The Girl with the Blue Coat

The Girl with the Blue Coat The Netherlands WWII Submitted to: Grade 7/8 Submitted by: Mrs. Arlidge Language Arts December 2, 2018 Germany The Canada Netherlands Amsterdam Den Haag 0 40 40 kilometers . WWII 1939-1945 . Despite the fact that when war broke out, The Netherlands declared itself neutral, Adolph Hitler ordered its invasion anyway, without first making a Declaration of War. German invasion of The Netherlands – May, 1940 . The Dutch Coast was critical for the German Army to launch air attacks against Britain. • The Dutch government was totally unprepared • They had outdated equipment and no real chance of succeeding in defending the country • Although the Germans met with fierce resistance from the Dutch, the Dutch defenders had enormous causalities. • It was quickly clear that the British and French armies would be unable to reach and defend The Netherlands in time. The City of Rotterdam after the German bombing in May, 1940 • The German army was nervous about sending in troops to Rotterdam. Instead they demanded surrender and when that was rejected they bombed the city entirely. • During the so-called “Rotterdam Blitz,” between 800 and 900 Dutch civilians were killed • 25,000 homes were destroyed • The bombers' target was the civilian areas of Rotterdam, rather than the town's defenses. • Under pressure from local officials, the garrison commander then surrendered the city and his 10,000 men on the evening of May 14, 1940 • The Germans warned that if the entire country did not surrender, they would do the same to other Dutch cities, including Utrecht. • During the four-day campaign, about 2,300 Dutch soldiers were killed • 7,000 soldiers were wounded • Over 3,000 Dutch civilians died. • The invading German army lost 2,200 men, with 7,000 wounded. • In addition, 1,300 German soldiers captured by the Dutch during the campaign, many around The Hague • They were shipped to Britain and remained Prisoners of War for the rest of the war. • All political parties were immediately outlawed in The Netherlands • The only party permitted to continue was a pro- Nazi Dutch party called the Dutch National Socialist Party (NSB) • The long term goal of the Nazi was to completely incorporate The Netherlands into a part of the larger Greater Germanic Reich • Hitler thought very highly of the Dutch people because he believed that they were fellow members of the Aryan, “Master Race.” • Shortly after it was established, the military regime began to persecute the Jews of the Netherlands. • At first, there were no deportations • Only small measures were taken against the Jews. This included things like wearing the identify Star of David; restrictions on movement and confiscation of bank accounts. • In February 1941, the Nazis deported a small group of Dutch Jews to a Concentration Camp • The Dutch reacted with a nationwide protest against the deportations • This was unique in the history of Nazi-occupied Europe. • Although the strike did not accomplish much— its leaders were executed—it was an initial setback for the Germans who had expected to be able to easily deport the Jews and to win over the Dutch to the Nazi cause.[ • Before the strike, the Nazis had installed a Jewish Council. • This was a board of Jewish leaders. • The Jewish Council ultimately served as an instrument for organising the identification and deportation of Jews more efficiently; • the Jews on the council were told and convinced they were helping the Jews. • In May 1942, Jews were ordered to wear the Star of David badges. • Around the same time the Catholic Church of the Netherlands publicly condemned the government's action in a letter read at all Sunday parish services. • As a result, the Nazi government treated the Dutch more harshly • Later in the war, Catholic priests were punished for their defence of the Jewish people and were deported to concentration camps. Jewish refugee children smuggled aboard Danish fishing boats bound for Sweden, 1943. (US Holocaust Memorial Museum) • Johan van Hulst, a former Dutch senator and teacher renowned for his efforts to save hundreds of Jewish children during the Holocaust, died March 22 at the age of 107, the Dutch Senate announced this week. • As principal of the Reformed Teachers Training College, van Hulst found himself at the center of a growing operation to smuggle Jewish children out of Amsterdam to protect them from Nazi persecution during the Second World War. • The college garden bordered that of a Jewish day-care center, from which hundreds of Jewish children were passed over the garden fence to be temporarily hidden by van Hulst before being collected by members of a children's rescue organization and smuggled to safety. • "Try to imagine 80, 90, perhaps 70 or 100 children standing there, and you have to decide which children to take with you.... That was the most Johan van Hulst – Teacher Dutch Holocaust Hero difficult day of my life," he remembered of the period in 1943 when the Jewish day-care center was due to be cleared out. "You realize that you cannot possibly take all the children with you. You know for a fact that the children you leave behind are going to die. I took twelve with me. Later on I asked myself: 'Why not thirteen?'