DISSENTING VOICES?
STICHTING 1940-1945, LOE DE JONG AND THE POST-WAR MYTH OF
RESISTANCE IN THE NETHERLANDS
by
Laurien Vastenhout, MA
MASTER THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY (RESEARCH)
2015
UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM
Supervisor: Prof. dr. J. Th. M. Houwink ten Cate
Second Reader: Dr. K. Berkhoff
Dissenting Voices?
Stichting 1940-1945, Loe de Jong and the Post-War Myth of Resistance in the
Netherlands
Laurien Vastenhout, MA
– Contents –
Introduction – Competing Narratives: the Memory of the Second
World War
The Different Phases in the Approaches to the War
Successful Government-led Myth versus Dissenting Voices
Chapter 1 – Stichting 1940-1945: ‘Resistance’ as an Elusive
Definition
1.1 The Organisational Structure and Tasks of the Stichting
1.2 ‘Resistance’: Inclusion and Exclusion
1.3 The Communists
Chapter 2 – Loe de Jong: Shifting Approaches to Resistance
2.1 A Benchmark of Dutch Collective Memory
2.2 Resistance in Het Koninkrijk
2.3 Historian versus Moral Educator
7
9
26
40
44
52
64
70
72
80
96
Conclusion
106
Archives
111
Bibliography
112
Appendix
117
Acknowledgements
118
– Introduction –
Competing Narratives: the Memory of the Second World War
‘Thanks to their sacrifice, a new nation will be resurrected that differs from the past, it
will take a different stance vis-à-vis her allies than before. Our national resistance will be
remembered as the most characteristic attitude of our people in this period of our history.
It will make our history grow brighter. This, in particular, is what the Dutch people
should be aware of today’.1
The days marking the end of the German occupation of the Netherlands in May
1945 were euphoric; people danced on the streets and celebrated the Nazi defeat.
However, their joy was short-lived. The Dutch nation had suffered some serious
blows during the war. In the literal sense this concerned, amongst others the
bombardments of Rotterdam in May 1940. In the figurative sense this blow was
mainly caused by the rapid occupation of the country, – the struggle against the
Germans in May 1940 had only lasted for five days – the relative large number of
Jews that had been deported from the Netherlands and the fact that a famine had
struck the Dutch nation (particularly the densely populated areas in the Western
part of the country) during the last winter (Hongerwinter) of 1944-1945. The first
post-war government, headed by the Social Democrat Prof. dr. Willem
Schermerhorn, faced the tremendous task of having to revive the country and to
restore its honour. Next to the practical responsibilities that had to be taken care of
– e.g. freezing assets, trying collaborators, taking care of housing as well as the
financial restoration of the country – the government also had to create an
atmosphere in which Dutch citizens were willing to actively contribute to the
restoration of the country. A continuous emphasis on the dreadful and uncertain
period of Nazi occupation, in which quite some individuals had played a rather
dubious and even collaborative role, would be detrimental to the constructive and
optimistic mood that was necessary to achieve this aim. By pretending that the
1
Dutch Prime Minister Schermerhorn in a radio speech on August, 31 1945. Het Parool, Sept, 1
1945. NIOD Archief 263–7c. “Dank zij hun offer zal hier een andere natie herrijzen dan die van
voorheen, zal deze een andere plaats innemen tegenover haar bondgenoten dan vroeger. Ons
nationaal verzet zal als de meest kenbare houding van het volk worden aangemerkt in deze periode
van de geschiedenis. Het zal er de kleur en den glans aan verleenen. Dit vooral dient het
Nederlandse volk vandaag te beseffen.”
7
Dutch citizens, with the exception of some collaborative elements, had behaved in
an honourable way and by focussing on the idea that Dutch society at large had
been heroic during the period of Nazi occupation, the difficult history of the war
could be easily dealt with.
An important question that has occupied historians to date is what role the
government has played in the construction of this idea that the vast majority of the
Dutch people had been heroic citizens under Nazi occupation and to what extent
this idea of a heroic nation was widespread and successful in the first place. The
Belgian historian Pieter Lagrou has argued that the government deliberately put
forward the ‘myth of resistance’ and thereby ignored the stories of persecuted
groups that were not constructive to the myth that the entire society had been
heroic. In doing so, the government consciously marginalised particular groups:
‘labour conscripts, survivors of concentration camps and Jewish survivors of the
genocide in particular suffered from a lack of recognition of their particular fate’. 2
In contrast, Dutch historian Martin Bossenbroek has stated that, taken the
difficulties of the post-period into consideration, the government has done all it
could to pay attention to the stories of these persecuted groups.3 There was, in his
view, not a deliberate intention to ignore the stories of persecution and these
groups received attention at different levels in his view.4 The Dutch anthropologist
and sociologist Rob van Ginkel has introduced yet another view in which he states
that the government in fact did not have a significant influence on the position of
these persecuted groups as they constructed their own views and memories of the
war.5
If the government was indeed instrumental to, and successful in, the
construction and maintenance of the all-encompassing idea that the Netherlands
had been a heroic nation as Lagrou has argued, there must have been no room for
dissenting voices or alternative memories that were destructive this heroic story.
2
Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in
Western Europe, 1945-1965 (Cambridge: University Press, 2000), 295.
3
Martin Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep Terugkeer en opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog
(Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2001), 367-380.
4
5
Ibid.
Rob van Ginkel, Rondom de stilte: herdenkingscultuur in Nederland (Amsterdam: Bakker, 2011),
726-727.
8
Still, both Bossenbroek and Van Ginkel, albeit from different perspectives have
indicated that memories and stories challenging this conspiracy of silence were
visible in Dutch society. This thesis will explore whether or not the government
was instrumental to, and successful in spread of a nation-wide of the myth of
resistance as Lagrou has indicated or whether dissenting voices can be identified.
Different Phases in the Approach to the War
The memory of the Second World War is inevitably linked to the historiography of
Dutch resistance. There have been several attempts to identify different phases in
the way the war has been remembered, copying the Dutch marxist historian Jan
Romein who established a theory on the way the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) –
the revolt of the seventeen provinces of Holland against the political and religious
hegemony of Spain – had been approached throughout history. Romein argued
that six phases could be identified. First there was the chaotic reality, then the
filtered reality followed by a condensed story. After that, there was the dramatic
representation and then the genuine image of the war. In the last phase, a
conceptual image could eventually be identified.6 Only with the passing of time,
Romein argued, one is able to develop a more distanced and well-balanced
approach to such a turbulent period. In 1983 Hans Blom, Dutch historian and
future director of the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (the current Dutch
Institute for War- Holocaust- and Genocidestudies, NIOD), formulated an
alternative model in order to understand the different phases of our approach to
the Second World War.7 These different phases identified by Blom will be
followed.
During the first phase – the immediate post-war years – the suffering that
had taken place during the war was still fresh in the memory of the people. In the
Netherlands, there were severe casualties that had to be dealt with. In the first
place, the country had hardly provided any serious resistance against the invasion
6
Jan Romein, “Spieghel historiael. De geschiedschrijving over de Tachtigjarige Oorlog” in:
ibidem et al., In opdracht van de tijd. Tien voordrachten over historische thema’s (Amsterdam:
Querido, 1946).
7
Hans Blom, “In de ban van goed en fout?: wetenschappelijke geschiedschrijving over de
bezettingstijd.” Inaugural lecture at the University of Amsterdam, 1983.
9
of the Germans; the struggle lasted only from May, 5 1940 until May, 10 of the
same year. This fostered feelings of anger and humiliation. The nineteenth century
ideal of the nation-state, which was supposed to guarantee the integrity of the
national territory, had proven defenceless when faced with foreign invasion. 8
Second, in comparison to surrounding countries, the percentage of Jews deported
from the Netherlands was significantly higher than elsewhere; 75% of the Jews
living in the country were deported, in Belgium this amounted to 40% and in
France ‘only’ 25%.9 Combined with the fact that there had been relatively little
resistance against the Germans during the occupation, and the fact that atrocities
had been part of the daily reality in post-war internment camps for collaborators,
this fostered an unstable post-war situation.10 At a later stage, the situation grew
even worse after the unsuccessful decolonisation and the Indonesian War of
Independence (1945-1949) – a struggle that lasted over four years and involved a
bloody armed conflict, internal Indonesian political and communal upheavals and
two major international diplomatic interventions. In the end, Dutch forces were
not able to prevail over the Indonesians, and was forced to recognise Indonesia's
independence at the end of 1949.11 Again, the honour of the Dutch nation had
been at stake.
In short, the Netherlands had suffered some serous blows, and in order to
restore the highly fragmented country and to emphasise the legitimacy of the postwar government, a national consensus had to be reached on the experience of the
Second World War: [the] national reconstructions required a self-confident image
of the past’.12 Despite the fact that individuals and particular groups in society all
8
Louis de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, part III (‘s
Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1970), 473-380.
9
Blom, “De vervolging van de joden in Nederland in internationaal vergelijkend perspectief”
Amsterdam: De Gids Vol. 150, 6/7 (1987), 484-507.
10
Johannes Houwink ten Cate, “De kampen voor ‘foute’ Nederlanders na de Tweede Wereldorlog”
in: Historisch Nieuwsblad No. 7 (2001). In the first weeks after the liberation, many persons who
were suspect of collaborative activities were interned by former members of illegal groups. The
conditions in these internment camps was immoral and inhuman – people were continuously
beaten up and dehumanized by all sorts of ‘punishments’. Despite the fact that authorities were
aware of these atrocities, nothing was done to improve the situation of people, of whom a vast
amount was innocent.
