Do You Agree ?

[Bobsy]

75 years ago in 1941 Dutch working men went on Strike against the Nazi occupiers against the treatment of the Dutch Jews. I'm so proud of our Dutch friends .!!

[Zacs-Master]

I had no idea this happened. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. A very brave thing to do.
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/this-day-in-jewish-history/1.705233

[Gavmacp]

Yes. I also have never heard of this. Very brave indeed!

[retrocop]

I agree. But the Dutch were not alone in their resistance to the Nazis. Denmark was another country.

//Matters came to a head in Denmark during the summer of 1943 when strikes and other overt resistance activities against the Germans resulted in a demand from Hitler that the Danish government declare a state of emergency. The government refused to comply, resigning in protest, and the German commander-in-chief, Hermann von Hanneken, imposed martial law. The arrest and deportation of Danish Jews was finally ordered and carried out on 2 October 1943, but by then nearly all the Jews in Copenhagen had already been warned and gone into hiding while government officials secretly negotiated an agreement with Sweden to receive them. Only 284 of an estimated 7,000 Jews in the area were rounded up, and over the next several weeks most of them made their precarious way to Sweden on fishing boats, private vessels, and any other type of floating craft that could undertake the journey. Fewer than 500 Danish Jews were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, and nearly 90% of them survived to return to Denmark after the war. (Only these few hundred Danes who were sent to Theresienstadt were made to wear yellow stars identifying them as Jews.)

Although this legend may not be true in its specifics, it was certainly true enough in spirit. The rescue of several thousand Danish Jews was accomplished through the efforts of "thousands of policemen, government officials, physicians, and persons of all walks of life." The efforts to save Danish Jews may not have had the flair of the "yellow star" legend, and they may not have required quite so many citizens to visibly oppose an occupying army, but those who were rescued undoubtedly preferred substance to style.

Last updated: 1 May 2014 //
http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/yellowstars.asp

[Peter Pedant]

Heart warming

I have a sense of history being re written a teentsy weentsy bit -
The dutch resistance museum in Amersterdam - I think is
https://www.verzetsmuseum.org/museum/en/museum

and a german said mmm versetz is not resistance - it is more like being sat upon ( = occupation )
a common metaphor in Dutch papers was 'the German embrace during the war "

and the thing about dutch resistance during the war is...
there wasnt an awful lot
The so called spies were thoroughly infiltrated by German agents
and the German spy master successfully persuaded the British to drop a few boxes of tennis balls ( yes Yes ) so that an agent could impress teh King of somewhere at tennis. Yes the spy master knew his shakespeare and knew about Henry V and the tennis balls ......

when the allies finally occupied Holland - they went under it ( to the south ) in winter 1944 - the spymaster sent a teasing insolent message back to London en clair - " We have done so much business in the past that I regret our relationship must come to an end "

Finally - the Haarets photo
The people in the background are dressed in forties clothes and the old woman is in trad dress.... grinning at her German Liberator .....
A lot of the Dutch felt they didnt nneed liberation by the way.
However the Dutch Nazis did ( heavens were there any ? ) and they tradionally wore...... the old country dress

[ How do I know all this - I worked there for a time ]

[Peter Pedant]

Hi Retro

Nice to see you contributing - have they tied you to a hospital bed or are you at home ?

Danish resistance - shell house raid is good
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Carthage

The bomb goes thro the Gestapo hq front door
and there is movie film of the raid from the aircraft

one pilot knocks off a chimney pot in his bombing run
For some reason a Danish sound engineer stuck his mike out of a window and so the erm-erm-erm sound track is the ACTUAL noise they made during that raid, as they went into bomb.
Downside was they flattened a school as well

[tamborine]

Perhaps coz jews employed them but they never saved Anne Frank etc.

[jourdain2]

They were, indeed, brave people. I didn't know about it, nor about Retrocop's contribution. Thank you both.

Interesting, P P, - the French police were most assiduous (especially in the South) in rounding up Jews and putting them onto trains.

[Peter Pedant]

Eef you go to ze ..... sorry Versetxmuseum - Jordy
when the order to hand in radios came out - the museum has a postcard where a worker has scrawled - DISGUSTING ! in dutch over the order

( the post card is the order to hand in the radios ) - all done by the dutch civil service

The verssetxmuseum is worth a vizeet actually

The civil service had made ethnic records of all the population in HOlland and there was a red "I" on various recrods which stood for "Israelitisch" - [ the "isch" ending in Dutch is always " ees" ] - That was erm 1936 and so it was relatively easy to round up Jews when The Time Came

// Perhaps coz jews employed them but they never saved Anne Frank etc.// Tambo
Tambo needs to read Miep Gies's book how she and her family risked her life to feed the Frank family in hiding. Otto Frank was a Jewish employer up to the time of the order than Jews could not be employers when the family business was transferred to a trust - with christian trustees as placemen.

[Peter Pedant]

Jordy - village of secrets is a good read
I read it on a hospital trolley in cas.... ( but dont do that )

Grandes Affaires de la Resistance is pretty eye popping read for an anglo
available on english wiki in Fransh for £4.75

it goes into the ins and outs of l'affaire Grandclement
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Grandcl%C3%A9ment

and others

sorry off thread

[jourdain2]

Off-thread reply,PP. I knew a Frenchman whose father had been in the Resistance- in fact he is delineated on the national monument near LaRochfoucauld (worth a visit) - and he curled my hair with some of his knowledge. He was 10 when Oradour-sur-Glane was massacred (another important visit), they could see the flames and his dad and others took him and other boys there the next morning; the walls were still flickering,as were some of the corpses.

There are still families in the villages I knew that no-one will speak to. Sound an interesting book, thanks.

Apologies for digressing, Bobsy. x

[tamborine]

PP, agree were some heros saving jews but NOT all of the dutch population, who couldn't wait to get fat on jewish losses.

[Peter Pedant]

as detailed in
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389557/?ref_=fn_al_tt_4
the black book

zwartboek

where one of the themes is that the resistance intelligence is hopelessly infiltrated ( well comprehensively infiltrated )

The War of Resistance is doing the rounds on tee-vee
and IMO isnt very good - the Dutch do too much resisting when it is pretty obvious they werent