“ Johan van Hulst • Across the road from Van Hulst's school was the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theatre seized by the Nazis in 1941 to be used as a deportation centre. • While the records of those detained there are no longer available, historians believe about 46,000 people were deported from the old theatre over about 18 months up to the end of 1943. • Most ended up at concentration camps in Westerbork in the Netherlands, or Auschwitz and Sobibor in occupied Poland. • The deportation centre's administrator was a German-Jewish man named Walter Süskind, entrusted to run the centre by Nazis who disregarded his Jewish heritage because of his SS links. • Soon after starting his work there however, he noticed that it was easy to help people escape. He falsified arrival numbers, claiming for example that 60 people instead of 75 had arrived on a particular day, and then letting 15 people escape. • His task became easier when, in early 1943, the Nazis took over a crèche across the road from the theatre - and next door to Van Hulst's school - to place Jewish children before deporting them to concentration camps. • Süskind joined forces with the head of the crèche, Henriëtte Pimentel, sneaking children to safety when a tram passed in front of the crèche. • It was only when Pimentel persuaded Van Hulst to join them that their rescue efforts picked up speed. • Their buildings were separated at the back by a hedge. The crèche's nurses would pass children over the hedge to Van Hulst, who would in turn pass them on to Resistance groups who would help hide them. • None of the escapees - whose departures were all agreed by their parents - had been registered as new arrivals, so their disappearances were not spotted. • Only a handful were spirited away at a time - enough not to arouse suspicion. But helping some, while knowing others could not be spared, proved painful to the rescuers. • "Everyone understood that if 30 children were brought, we could not save 30 children," "We had to make a choice, and one of the most horrible things was to make a choice." • One of the children Van Hulst helped rescue was Lies Caransa, who was smuggled out of the crèche aged four while hiding in a bag. Most of her family was later killed at Sobibor (a Concentration Camp), but she was later reunited with her mother. • "I was not allowed to say goodbye or cuddle my mother and grandmother, because that might make a scene," Lies said. • "I was just allowed to wave. I felt alone and lonely." • In order for the Plantage neighbourhood to hide their rescue efforts, they needed to keep on uncomfortably good terms with the Nazis. • Süskind and other staff at the crèche and old theatre still had to continue with their day jobs. And Van Hulst had one trick to convince the Nazis he was on their side. • "Johan had an anecdote," Annemiek Gringold, a curator in Amsterdam's Jewish Cultural Quarter, told the BBC. "His students would be watching the SS guards and he would shout at the students 'Let these people do their job, it's none of your business', while winking at the SS guards, trying to gain their trust. • "He performed an act quite regularly in order to get their confidence." • All of this took place without him once telling his wife Anna what he was doing, as he did not want her to possess compromising information • The rescuers needed a degree of luck too. • When the government sent an inspector to Van Hulst's school without warning, she heard babies crying inside. By chance, the inspector happened to be a member of the Resistance and joined Van Hulst's efforts to move the children to safety. • The end of the operation, when it came, was sudden. • Henriëtte Pimentel was arrested in July 1943, and was killed in Auschwitz in September that year. • That same month, it was announced suddenly that the crèche was to be cleared out. Many children remained inside, and not all could be rescued. • The fact he was not able to save more children haunted him to the end. • "I only think about what I have not been able to do, about those few thousand children that I could not save," "We say those who save one life saves a universe.

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