11
Peter Romijn, “Learning on ‘the job’: Dutch war volunteers entering the Indonesian war of
independence, 1945-1956” in: Journal of Genocide Research Vol. 14, No. 3 (2012), 317-336.
12
Pieter Lagrou, “The politics of memory. Resistance as a collective myth in post-war France,
Belgium and the Netherlands 1945-1965” in: European Review Vol. 11, No. 4 (2003), 527.
10
had suffered in their own way, a national history of the war was formulated. 13 As
there was no homogenous national heroic figure like the Great War veteran, who
could provide an undisputed milieu de mémoire,14 a heroic story of collective
resistance against the Nazis was with which everyone was supposed identify was
invented. In doing so, a particular mass-psychological need was satisfied: an
uncomplicated, heroic image of the war ensured that people could relatively easily
live on their lives after this disrupting period.15 However, the negative result
according to Lagrou was that the experiences of those whose story could not be
easily integrated in this collective story of resistance – Jewish survivors, prisoners
of war and voluntary labourers to the Reich – were ignored and suppressed as
they represented quite different and often antagonistic experiences of the war and
occupation.16 The stories of persecution were, in short, not paid attention to.
Resistance, as the antidote of collaboration, became the sole basis for the
reconstruction of national identity after the war. This first post-war period has in
historiography been characterised as mythologizing because it wrongfully
emphasised the large scale resistance activities of the Dutch people.17
Already during the early war years, scholarly as well as propagandistic
works were written on the behaviour of Dutch society at large under occupation,
satisfying this need for a collective story of resistance. The occupation of the
country was viewed as a collective history, which had connected the large
majority of Dutch citizens in their struggle to resist the German occupier. 18
Characteristic of this are the writings of Louis (Loe) de Jong, a Dutch journalist
whose aunt Aaltje (Alida) had a thriving career as a politician and was one of the
first female representatives in the Dutch parliament, the Tweede Kamer, as
13
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 295.
14 A concept
introduced by Pierre Nora. A milieu de mémoire is a place which remind us of the past
and often serves a certain (political) goal of memorialisation. Pierre Nora (ed), Les lieux de
mémoire part of the series Bibliothèque illustrée des histoires (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).
15
Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 295.
16
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 295.
17
See for example Van Ginkel, Rondom de stilte, 726-733. Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi
Occupation, 25. Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 295.
18
Frank van Vree en Rob van der Laarse, “Ter Inleiding”, in: ibid. (eds), De dynamiek van de
herinnering: Nederland en de Tweede Wereldoorlog in een internaitonale context (Amsterdam:
Bert Bakker, 2009), 7.
11
member of the Socialist Party (SDAP). She was an important factor in the lives
and (socialistic) upbringing of her highly intelligent nephews, who were
successful students.19 After successfully finishing his History studies at the
Gemeentelijke Universiteit of Amsterdam, Loe de Jong aspired to obtain a
research position at the Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (ISG), but he was
rejected because of a lack of funding opportunities.20 Therefore, the first serious
position he obtained in 1938 as an assistant editor of the liberal-democratic
weekly De Groene Amsterdammer was only his second choice. When De Jong
fled to London after the outbreak of the war in May 1940, he was one of the first
Dutch journalists to report on resistance activities in the Netherlands.
In Hollands Fights the Nazis (1941), part of the series Europe under the
Nazis (1941-1945) published by the English publishing house Drummond, the
entire Dutch population, with the exception of some despicable traitors, has been
characterised as having resisted the Nazis from the occupation in May 1940
onwards.21 De Jong claimed that Dutch citizens were collectively fighting the
Germans.22 One of the many examples he mentions is a man living in Apeldoorn,
in the Eastern part of the Netherlands, who had offended a German soldier who
was buying groceries. The man received four months’ imprisonment on account of
behaviour offending the honour of the German army. This was, according to De
Jong, only one example ‘characteristic of Dutch resistance to the Nazi
occupation’.23 In his second propagandistic work The Lion Rampant (1943), a
similar tone prevails. Dutch citizens in general are referred to as an ‘indissoluble
unity’ desiring nothing but active resistance against the Nazis: ‘every patriot
wants to do something, be it listening to prohibited broadcasts or reading
underground newspapers – all forms of sabotage which one may have to pay for
19
Peter-Paul de Baar, “Alida de Jong (1885-1943): Één knotje tussen de snorren” in: Historisch
Nieuwsblad (2014).
20
Boudewijn Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005: Historicus met een missie (Amsterdam: Boom,
2014), 63.
21
De Jong, Holland Fights the Nazis (London: Drummond, 1941), 68-81.
22
Ibid.
23
De Jong, Holland Fights the Nazis, cover text.
12
with his life’. 24 The Dutch citizens realised that a battle of ‘life and death’ had to
be fought to the end, ‘no matter the costs’.25
In Nederlands verzet tegen Hitler-terreur en Nazi-roof (1945), of which
the authors remain unknown because it was published by the illegal publishing
house De Algemene Vrije Illegale Drukkerij (D.A.V.I.D), has been stated in a
similar vein that typed and stencilled songs mocking the enemy were spread
through the entire nation immediately after the Germans had occupied the
country: almost the entire population was somehow involved in this activity.26 The
so-called ‘Februaristaking’ on the 25th and 26th of February 1941 – the strike of a
large number of Dutch citizens against the laws of the Nazis and the treatment of
Jews – in which ‘all but a few exceptions participated’ is also continuously
referred to as being exemplary of the general attitude of Dutch citizens.27 Due to
its scale, the strike was a unique phenomenon in Western Europe and was
therefore a useful and often repeated example of the attitude of the Dutch citizens
in general.
The choice of wording for the title of the work Onderdrukking en Verzet –
Oppression and Resistance – a series of works on the Nazi occupation of the
Netherlands published between 1949 and 1954, is yet another illustrative
example. Abel Herzberg, a Dutch lawyer and public prosector, who was one of the
Jews who had returned to the Netherlands from concentration camp BergenBelsen in the summer of 1945, was responsible for one of the key publications in
the Onderdrukking en Verzet series: Kroniek der Jodenvervolging 1940-1945
(1950). This was internationally considered one of the most thorough and
important scholarly works on the persecution and destruction of the Jews. 28
Herzberg emphasised the Jewish cultural and intellectual life during the
occupation had flourished and defended the course of action taken by the leaders
of the Amsterdam Jewish Council – de Joodsche Raad van Amsterdam –, whom
24
25
De Jong, The Lion Rampant (New York: Querido, 1943), vii.
Ibid., v.
26
J.J. Boolen and J.C. van der Does, Nederlands Vijfjarig Verzet (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij
D.A.V.I.D, 1945), 16.
27
Ibid.,19-20.
28
Conny Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht: Abel Herzberg, Jacques Presser en Loe de
Jong over de jodenvervolging (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1998), 17.
13
by then were officially prosecuted for its role in the deportations of Jews to
Eastern Europe. His work had a major impact because the charges against the
Council leaders Abraham Asscher and David Cohen were dropped as a result of
his claims. Rather than arguing that the Jews had been successfully demolished by
the Nazis, as the German Jewish journalist Heinz Wielek had claimed in 1947, 29
Herzberg argued that the Jews had been able to withstand the Germans, despite
the fact that severe losses had been suffered.30
Next to the hagiographic approach towards the attitude of Dutch society at
large, attention was also paid more specifically to former members of organised
resistance groups. In some cases, these groups published histories of their own
undertakings during the war. One example is Den Vijand Wederstaan: Historische
Schetsen van de Landelijke Organisatie voor Onderduikers, Landelijke
Knokploegen en Centrale Inlichtingendienst (1946). It was the first attempt to
write the history of one of the largest armed resistance groups in the Netherlands:
the LO-LKP, a resistance organisation that was established by the Landelijke
Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers (LO, the only national organisation
aiming to help people in hiding). In this work, the deeds of those who had played
an active role in this organisation were commemorated and honoured. The
resistance heroes, ‘despite the fact that their Jewish neighbours had been egoistic,
demanding and nervous’ (because of which, the author states, it was difficult to
live with ‘these people’) had acted in their (the Jewish – LV) interests. The
compassion of these people hardly knew any boundaries and they had been
extremely brave. 31
The first biography of one of Holland’s most famous resistance fighters,
Gerrit van der Veen describes how he, as a small child already had the right moral
standards: he especially befriended those children whose parents he knew were
29
Heinz Wielek, De oorlog die Hitler won (Amsterdam: Amsterdamsche Boek- en Courantmij,
1947), 337-346.
30 Abel
J. Herzberg, Kroniek der Jodenvervolging 1940-1945 (3rd ed., Amsterdam: Meulenhoff,
1978; first ed., 1950), 165.
31
Klaas Norel, Charles Hubert Eyck et al., Den vijand wederstaan: historische schetsen van de
Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers, Landelijke Knokploegen en Centrale
Inlichtingendienst (Wageningen: N.V. Gebr. Zomer en Keuning’s Uitgeversmij, 1946), 14.
