Appel Is Forever: A Child’s Memoir

Introduction

INTRODUCTION In the 1930s many German Jewish families fled Germany and came to hospitable Holland. Holland had been neutral in World War I and people hoped it could be neutral again in the impending war. Amsterdam had a sizable refugee community and many of the German Jewish families joined the large Liberal Jewish Synagogue of Amsterdam. Holland also had a more established orthodox population which periodically was enlarged by Jewish families fleeing the various disasters of Eastern Europe. The longest established Jewish population was made up of the descendents of the Sephardic Jews. These made their home in Holland in the years after the 1492 expulsion from Spain. In 1492 Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand finished their "ethnic cleansing" of Spain by throwing out the remaining Muslim Moors and all the Jews who would not convert to Catholicism. Holland has a tradition of tolerance. Perhaps the age-old communal struggle to hold the land against the always threatening sea created a different mindset than that of other European lands. Holland's long fight in the 1500s for independence from autocratic, imperial Spain must have been influential in forming the national character. After the Spanish were defeated Holland had to accommodate itself to being half Catholic (in the south) and half Protestant (in the north). During the long years of religious absolutism this ability to live peaceably together in the same national entity must have required some ability to tolerate "differences." Holland's own "golden age" of accomplishment and imperialism set it on a unique path that furthered a distinct Dutch culture. When Rembrandt painted he used his Jewish neighbors as models for some of 13 INTRODUCTION his biblical paintings. When Napoleon was triumphant after the French Revolution of 1789 his army occupied Holland and he put his brother on the Dutch throne in 1806. He also spread the egalitarian ideas of the French Revolution. In the early 1800s emancipation came to many of the European countries. It meant that Jewish people could now be citizens of the lands they lived in and were required to take a last name, that is, a family name. Holland's openness to foreigners such as Huguenots, English pilgrims , and Jews was not its only characteristic. A strongly conservative streak coexisted, as shown by some of the rigidities of the early Dutch Reform's strict Protestantism, of the well-defined class system, and of the behaviors of some of the expatriate Dutch colonizers. In the years following World War I and the Great Depression, Holland, too, had its homegrown fascists. This nazi party was known by the acronym of NSB. In September 1939, Germany attacked Poland and Blitzkrieg became a new reality. In May 1940, Germany attacked the Netherlands and Belgium. It was easy to "blitz" across the borders. The land was flat, cultivated farmland with good roads. The Dutch army fought five days before surrendering to the Germans. Concurrently the port city of Rotterdam had its center bombed out of existence. The Dutch queen, Wilhelmina, and her family and household fled to England and then to Canada, where they remained until the end of World War II. The occupation lasted five long years. Hitler's original intent was to use propaganda to nazify the population as fellow "Aryans" and eventually annex the country as part of the greater Reich. From May 1940 to spring 1941 the Germans behaved relatively mildly in Holland. Then German policies became more demanding and punitive: rationing, labor callups to work in Germany, and the implementation of the legal structure of persecution. Law after law restricted and constricted the ability of Jewish citizens to go about their lives. Jews could not practice their profession , own a business, use public transportation, attend schools, use parks or places of recreation, or attend religious services, and they could shop only at a few specified hours at the end of the day. Each had to wear a large, yellow cloth star. The Dutch population became increasingly hostile to the German occupiers. In February 1941 a general strike started in Amsterdam and was spread by the working people of the cities and the countryside. Among other strike causes there was widespread indignation about the brutality toward Jewish citizens. In July 1942 the Germans began the deportations of Jewish citizens to Poland and other points east. 14 INTRODUCTION The period of spring 1943 to September 1944 saw increasing resistance in the form of another...