality rate due to starvation and exposure? Certainly they knew that things were worse than they appeared; but it is imperative to remember that they faced the same reality of non-compliance in addition to owning the responsibility to reduce the inevitable “worse conditions”. In other words, they filled the German quotas by selecting Jews who would most certainly die. Failure to meet quotas meant retaliation resulting in the mass slaughter of many, many more. The rock and the hard place.

Bikes were confiscated

 In January 1942 100,000 copies of a supplement to the publication De Vonk (The Spark) informed its readers that “the so-called unemployed (Jews selected for transport) had been sent to what amounted to concentration camps” furthermore that they and eventually all Dutch Jews would be sent to Poland for extermination. Regardless of what the Jewish Council knew or believed, their efforts on behalf of the Jewish population can simplistically be labeled as a futile series of stalling tactics. They filed formal complaints regarding the German failure to grant leaves from camp. They were told that when Jewish reaction improved, leaves would begin. Again, it is impossible to know what the Council actually believed.

 “If you refuse, we shall no longer be able to do anything for you, 

and you yourself must bear full responsibility for the consequences.” 

–Jewish Council, April 1942.

By April the tone of the statements released by the Jewish Council had changed. With the hindsight of 71 years we know that the vast majority of the people transported did not survive, and we know the fatal consequences for those who refused and were captured. There is little wonder why those who refused chose one of only two alternatives to transport: suicide or hiding. By May it was ruled by the German Delegate’s Office “no Jews fit for work and below 60 or 65 years would be allowed to remain in Amsterdam.

Nazi Recruitment Poster

Until July 31, 1942 the Jewish Council fulfilled its gruesome task of selecting people to fill the German quotas. (One estimate suggests 4,500 per month.) By then the Council’s delay tactics and persistent appeals for clemency grew tiresome to German authorities, which ruled that the selection process would become the responsibility of non-Jewish doctors. Efforts to avoid transport included everything from supplying urine from diabetics to bribery; but quotas were filled. As Jacob Presser, author of Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry and a person selected for transport, wrote, “If Nazi doctors got the job every examinee would have been given a one-way ticket to Mauthausen.” (In fact, later, when Nazi doctors did make the selections, no medical exemptions were granted.)

On page 111 of Ashes in the Wind, Presser writes, “In the light of the approaching catastrophe, all the other German measures during the first half of 1942, however unpleasant, can only be regarded as so many pin-pricks.” He continues, “(The Dutch Jews) would have to die, all of them, some almost at once, but none before they had been driven to extremity, humiliated and robbed of their last belongings.”

Almost every day, and certainly every day I pass the Jewish Lyceum behind our apartment, I consider the horrors of Nazi occupation. The damage is irreversible, and the scars are invisible. The more I know, the more I want to know; then, I almost wish I didn't.