14
less fortunate. 32 Also, he could not stand the cruelty of bullfights and was so
disgusted when he once attended one, that he left the show halfway through. 33
Even more dramatically exposed is the life story of Johannes Post, written by
Dutch novelist Anne de Vries in 1948. Already a few days after he is born,
Johannes’ mother saw that this was a special and very wise child.34 The
continuous references to religious habits and beliefs are tied in with an almost
Chirstlike description of Posts’ character. Whereas everyone is afraid and in panic
after the outbreak of the war in May 1940, Johannes is brave. He walks outside,
and God tells him: ‘Please call to mind, Johannes, that my loyalty to you is eternal
knows no boundaries’.35 As if God has spoken to his son, Johannes walks inside
and tells his wife that all will be fine. Post is portrayed as having been sacrosanct
rather than a mere human being; his moral and spiritual superiority is
continuously emphasised throughout the work.36
In the collective story of unequivocal resistance, these kind of
hagiographic descriptions of members of organised resistance groups and the
sanctification of particular resistance fighters fulfilled a complex role. Stories in
which individuals, or particular groups, were extricated were liable to disrupt the
national consensus of large-scale resistance to the German occupier – just as
attention for the suffering of Jews as a group could damage the constructed myth
of oppression versus resistance. Whereas short-sightedness remained visible with
reference to the Jewish suffering in this period,37 former resistance organisations
claimed and received (limited) space to honour their heroes. Each of the pillars
(zuilen) – Communists, Catholics, Social-democrats, Protestants and Liberals – of
Dutch society put forward its own heroes. These were particularly admired and
honoured. As Dick van Galen Last has indicated:
32 Albert
Helman, Een doodgewone held: de levensgeschiedenis van Gerrit-Jan van der Veen
1902-1944 (Amsterdam: Uitgeversbedrijf de Spieghel, 1946), 24.
33
Ibid, 46.
34 Anne
de Vries, De levensroman van Johannes Post (Kampen: Kok, 1949), 14.
35
Ibid, 107.
36
Ibid.
37
Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 296.
15
‘Each zuil had its own heroes. For the Calvinists there were Frits de Zwerver and
Tante Riek, the founders of the LO, together with Johannes Post of the LKP. For
the Roman Catholics, there were Father Bleijs and Titus Brandsma, for the
Liberals, Professor Telders, for the Socialists, Wiardi Beckman and for the
Communists Hannie Schaft. They were all installed in the Pantheon of resistance
even before the war was over.’ 38
This was not surprising taking into consideration that the glorification of the
contribution of resistance movements was the only basis available for a true
national myth.39 Each of the pillars of the divided society wanted to have their
share in the Dutch collective memory of the war. Therefore, they cherished their
own heroic moments and tried to fit their private heroic stories in that of the
Dutch society at large.40 Already at an early stage, these claims for a place in the
larger story of resistance were made at the expense of other groups, of which
Communists were the easiest target in light of the Cold war tensions. As a result
of the space these former illegal workers successfully claimed for honouring the
heroes of the group they had belonged to, thereby weaving the individual memory
into the collective memory of Dutch society at large, their personal stories were
not irreconcilable with the national myth of resistance.
It was an absolute necessity, however, that the freedom entitled to these
former illegal workers, was not boundless as this would eventually obstruct the
national consensus of resistance. This is most visible in the construction of
monuments and the speeches that were given as soon as these monuments were
revealed to the larger public. The policy of the construction of war monuments
was aimed to prevent all kinds of symbols that would make individuals stand out.
In most cases, although these monuments were meant to honour the acts of illegal
workers, they represented the majority of the population instead; the memory of
the war was polished to such an extent that ‘resistance’ became a concept with
which the vast majority of Dutch society could identify itself with. 41 Exemplary
38
Dick van Galen Last, “The Netherlands” in: Bob Moore (ed), Resistance in Western Europe
(Oxford: Berg, 2000), 215.
39
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 25.
40
Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 302.
41
Ibid., 489.
16
thereof is the monument at the Dam square in Amsterdam in which ‘resistance’ is
represented by two hardly recognisable men, symbolising in a rather broad way
both intellectual resistance and workers’ resistance. 42 Despite, or better said:
exactly because of, the fact that the actual resistance heroes were crucial in the
formation of a myth of resistance that was applied to all, illegal workers were not
actually singled out as individuals, or members of a particular group. The fact that
no formal decorations were given in this period underlines the idea that in the end,
resistance heroes were not supposed to obtain a distinctive position in Dutch postwar society. As a result, the actual resistance heroes were largely ignored and
marginalised.43
Although the previously mentioned hagiographic approach continued in
the 1950s, a second phase in the approach to the war can be identified in this
period. The carefully constructed idea of a shared, nation-wide attitude of
resistance received its first serious blow. That is, the position of Communists
became increasingly problematic. Already in the summer of 1945, a few months
after the liberation of the country, the Communists were condemned for their
supposed misbehaviour towards fellow prisoners in the camps during the war.44 In
light of the Cold War, it became increasingly questionable whether the national
consensus of resistance could still be applied to Communists and, consequently,
whether they could still be part of the national community as such.45 In this
period, Ben Sijes, a Dutch Jewish Socialist who had been in hiding during the
war, conducted his first historical research on the Februaristaking: the largest
collective strike against the Germans in Western Europe in which Communists
had fulfilled a crucial role. 46
On the one hand, Sijes underscored the typical post-war heroic consensus
in which the majority population was inspired by, and praised the heroic element
42
Lagrou, “Herdenken en vergeten. De politieke verwerking van verzet en vervolging in
Nederland na 1945”, in: Spieghel Historiael 29 (1994), 109-115.
43
Bob Moore, “Introduction: Defining resistance” in: Resistance in Western Europe (Oxford:
Berg, 2000), 1-2.
44
Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 289.
45
Hans Blom, In de ban van goed en fout: geschiedschrijving over de bezettingstijd in Nederland
(Amsterdam: Boom, 2007), 125.
46
Ben Sijes, De Februaristaking 25-26 Feburari 1941 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954),
112-114.
17
of the strike.47 On the other hand, the work also challenged the notion that
Communists had played a crucial role. By arguing that the Communists had
indeed, as the common view was, initiated the strike, but underlining as well that
they were not responsible for the eventual magnitude of it, oppositions between
Communists and non-Communists increased.48 As a result of these increasing
tensions, the commemoration of the strike was divided in two separate ceremonies
from the 1950s onwards. In the morning, there was the ‘official’ commemoration
of the municipality and representatives of three non-Communist organised
resistance groups. In the afternoon the Communists held their own
commemoration of the event on the same spot, the Jonas Daniël Meijer square in
Amsterdam.49
Despite the visible cracks in the constructed collective story of resistance
against the occupier, other groups were still tacitly affected by the national myth
of resistance; there was little room for individual stories and attention to the
suffering of particular groups, for example Jews, was absent. In short, the personal
suffering still remained subordinated to the national story of heroism. The
inevitable result, as Lagrou has argued, was some form of alienation between
private memory and public discourse:
‘[t]he effect of the inadequacy of collective ways of remembering the war was not
only that they did not suit the variety of individual experiences: they were
obtrusive to the point of invading private memories, of creating silence instead of
communication, since so many of these experiences did not suit de patriotic or
anti-fascist reading of the past’. 50
In the early 1960s the situation remained unaltered. The image of the Dutch heroic
nation was still emphasised in the television series De Bezetting broadcasted
between 1960 and 1965. The series were an initiative of VARA-secretary Jan
47
Ibid., 182.
48
Ibid., 186.
49
Van Ginkel, Rondom de stilte, 262.
50
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 305.
18
Willem Rengelink,51 who had participated in organised resistance during the war
and wanted to make the story of the Dutch occupation available to the generation
that had not lived through the war.52 Because Loe de Jong was a well-known
authority on the subject of the Second World War and since he was already an
experienced presenter at the VARA, Rengelink asked him to participate in his
project to which the latter agreed. De Jong was not only responsible for the
content of each of the series; he also functioned as the presenter of all episodes.
The series was an instant success, not in the least because, as Dutch
historian Chris Vos has indicated, the content of the program perfectly fitted the
Dutch ‘model of consensus’.53 In all episodes, the national rhetoric that had been a
dominant tendency in the previous decades, was strengthened. The occupation of
the country was viewed as a national happening, connecting the large majority of
Dutch citizens in their struggle to resist the German occupier. 54 Out of 21
episodes, only one is centred around the notion of collaboration: ‘Mussert en de
Duitsers’ – Mussert and the Germans. In this particular episode, a very narrow
perspective prevails. 55
That is, the movement of Mussert, the Nationaal-
Socialistische Beweging (NSB, The National Socialist movement in the
Netherlands) is entirely isolated from the Dutch society at large. In fact, this
example of collaboration is placed completely outside the Dutch national
history. 56 It is furthermore telling that, besides the name Anton Mussert, no other
collaborator is referred to, let alone being interviewed as was common in other
episodes of De Bezetting. 57 Clearly, collaboration was only a minor subject in the
51
In the era of Dutch pillarization (verzuiling), the VARA had close links with the Social
Democratic Workers Party (PvdA). Eventually, De Bezetting was broadcasted at the ‘neutral’
Nederlandse Televisie Stichting (NTS).
52
Boudewijn Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005: historicus met een missie (Amsterdam: Boom 2014),
116.
53
Chris Vos, Televisie en bezetting: een onderzoek naar de documentaire verbeelding van de
Tweede Wereldoorlog in Nederland (Hilversum: Verloren, 1995), 84.
54
Van Vree and Van der Laarse, Dynamiek van de herinnering, 7.
55
Loe de Jong and Milo Arnstadt, De Bezetting 5. Mussert en de Duitsers. NTS 28.4.1961. Can be
accessed online via http://www.npogeschiedenis.nl/nieuws/2011/December/Bekijk-De-Bezettingvan-Loe-de-Jong.html, Nov, 9 2014.
56
Veerle van den Daelen, “Loe de Jong en Maurice de Wilde: twee oorlogsmonumenten” in:
Bijdragen tot de eigentijdse geschiedenis, Vol. 22 (2010), 180.
57
Ellen Tops, “Lebendige Vergangenheit” in: Monica Flacke (ed), Mythen der Nationen. 1945 –
Arena der Erinnerungen (Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabem, 2004), 437-438.
19
series while resistance played a central role in all other episodes centred around
the period of occupation.
The underlying idea of De Bezetting has been characterised by the German
scholar Ellen Tops as portraying an image of the Netherlands as ‘ein mutiges und
standhaftes Land, das sich deutlich von der verdorbenen deutschen
Besatzungsmacht abhob’.58 Loe de Jong’s most recent biographer Boudewijn
Smits has also indicates that the central image portrayed in De Bezetting is that of
the ‘brave Dutchman’ and it can be safely argued that there is no attention for any
deviating conception.59 Dutch historian Frank van Vree who has published
extensively on the memory of the war, indicated that De Bezetting was a tool to
fuse particular memories of the war into a national history – a highly idealistic
national history of the war was portrayed, which was introduced in the first
episode and was continuously repeated in the next twenty episodes.60 The
foundation of the series was one of archetypical oppositions: it was a story of
suffering and struggle, loyalty and betrayal, compassion and barbarity and goed
versus fout.61
Although the series were extremely successful, it was also hunted by
critique and mockery after its completion.62 This was the result of a changing
society in which a new generation began to pose different questions to the period
of Nazi occupation and thereby introduced an approach to the war that differed
from the hagiographic approach that had characterised historiography until then. 63
A new (third) phase in the approach to the war can be identified, which correlated
with increasing secularisation and de-pillarization. The new generation that had
not (consciously) experienced the war blamed the war-generation for its
indifference during the occupation – feelings of guilt emerged regarding the
58
Ibid., 429.
59
Smits, Loe de Jong, 343.
60
Van Vree, “Televisie en de geschiedenis van de Tweede Wereldoorlog” in: Theoretische
Geschiedenis, Vol. 22 (1995), 2.
61
Ibid., 4.
62
Van Vree, “Televisie en de geschiedenis van de Tweede Wereldoorlog”, 1.
63
Jan Bank, “Oorlogsverleden in Nederland”, Oratie (Baarn: AMBO, 1983), 9.
20
attitude of parents during the war, affecting the way Dutch resistance was
approached.64
This correlated with the increasing attention for the fate of Dutch Jews
during the war which was partly the result of the success of the two-volumed
work Ondergang: De Vervolging en Verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom
(1965) by Jacques Presser (1899-1970). 65 Presser, who grew up in a rather poor
Jewish family felt strongly connected to the rising socialism in the Netherlands.
Presser first worked as a office employee but later decided to study history. In
1926, he obtained his PhD (cum laude) and became teacher at the
Vossiusgymnasium in Amsterdam where he taught Louis and Sally de Jong. 66
After the German invasion of the Netherlands, Presser unsuccessfully tried to flee
to England. During the first year of the German occupation he was first suspended
from his job and on March, 1 1941 fired due to German anti-Jewish regulations.
In 1943 wife Dé Appel was deported to Sobibór where she was killed.
Presser went into hiding in May 1943. After the war, Presser became Professor at
the University of Amsterdam (UvA). In 1950, the Rijksinstituut voor
Oorlogsdocumentatie (RIOD) asked him to write the history of the Jews between
1940-1945 which resulted in his momentous work De ondergang: de vervolging
en verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom 1940-1945. As Dutch historian Jan
Bank indicated in his inaugural lecture of 1983, the immediate sanctification of
this scholarly work has indicated that Dutch public opinion was for the first time
confronted with the scope of the catastrophe that had befallen Dutch Jews. An
almost collective realisation of guilt resulted from this publication. This was also
the result of a general change in the awareness of the history of the Second World
War in the 1960s.67 Without doubt, the extensive attention for the 1961 trial of the
State of Israel against Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer charged
64
Wijnand Mijnhardt, “Dutch Perceptions of World War II: the struggle with an unredeemable
past”, 9; Chris van der Heijden, Grijs Verleden: Nederland en de Tweede Wereldoorlog
(Amsterdam: Contact, 2001), 380; Jan Bank, “Oorlogsverleden in Nederland” Inaugural Lecture at
the Erasmus University, Rotterdam (1983), 25.
65
Kees Ribbens, Joep Schenk and Martijn Eickhoff, Oorlog op vijf continenten: nieuwe
Nederlanders en de geschiedenissen van de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Boom, 2008),
298-299.
66
Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht, 49.
67
Bank, Oorlogsverleden in Nederland, 22.
21
with facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos
and extermination camps in German occupied Eastern Europe, in which victims of
the Nazi regime were for the first time publicly allowed to tell their stories,
contributed to this awareness as well.
Finally, the collective story of resistance against the occupier was put aside
for a story in which the suffering of particular groups could be centralised. The
image of the Netherlands as a country that had bravely resisted the occupier was
replaced by a more truthful, self-critical story. In this period, a more nuanced
approach to resistance in the Netherlands became visible in Werner Warmbrunn’s
The Dutch under German Occupation 1940-1945, published in 1965. In this
work, Warmbrunn has given a thorough analysis of the behaviour of the Dutch
population at large and underlined that the problem for most Dutch citizens was
whether to resist, accommodate, or to practice ‘reasonable collaboration’, thereby
introducing terms that had been unheard of until that moment. On the one hand,
Warmbrunn argued, the Dutch citizens did not fall victim to the blandishments of
national socialism: ‘the traditional loyalties and the commitment to democratic
and humanitarian principles of the great majority of the population remained
unshaken’.68 In that sense, the ideological conquest of Holland in his view did not
succeed. However, the response of the Dutch people to German attempts to
exploit the Netherlands economically was, in his view, less clear-cut than their
resistance to nazification: ‘most Dutch men were prepared, albeit unhappily, to
work for the German war effort’.69 Although many Dutch citizens were willing to
take minor risks such as reading underground newspapers and passing them on to
friends or listening to the Allied radio, Warmbrunn concludes, the bulk of the
population did not participate in resistance activities.70 As a result of the
distinction made by Warmbrunn between different forms of resistance,
collaboration and ‘reasonable collaboration’ new light was shed on the attitude of
Dutch society at large under occupation.
68
Werner Warmbrunn, The Dutch under German Occupation 1940-1945 (Stanford: UP, 1963),
264.
69
Ibid., 265.
70
Ibid.
22
Interestingly, in the foreword to this work, Loe de Jong also showed a
more nuanced approach to the behaviour of the Dutch citizens in comparison his
works previously mentioned.71 He noted that:
‘the real history of occupied Europe [...] has been less heroic than many observers
supposed during and sometimes even after the war [..]. Unwilling adjustment was
the rule – intentional resistance the exception’.72
Ironically, De Jong himself had been one of the ‘observers’ he accused of having
portrayed an unrightfully heroic image of the Dutch society at large. Also, he
condemned the approach he was still supporting in his series De Bezetting that
was broadcasted in the same year. The attitude of the Dutch population under the
occupation, De Jong continues:
‘can be summarised as having been uncorrupted by Nazi ideology, but as being
ambivalent in respect
to employment beneficial to the Germans and with regard
to underground activities. The general dislike and hatred of the Germans and the
desire to harm the enemy and to avoid doing anything that might benefit him,
were in a dynamic balance for most people, with the concern over physical safety
and economic security of self and family. For this reason, amongst others,
participation in “militant resistance” activities remained limited to a small but
ever widening section of the population’. 73
Clearly, the all-encompassing heroic image De Jong had portrayed in his
propagandistic wartime publications and his immediate post-war works on the
attitude of Dutch citizens under occupation, was altered here.
The late 1960s can be characterised as a period in which the attitude of the
large majority of the Dutch citizens was critically reviewed, as Pieter Lagrou has
indicated:
‘[The] pride in the heroic acts of the resistance was replaced by a sense that the
Dutch population had failed to protect its fellow citizens. Only in the 1960s,
71
In particular his propagandistic works Holland Fights the Nazis and The Lion Rampant.
72
Loe de Jong, ‘foreword’ in: Werner Warmbrunn, The Dutch under German Occupation
1940-1945 (Stanford: UP, 1963), v-vi.
73
De Jong, The Dutch under German Occupation, 266.
23
when the period of concerted reconstruction was successfully completed did the
astonishing coherence and national consensus over memory come to an end and
was replaced by a more differentiated remembrance’.74
In the 1980s yet another phase in the approach to the war was put forward by
Hans Blom. In his inaugural lecture at the University of Amsterdam (1983), he
argued that the war still was unrightfully approached from a political moralistic
dichotomy of goed (good) versus fout (bad) exclusively. He advocated an
approach to the war in which moral judgments would be suppressed as much as
possible, for example by more systematically analysing the contemporary mood
of Dutch citizens, or by placing the history of the occupation in an international
context.75 We might question whether the premise behind Blom’s thesis was
entirely valid, taken into consideration that already since the late 1960s more
attention had been paid in scholarly works to the more complex situation of the
war. As Abram de Swaan has indicated in the same year Blom held his inaugural
speech, Dutch society should recognise that the role of the Dutch population at
large was one of carefulness and reservedness. In general, De Swaan argued,
people were striving for a life that would be more or less bearable and honourable.
A part of the price they had to pay for this, was that they had to witness their
fellow Jewish citizens being deported and interned on a daily basis. 76 De Swaan
clearly acknowledged that the role of Dutch citizens could not be headed under
either the term goed or fout, but underlined that this notion should be understood
more broadly in the public sphere as well.
Whereas scholars showed awareness of the more complex image of the
attitude of the Dutch citizens during the war, the goed versus fout dichotomy was
still most visible in the public sphere. Therefore, the impact of Blom’s speech was
large – much larger than he had anticipated. As Dutch historian Niek van Sas has
indicated, the intense response to Blom’s speech – visible in newspapers like Het
74
Lagrou, “Victims of Genocide and National Memory: Belgium, France and the Netherlands
1945-1965” in: Past and Present Vol. 154 (1997), 205.
75
Hans Blom, In de bam van goed en fout, 20- 22.
76 Abram
de Swaan, “De maatschappelijke verwerking van oorlogsverledens” in: J. Dane (ed.)
Keerzijde van bevrijding: opstellen over de maatschappelijke, psychosociale en medische aspecten
van de problematiek van oorlogsgetroffenen (Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1984), 54-66, here:
62.
24
Vrije Volk – can be explained by the fact that the myth of resistance somehow still
had the social function of a national memory.77 Despite the fact that the image of
the Dutch heroic nation was already challenged in the late 1960s, the attitude of
the majority of the people generally was still not thoroughly reflected upon. From
the 1980s onwards, the term ‘accommodation’ used to describe the attitude of the
majority of the citizens came in vogue, following the Dutch historian Ernst
Kossmann who had already introduced the term in 1977,78 which radically
differed from the heroic image that had prevailed until then. Rather than the black
versus white frame that had characterised post-war writings, there was now more
room for ambivalence and ambiguity,
A few weeks before Blom had held his speech, Dutch historian Jan Bank
had also centred his inaugural speech at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam
around the Dutch historiography of the Second World War. The different phases
he identified in the approaches to the war led to the conclusion that research on
the subject was still in its infancy. A renewed interest in the war, initiated by
historians who had not (consciously) lived through the period, was supposed to
change the course of historiography throughout the 1980 in his view. Room was
made for, and interest increased in, individual memories of the war.79 Increasingly,
the government in particular was blamed for having ignored the victims of the
war.80 After almost four decades, the time was ripe for singling out particular
groups, such as organised resistance groups. This becomes most visible in the
government’s introduction of a decoration: the commemorative resistance cross,
which was ultimately awarded to about 15.500 resistance fighters.81
This
increased attention for personal stories, not only of resistance fighters, but also
individuals who had suffered severely under the Nazi occupation was the final
77
Niek van Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland: van oude orde naar moderniteit 1750-1900
(Amsterdam: University Press, 2004), 41-66, here: 53.
78
Ernst Kossman, “De Tweede Wereldoorlog: accommodatie en collaboratie” in: Winkler Prins
geschiedenis der Nederlanden: De Lage Landen van 1780-1970 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1977),
272.
79
Wijnand Mijnhardt, “Dutch perceptions of World War II: the struggle with an unredeemable
past” Lecture at Los Angeles, University College (2002), 11-12.
80
Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 556.
81
Van Galen Last, “The Netherlands”, 21.
25
demythologising blow to the idea of a collective suffering and collective
resistance of the Dutch society at large.
Successful Government-led Myth versus Dissenting Voices
As national governments of former occupied countries had to affirm their
legitimacy in the face of organised groups of armed citizens and re-establish
public order and the constitutional state, the Netherlands was not the only country
in which a myth was constructed after the war in order to rebuild the nation. In
Belgium and France similar tendencies can be identified. In order to establish a
stable post-war order, the governments ‘deliberately constructed a forced national
consensus around the myth of a unanimous resistance, at the expense of veterans’
movements and all forms of associate memory’.82 In 1987, the French historian
Henry Rousso introduced the term résistancialisme in order to describe and
explain the different aspects of the post-war memory in France:
‘By résistencialisme I mean, first, a process that sought to minimise the
importance of the Vichy regime and its impact on French society, including its
most negative aspects; second, the construction of an object of memory, the
“Resistance”, whose significance transcended by far the sum of its active parts
(the small groups of guerilla partisans who did the actual fighting) and whose
existence was embodied chiefly in certain sites and groups, such as the Gaullists
and Communists, associated with fully elaborated ideologies; and, third, the
identification of this “Resistance” with the nation as a whole, a characteristic
feature of the Gaullist version of the myth [..] The Gaullist resistencialist myth
did not so much glorify the resistance – and certainly not the résistants – as it
celebrated a people in resistance, a people symbolised exclusively by De
Gaulle.’ 83
The myth entailed that France, despite the actions of a few traitors, had liberated
itself from the Nazis under the guidance of Charles de Gaulle, a French decorated
officer of the First World War and head of the provisional government of the
French Republic between 1944 and 1946. De Gaulle had refused to accept his
82
83
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 527.
Quoted from the English translation The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since
1944 (Harvard: University Press, 1991), 10; 18.
26
government’s armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940 and fled to London where he
led a government in exile. In this period, he made several appeals to the French
population to resist the occupation.84 After the war, De Gaulle was unsuccessfully
striving for a collectivisation of the resistance in order to produce a broad
consensus on the war period, although he knew that the resisters had been a tiny
minority: ‘for him, the truth was best overlooked in the cause of healing the
division of the nation and restoring France’s reputation abroad’.85 However,
Gaullist memory only represented one facet of the French memory, even when,
with the Gaullle’s return to power between 1958 and 1969 it became the State
Memory. 86
In Belgium, the meaning of the history of the war was immediately
questioned after the liberation in September 1944. Similar to the situation in
France, rivalling memories can be identified in the post-war period which is most
eminently symbolised by the so-called Koningskwestie, which was a political
conflict between the Belgian King Leopold III and the Belgian government. King
Leopold, who unlike his government had not fled the country after the invasion of
the Germans, had retreated as a Prisoner of War in his castle in Laken after the
Belgian capitulation. As he was convinced of the idea that Germany would win
the war, he wanted to safeguard his position as leader of Belgium. However,
Leopold did not receive any jurisdiction over the country during the German
occupation. Both during and after the war, his course of action has been severely
criticised.87 After the Belgian liberation the government, headed by the Catholic
Hubert Pierlot, wanted Leopold to resign which eventually resulted in the
Koningscrisis. The country was divided: whereas the political right voted for the
return of King Leopold, the left opted for the resignation of the King. 88
Eventually, the King resigned. The patriotic lessons of the war had not resulted in
a pacification of the everlasting pre-war social oppositions not only between the
84
Jonathan Fenby, “The Man Who Said ‘Non’” in: History Today Vol. 60 No. 6 (2010), 35-41,
here: 36.
85
Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944 (Oxford: University Press, 2001), 606.
86
Lagrou, “The Politics of Memory”, 537-538.
87
Jan Velaers and Herman van Goethem, Leopold III: De Koning, het Land, de Oorlog (Tielt:
Lannoo, 1994), 902-903.
88
Ibid., 982 - 993.
27
political right and left but also between the Flemings and Walloons.89 As the
country was divided it became impossible to establish one, national heroic
memory of the war.
Although in each country attempts were made to universalise the memory
the war, this was thus least successful in Belgium and France. In Lagrou’s view,
the ‘memorialist project’ could succeed so well in the Netherlands, because the
‘heritage of the occupation presented less disruptive issues [in the Netherlands]
than in for example France and Belgium.90 In contrast to the other two countries,
the Queen and the government had been united in exile. Also, the collective
victimisation of the civil population particularly during the last winter of
occupation led to a homogenised war experience and had united groups in their
aim to take care of practical issues after the German surrender. Another key factor
was that the Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB), which had been engaged
in ideological collaboration, had no pre-war constituency in the Netherlands. As a
result, ideological collaboration could be criminalised and ‘treated as a problem of
deviant social and political behaviour extraneous to the domestic social tissue’. 91
In addition, as Lagrou argues, as a result of consistent policy of memory in which
next to the existence of Stichting 1940-1945, all forms of recognition for veterans
were forbidden, the myth could flourish without too many problems. 92
The Dutch State succeeded in side-tracking all kinds of veterans’
associations and rejected separate laws in which social assistance to particular
groups would be given. It also refused to award medals to those who had actively
fought against the Nazis, or to publicly honour them in any other possible way. In
addition, by applying a homogeneous monuments policy in which everyone was
supposed to be able to recognise itself, it consciously and actively contributed to
the myth that Dutch society had almost exclusively existed of ‘resisters’, Lagrou
has argued.93
89
Ibid, 996.
90
Lagrou, “The politics of memory”, 534.
91
Ibid., 535
92
Ibid.
93
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 251.
28
In Belgium and France political confrontations led to the successful
proliferation of milieux de mémoire in which next to the stories of illegal workers,
individual groups successfully asked attention for their stories as well. Exemplary
thereof are for example those who had returned form Arbeitseinsatz in Germany, a
group with a complicated story that did not easily fit in the idea of a heroic nation
as they had worked for the German war industry. In France and Belgium, both this
group and the survivors of concentration camps fulfilled a role in the national
milieu de mémoire: they underlined the cruelty of the Nazi occupier.94 In the
Netherlands, however, these ‘difficult groups’ were entirely ignored. The fact that
only in 1973 the victims of the Nazi persecution in the Netherlands were allowed
a financial compensation for their suffering through the Wet Uitkering
Vervolgingsslachtoffers (WUV) whereas the victims of domestic resistance had
already received a pension in 1947 symbolises this. The difference between
Belgium and France on the one hand and the Netherlands on the other can
according to Lagrou be explained by the fact that the two former countries had a
strong tradition of veteran’s organisations (due to the First World War).95
The Dutch State Institution for War Documentation in his view is most
emblematic of the idea that the state ensured that all institutions contributed to the
myth of resistance:
‘Not unlike Eastern European Academies of Science, [this institution] became the
almost exclusive and in any case the dominant source of war historiography and
Lou de Jong the personification of the history of the war both in writing and on
television. This situation originates in the distinctive war experience of the Dutch
people and in the urgency of a national consensus in the barren post-war years,
which tilted the balance of power towards the governments of national unity
rather than the intermediaries.’96
94
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 302.
95
Lagrou also mentions the late liberation of the Netherlands and the Hongerwinter as a
consequence thereof, which made it difficult to recognize specific groups of ‘martyrs’. Lagrou,
“The Politics of Memory”, 535.
96
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 302-303
29
In many instances, scholarly histories in Lagrou’s view were not more than
‘erudite derivatives’ of political memories.97 In claiming this he has copied Jan
Rogier, a Dutch journalist who criticised De Jong already from the publication of
the first volume of Het Koninkrijk onwards for being too nationalistic and
monarchical and who ironically referred to De Jong as the Rijksgeschiedschrijver:
the State Historian.98
This notion of a successful conscious government-led construction of a
national myth of resistance has been underlined by other scholars as well. In her
research on the feelings of former illegal workers after the war, Petra Drenth has
argued that some former illegal workers whom had fulfilled important positions in
their groups during the war, were well aware and even actively involved in what
she calls the ‘post-war policy of national unity of the government’.99 Prominent
members of former illegal organisations were in close contact with government
officials, for example members of the Grand Advisory Commission of the
Underground (Groote Adviescomité der Illegaliteit, the GAC). This was an
advisory body consisting of representatives of illegal social and political
organisations formed at the explicit demand of the London cabinet. Eventually,
however, they did not play a significant formal political role after the war. 100 This
close connection between politicians and the GAC, according to Drenth, ensured
that Stichting 1940-1945, a Foundation of former illegal workers which was
(financially) taking care of disabled veterans, could be established. 101
By arguing that government did not only play a crucial role in the
construction of the myth of resistance, but also in the active and conscious
marginalisation of groups, Lagrou has contributed to a debate on the role of the
government in the post-war treatment of certain groups whose story was not
useful to the maintenance of the myth, for example Jews. One year after the
97
Ibid., 305.
98
For more information on the criticisms voiced by Jan Rogier, see: De Geschiedschrijver des
Rijks en andere socialisten. Nijmegen: Socalistische Uitgeverij, 1979.
99
Petra Drenth, “Illegalen in vredestijd: teleurstelling en successen van verzetsstrijders en
politieke gevangenen” in: Hinke Piersma (ed), Mensenheugenis.: Terugkeer en opvang na de
Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Bakker, 2001), 34.
100
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 29.
101
Drenth, “Illegalen in vredestijd, 34.
30
publication of The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, the Dutch historian Martin
Bossenbroek portrayed a different image of Dutch government’s treatment of
these groups after the war. He argued that there was in fact an serious political
interest in the suffering of other groups.102 In his book De Meelstreep: Terugkeer
en opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (2001), which was part of a project
financed by the Dutch government, Bossenbroek has indicated that the treatment
of the victims of the war in the Netherlands both on in material as well as in
immaterial terms was from the perspective of that particular period of time, not at
all inadequate.103 As the country was ruined, the failure of the government to
provide (sufficient) support to this larger group of war victims should in his view
be seen as something that was beyond the reach of the politicians and not
something they consciously avoided to do.
The example he mentions is the functioning of the District Bureaus voor
Oorlogsslachtoffers (DBVO) where victims of the war could apply for (financial)
compensation for the losses suffered during the war. However, the help provided
through these institutions, which were local bodies of the national organised
Centraal Bureau Verzorging Oorlogsslachtoffers (CBVO) was limited: many
applications were rejected and those who had successfully applied were seriously
infringed on in their daily lives. Besides, these local bodies were already
abolished in 1947.104 From then onwards, the help provided to the victims of the
war (oorlogsgetroffenen), was distributed among ordinary, municipal social
services.105 Whereas resistance fighters were allowed a distinctive position
through the establishment and continuation (up until this day) of Stichting
1940-1945, the oorlogsgetroffenen were dealt with through ordinary regulations.
Although there indeed might have been some help for these victims of the war, the
help was limited in quantity, quality and in its duration. Bossenbroek’s notion that
there was not a deliberate intention of the government to ignore particular groups
in that sense is not illustrated by the examples he has put forward. His claims have
received support, however. For example from Dutch historian Bettine Siertsma
102
Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 504.
103
Ibid., 367-380.
104
Ibid., 379.
105
Bossenbroek, De Meelstreep, 379.
31
who has argued in a similar vein that disinterest in the suffering of other groups
was far from absolute.106
This notion is taken a step further by both the British historian Tom
Lawson and the American historian David Ceserani. Lawson has indicated that
the notion of a post-war silence on the suffering of particular groups is
misleading: ‘it ignores the many voices that were discussing the murder of
Europe’s Jews in the immediate aftermath of the war’.107 The examples he has
referred to are the courts and commissions responsible for post-war justice and
retribution, and academic disciplines (most notably psychology). The Jewish
suffering in these years in his view was embedded in a more universal story of
Nazi cruelty.108 Thus, the subject was discussed although in a way that does not
conform to our present day conceptions of the Holocaust.
Ceserani has argued that there has been a ‘comfortable consensus’ on the
post-war responses on the Holocaust in which the world quickly lost its interest in
the story of persecution.109 Similar to Lawson, he has indicated that for example
the Jewish suffering was seen as an example of the cruelty of the Nazis, but not as
its essence. Although this might be unthinkable from our current-day perspective,
this shows in his view that the subject of persecution was not at all treated as
unimportant: ‘on the contrary, it may have been so obvious to them that it did not
have to be underlined or highlighted’.110 One of the examples he mentions in the
case of the Netherlands is Herzberg’s Kroniek der Jodenvervolging in 1950 which
thoroughly discussed the persecution of the Dutch Jews. Although both Ceserani
and Lawson do not particularly refer to the role of the government, it is clear that
they oppose Lagrou’s view of a successful construction of a myth of resistance in
which no attention was paid to the victims of Nazi persecution.
The Dutch historian Dienke Hondius has posited herself in between
Lagrou on the one hand and Bossenbroek and Ceserani on the other by indicating
106
Bettine Siertsma, “Kampgetuigenissen. Herinnering in teksten”: in Van Vree and Van der
Laarse (eds.), De dynamiek van der herinnering, 106-127, here: 113.
107
Tom Lawson, Debates on the Holocaust (Manchester: University Press, 2010), 19.
108
Ibid.
109
David Ceserani, ‘Introduction’ in: Ceserani and E.J. Sundquist (eds.), After the Holocaust.
Challenging the Myth of Silence (New York/London: Routledge, 2012), 1.
110
Ibid., 21.
32
that there was a serious failure to recognise the suffering of the Jewish section of
the population and a consistent denial of governmental responsibility but also
noting that the government as such cannot be accused of antisemitic policies or
attitudes as the policies should be viewed in the perspective of that particular
period of time.111 More recently, Dutch historians Frank van Vree and Rob van der
Laarse have stated in De dynamiek van de herinnering: Nederland en de Tweede
Wereldoorlog in een internationale context (2009) similar to Lagrou that the
German occupation was remembered as a ‘national history’, in which their was a
focus on heroism and the national honour: ‘there was no place for deviant stories
or victimisation’. 112 In 2010, the Dutch historian Wichert ten Have has also
indicated that there was hardly attention for the victims of the war; ‘the small
minority that has survived was not supported’.113
Although the Dutch sociologist and anthropologist Rob van Ginkel on the
one hand has indicated that indeed the war experiences of other victims than the
illegal workers were not sufficiently heroic in order to be included in the
dominant story of heroes and martyrs (fusilladed illegal workers and perished
soldiers), he has challenged Lagrou’s notion that this was due to a successful
government-led policy. Van Ginkel has placed a much larger emphasis on what he
calls herinneringsgemeenschappen – communities of memory – in which
continuous supplementary or contradictory memories of groups or individuals
constantly adapt the way the large majority of a population perceives a particular
period. This notion is to a certain extent similar to the theory of ‘collective
memory’ that was already introduced by French philosopher and sociologist
Maurice Halbwachs in 1925. However, Van Ginkel made some important
modifications to this theory. Halbwachs has conducted research on the way
collective memory shapes the content of memory while safeguarding the integrity
of each individual memory.114 In Halbwachs’ view, our private experiences and
111
Dienke Honduys, “Bitter Homecoming. Return and Reception of Dutch and Stateless jews in
the Netherlands, in: David Bankier (ed.), The Jews are Coming Back: the return of Jews to their
Countries of Origin after the Second World War New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), 129.
112
Van Vree and Van der Laarse, De dynamiek van de herinnering, 7.
113
Wichert ten Have, “De Holocaust” in: M. De Keizer and M. Plomp (eds), Een open zenuw. Hoe
wij ons de Tweede Wereldoorlog herinneren (Amsterdam: Bakker, 2010), 238.
114
Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1925).
33
memories are continuously adapted through confrontations with the collective
memory of a specific group, and in most cases this extends to the collective
memory of an entire nation. 115
Van Ginkel has refined this notion by arguing that national memories
cannot be equated with the concept collective memory because memories, in case
of the experiences of the Second World War, significantly differ per social
grouping, generation and geographic community. Besides, these memories are
again easily influenced by social and cultural developments and subject to
political exercises of power in which certain matters are emphasised while others
are ignored.116 Those people whose story is ignored, Van Ginkel has argued, will
eventually demand recognition. As a result, alternative stories are formulated,
which sometimes even replace the dominant story. One cannot spake of static
reproduction of memory, despite the fact that some stories dominate collective
memories for a longer period of time.117 Several herinneringsgemeenschappen
can exist simultaneously, either supplementing or challenging one another. In the
complex process of the formulation of these multiple collective memories, new
layers are added to the fabric of these memories. In that sense, a particular
memory formulated and imposed by the government is only one of the many
factors influencing collective memories and therefore can never serve as the sole
impetus, Van Ginkel has argued. 118
Van Ginkel has taken his analysis a step further by arguing that the myth of
resistance in the case of the Second World War was predominantly established by
private organisations rather than the government. This is most visible in the
(initiatives for) remembrance days and the construction of monuments which were
done by privately owned companies and individual groups. 119 Whereas Lagrou
has argued that ‘the dirigiste manner in which the erection of monuments was
planned, regulated and centralised is an extraordinary example of the Dutch style
115
Judith Zur, “Remembering and Forgetting” in: Kim L. Rogers, Selma Leydesdorff et al. (eds),
Trauma and Life Stories: International Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 1999), 53.
116
Van Ginkel, Rondom de stilte, 22.
117
Ibid., 23.
118
Ibid., 25.
119
Van Ginkel, Rondom de stilte, 726-727.
34
of commemoration, 120 Van Ginkel has argued instead that former illegal workers
have played a dominant role in the post-war construction of monuments. The fact
that the government honoured the request of former illegal workers not to
commemorate the victims of the war on the same day as the liberation of the
country was celebrated, in his view is exemplary of the weakness of the
government in post-war Dutch society.121 Other important examples Van Ginkel
has mentioned in which the government has not played an initiating role are the
construction of the National Monument at the Dam Square in Amsterdam, the
National Monument of the Army at the Grebbeberg (a site at which there had been
a bloody battle against the German invasion in the May days of 1940) and the
remembrance of the liberation at the Ridderzaal in The Hague.122 Rather than one
overruling government-led national myth, one could better speak of several
deviating constructions of memory in Van Ginkel’s view.
In some respects, Van Ginkel’s argument is conflicting. For example,
whereas he has argued that individual herinneringsgemeenschappen rather than
the government were crucial to the existence and continuation of the myth of
resistance, he has also argued that these rivalling rivalling and deviating patterns
of memory were eventually marginalised and ignored.123 Apparently, these
deviating constructions of memory were not successful in challenging the larger
national memory of resistance and contributed to the myth of resistance instead.
In the case of the Jews, Van Ginkel has provided an explanation for the absence of
deviating persecution stories: Jewish authorities consciously chose for the lack of
attention to their stories after the war. Exemplary thereof in his view are the
speeches of rabbi Justus Tal who did not emphasise the Jewish persecuting and
suffering but rather honoured those who had helped the Jews.124 Ido de Haan has
argued in a similar vein that Jewish survivors deliberately withdrew themselves
120
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 69.
121
Ibid.
122
Van Ginkel, Rondom de stilte, 729-730.
123
Van Ginkel, Rondom de stilte, 728-729.
124
Ibid., 381.
35
from pubic life and remained silence in order to focus themselves on the
reestablishment of the Jewish community. 125
Van Ginkel stands in between the notions put forward by Bossenbroek and
Lagrou on the role of the government in the marginalisation of particular groups.
Groups were indeed marginalised in Van Ginkel’s view but this was first of all not
due to a government-led construction of a myth of resistance as the government
did not serve as the sole, or central, impetus for the construction of memories.
Second, persecuted groups themselves in his view also wanted to reinforce the
larger heroic story of resistance.
Taking a closer look at Van Ginkel’s line of thought, one fundamental
misconception can be identified. That is, Van Ginkel uses a rather general theory,
based on Halwachs notion of ‘collective memory’ in order to argue that it is
impossible that one government-led dominant memory is successful in a
particular society. However, in the case of the Dutch post-war society there were
several key elements contributing to the fact that a government-led collective
memory of anti-fascistic heroism could possibly thrive. The period following the
Nazi defeat was one of exceptions and extremes. A conscious governmentconstructed myth which introduced a favourable story on the dark war period in
order to be able to rebuild the damaged country, was in many respects functional
to the paralysed Dutch society.
Whereas Bossenbroek, Lawson have argued that there was in fact room for
the persecuted groups to tell their stories, Van Ginkel has provided a more
nuanced story in which he argues that indeed these groups were marginalised but
that this was not a deliberate choice of the government, Contrary to the top-down
argument of Lagrou, herinneringsgemeenschappen from the bottom up created
their own memories of the war according to Van Ginkel. He has recognised that
the ‘myth of resistance’ dominated the memory of the war and underlined that
government took a specific interest in maintaining this idea, an obvious difference
can be identified with Lagrou’s theory. As Dutch governmental regulations
recognising the victims of the war were only established in the early 1970s
through the Wet Uitkering Vervolgingsslachtoffers (WUV), it would be wrong to
125
Ido de Haan, Na de ondergang: de herinnering aan de jodenvervolging in Nederland,
1945-1955 (Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers, 1997), 17.
36
follow the argument of, amongst others, Ceserani in the case of the Netherlands.
Clearly, the persecuted groups were marginalised at the expense of the heroic
stories of illegal workers in this country. The question remains, however, who was
responsible for the establishment and continuation of the dominant post-war
notion of the Dutch heroic nation, and whether it was indeed as successful and
authoritative as Pieter Lagrou has argued.
In order to explore this question more thoroughly, the theories of Lagrou
and Van Ginkel will be evaluated with the use of two case studies. First and
foremost, this allows for a close analysis on the way the history of the war, and
the topic of resistance in particular, has been dealt with in practice in the post-war
period. A close analysis of these case studies allows for a more nuanced overview
of way organisations and individuals have struggled with the difficult history of
the war in a (morally) ruined country.
The first case study is Stichting 1940-1945, an organisation of which the
foundations were already established in 1944 by a combined effort of 21 illegal
groups.126 The aim of the Stichting was, and still is, to provide (financial) support
to former illegal workers who had become disabled as a result of their wartime
illegal activities, or for surviving relatives of these workers.127 In order to do so,
the Stichting has received the necessary financial support from the Dutch
government from 1947 onwards after the introduction of Wet Buiten Gewoon
Pensioen (WBP – a pension provided by the government).128 Those veterans who
considered themselves qualified for support, could sent a request for financial
compensation to Stichting 1940-1945.
Two categories of primary sources form the basis of this case study. First,
personal files of individuals whose cases were rejected and who consequently
have protested against decisions made by both the Centraal Hoofdbestuur (Board
of Directors) of Stichting 1940-1945 and the Council of the Buitengewoon
Pensioenraad (BPR), have been explored. The BPR was a section of the
government making the final decision on whether or not someone was eligible for
126
Florine Boucher, Els Kalkman et al., Woord gehouden: veertig jaar Stichting 1940-1945 (‘s
Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1985), 11.
127
Ibid., 10.
128
Ibid., 59.
37
financial support. Exploring these documents allows for insight in the way the
Stichting processed a particular application, what type of proof was needed in
order for an individual or a family to be provided financial support and when a
particular case to be re-opened. In short, the definition of ‘resistance’ that was
used by the Stichting will be thoroughly investigated. Second, the minutes of the
Beroepscommissie – Commission of Appeals – of Stichting 1940-1945 will be
touched upon. The Beroepscommissie investigated the appeals made, decided
whether or the case should be re-investigated. If a case was re-opened, this
commission also discussed whether or not the new material that had become
available on a case would change the decision.
By investigating these sources, one can understand exactly how the
veterans of Stichting 1940-1945 approached the term resistance and whether it
implemented and internalized the myth of resistance which, as Lagrou argues, was
a successful, continuous and centrally implemented policy of the post-war
government. This is crucial for understanding whether and how the myth of
resistance was functioning in practice. More precisely, by examining the post war
minutes (1947-1949), we can investigate whether the Board of Directors followed
a particular by the government preordained path in deciding what cases of
resistance would be eligible for (financial) help, or whether we can identify
dissenting voices here.
In the second case study, Dutch historian Louis (Loe) de Jong’s
(1914-2005), approach to the term ‘resistance’ plays a central role. Loe de Jong is
generally considered to have been an authority on the history of the Second World
War and has played a crucial role in the way the war has been remembered. Pieter
Lagrou has claimed that De Jong was an instrument in the hands of the
government and merely disseminated ‘erudite derivatives’ of the political
memory.129 The primary sources that form the foundation of this case study are
the so-called ‘fiches’ – notes – Loe de Jong made in preparation for his magnum
opus Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. In addition, his
publications, lectures and other form of reports on this particular subject will be
thoroughly reflected upon. By exploring the differences between the notes he
made on the topic of Dutch resistance on the one hand, and the way he eventually
129
Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 301.
38
decided to formulate his views on the topic in each of the twelve volumes, one can
better understand how De Jong consciously framed his wording and to what
extent he embellished the things he wrote on Dutch resistance during the Second
World War. In addition, by examining his changing approaches to the topic and
definition ‘resistance’,one can understand whether De Jong was actually
instrumental to the creation and ongoing effectiveness of the myth of resistance as
Lagrou has claimed and if so, for what period of time this was effectively the
case.
39
– Chapter 1 –
Stichting 1940-1945: ‘Resistance’ as an Elusive Definition
Although resistance groups had a tendency to disagree with one another on a
variety of subjects, for example on the explicit (political) role former illegal
groups and workers were supposed to play after the war,130 the 21 groups that
were responsible for the establishment of Stichting 1940-1945 in 1944 soon
agreed on the objectives of this particular organisation. The aim, taking care of
those who had either become disabled, or had a lost a their spouses as a result of
wartime resistance activities, was outlined already at an early stage and did not
significantly alter with the passing of time. On October, 13 1944 during an illegal
meeting of the so-called Contact-Commissie at Keizersgracht 567 in Amsterdam,
the central role of the Stichting was outlined:
‘To take care of the moral, psychological, and material needs of persons or
groups, who during the occupation through their deeds or attitude have
contributed to domestic resistance and to their families or surviving relatives, in
case they are in need of support after the hostilities in our country.’131
The question of who exactly belonged to this group, remained a retuning subject
of discussion.
In the first known manual of Stichting 1940-1945 written at the end of
1945, several requirements were outlined to which applicants had to conform in
order to qualify for (financial) support of the Stichting. At this stage, the central
condition was that the applicant either through particular actions or because of his
attitude towards the German occupier had contributed to domestic resistance. If
this was proven, three matters were investigated. First, there had to be
demonstrable proof that the applicant found himself in a financial destitute
situation. Second, if only social welfare was asked for, the applicant was provided
help without any further investigation. In case the applicant did ask for financial
130
See for example NIOD, Verzet-plannen voor na de oorlog. “Waarvoor strijden wij” (kort
verslag van enige op verzoek van de Regering over dit onderwerp gevoerde gedachtewisselingen
door verschillende landelijke leiders). Archiefmap 249-0859A, a8.
131
Boucher, Kalkman et al., Woord Gehouden, 22.
40
support, however (the third option) there were three alternatives that had to be
explored: a) the financial destitute was a result of illegal activities, b) the financial
destitution was not the result of illegal activities and, c) the relation between the
financial destitution and illegal activities during the war was not clearly
established. In cases a and c, the Stichting would distribute its money ‘according
to its own norms’ (see Appendix).132
These norms, however, were rather unsteady because of which it was
extremely difficult to handle each of the cases, let alone to implement rules and
regulations in a uniform way. In cases ‘a’ and ‘c’ either part of, or the entire sum
of money that was provided to the applicant could be claimed back from the
District Bureau Verzorging Oorlogsslachtoffers (DBVO), which was the local
section of the centrally organised CBVO.133 In the case financial problems were
not the result of illegal activities during the war (case b), money could only be
remitted in case the DBVO was willing to provide the entire sum of money on its
own.134 Because the Stichting hardly established an archive in the period from the
liberation in May 1945 until around the end of 1946,135 there is little known about
the way it actually dealt with early post-war applications. However, it seems
unlikely that the requirements outlined in this manual were practically useful as
they were rather unspecific. Also, it seems unlikely that money was received from
DBVO. The reason for this is that the Stichting in reality had large sums of money
at its disposal in the immediate post-war period through a variety of private and
public institutions.
Initially, the Stichting was financed by the Nationaal Steunfonds (NSF – a
resistance organisation that had taken financial care of many illegal groups during
the war) which still had quite a large sum of money – 100.000 guilders – at its
disposal.136 In addition, a significant amount of money was raised through private
initiatives, local campaigns and initiatives of large companies wanting to help
132
Stichting 1940-1945, Notulen Hoofdbestuur Commissie 1945-1946. Handleiding 1945, 1-2.
133
Ibid., 2. See introduction. The CBVO was a governmental institution providing financial
compensation to war victims. In 1947, this institution was abolished.
134
135
136
Ibid.
Boucher, Kalkman et al., Woord Gehouden, 42.
Ibid., 52.
41
those who had resisted the Nazi occupier. Also, the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina
became patroness of the Stichting, which not only increased the nation-wide
sympathy for this organisation, but also resulted in a gift of 500.000 Guilders
from the Royal Family. 137 Therefore, it was possible to start supplying those who
qualified for help with financial support almost immediately after the end of the
German occupation on May, 5 1945. As a result, the Stichting had already
distributed more than 600.000 Guilders among 4381 persons or families by
October 1946. Although there was enough money in the first months after the war,
the aim was to provide full pensions to those who met the conditions outlined in
the Stichting’s manual. In order to do so, money was needed on a structural
basis.138 Furthermore, despite the fact that money was available from a variety of
funds, the Stichting wanted the rights of former illegal workers to be formalised
through official law regulations. 139 Because the government in exile had already
stated during the war that ‘resistance victims’ would be entitled similar pensions
as the ones received by the army, the Foundation was backed by governmental
financial support from September 1947 onwards in the form of the Wet
Buitengewoon Pensioen (WBP).140 Thus, the government was only at a later stage
involved, after the establishment of the WBP.
The earliest post-war minutes of the Stichting’s Central Administration
(Hoofdbestuur) meetings indicate that discussions on the specific cases that would
qualify for support continuously surfaced. In fact, the 1945 conditions were
already challenged the moment they had been officially formulated. This becomes
most visible in the minutes of the so-called Beroepscommissie – the Committee of
Appeals – where appeals of applicants who disagreed with the rejection of their
inquiry for support were processed. In addition to questions relating to the nature
and categories of resistance that qualified for help from the Foundation, the
question of whether particular groups should beforehand be excluded from any
form of compensation was often raised in the early post-war years. These
137
Ibid..
138
Hinke Piersma, Bevochten recht: politieke besluitvorming rond de wetten voor
oorlogsslachtoffers (Amsterdam: Boom, 2010), 37.
139
Boucher, Kalkman et al., Woord gehouden, 53.
140
Ibid.
42
discussions were intensified by letters the Stichting received in which was asked
for clarification of particular subjects. For example, on October 22, 1947 Prof. Ir.
W.J. Dewez, a Dutch agricultural engineer and professor at the University of
Wageningen who had himself played an active role in the resistance during the
war, wrote a letter in which he problematised the definition of resistance that was
outlined in the Stichting’s founding records.141 With the development of time and
due to an increasing amount of application, the definition ‘resistance’ changed
and, with that, the Stichting’s policies. This sometimes resulted in the tragic
situation that applicants were first honoured financial support and at a later were
excluded from support, or the other way around.142
This chapter will deal with the way Stichting 1940-1945 processed
applications and shed light on their more general approach to the inclusion and
exclusion of particular groups for financial support. In doing so, a close analysis
will be provided on the way it dealt with the term ‘resistance’ at different stages
between 1945 until the early 1950s. In historiography, a general tendency has
been identified in which the definition ‘resistance’ is said to have been restricted
after the war while, with the passing of time, more groups were headed under the
term. The Belgian historian Pieter Lagrou has for example claimed that this was
the result of a conscious government-orchestrated myth of resistance in which
only a narrow definition was used without paying attention to individuals and
particularly not to communists.143 This chapter will investigate whether, and to
what extent Stichting 1940-1945 marginalised particular groups after the war, by
denying them support or whether this institution receiving substantial amounts of
money and freedom from the government, pursued different ideals.
141
Stichting 1940-1945, Vergaderingen Dagelijks Bestuur Agenda’s en Notulen 1, 06-02-1946 t/m
19-03-1946. Prof. Dewez argued that the Stichting’s use of the definition is absurdly broad and
unworkable. He proposed instead to centralize the motives with which the applicants acted during
the war. In that case, he argues, aspects like self-enrichment can be taken better care of.
142
Tineke Piersma, Jan Driever et al., Getrouw aan hun geloof: de vervolging van de Nederlandse
Jehovah’s Getuigen in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Westervoort: Van Gruting, 2005), 107.
143
Pieter Lagrou, “Patriotten en regenten: het parochiale patiottisme van de naoorlogse
Nederlandse illegaliteit, 1940-1945” in: Gerard Aalders et al., (eds.), Oorlogsdocumentatie
’40-’45. Zesde jaarboek van het Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (Zutphen: Wallenburg,
1995), 37.
43
2.1 The Organisational Structure and Tasks of Stichting 1940-1945
The initial aim of Stichting 1940-1945 was to have representatives of the large
variety of illegal groups which had been involved in the establishment of the
Foundation (all representatives of the different pillars – zuilen – of Dutch society)
represented in the Board of Directors. The Communists were for example
represented as well by Bob Gilliéron, who had been an important member of the
Communist Waarheidsgroep.144 Still, the Christian Landelijke Organisatie voor
Hulp aan Onderduikers (LO – the national organisation that provided help to
people in hiding) was eventually most firmly represented. The other pillars – the
Catholics, Socialists and Liberals – were represented on a smaller scale. Taking
the background of the LO as a relief organisation into consideration, this is not
surprising. Initially, the Christian B.H. De Jongh, one of the founders of the
Stichting who had been an insurance expert before the war, was in charge of the
Stichting. He was soon replaced, however, by the Reformed Jan Smallenbroek,
who had been a member of the illegal Trouw group during the war and later
became the spokesman of the Dutch right-wing confessional Anti-Revolutionaire
Partij (ARP).
Allowing support to Stichting 1940-1945 through the WBP was the only
official governmental recognition of the war activities of former illegal workers.
Whereas for example in Belgium former political prisoners and illegal workers
were entitled a so-called Verzetskruis (Cross of Resistance), the Dutch
government did not want to give any public recognition to former illegal workers
other than the official support provided by Stichting 1940-1945. In 1948, the
government had for example openly refused to award any official medal to illegal
workers. According to Lagrou the rationale behind this was that the MinisterPresident in that case would have been forced to entitle an official recognition to
Communists as well, which he did not want.145 The Foundation supported the
government in its willingness not to provide any further recognition than the
financial support provided through the WBP. In the minutes of the Dagelijks
Bestuur (those in charge of the day to day management of the Stichting) of
144
Touwen-Bouwsma, Op zoek naar grenzen, 59.
145
Lagrou, “Patriotten en regenten”, 37.
44
November, 10 1947, a statement of Hendrik Wiersma, member of the Advisory
Commission of the Stichting, shows that the Foundation did not want to isolate
itself from the rest of society. It did not want to claim a distinctive position in
society:
‘ “They gave their lives for you, so what do you do for their surviving relatives?”
– how often don’t we hear his message propagandistic leaflets? As a result,
although subconsciously, a division is made between former illegal workers
and the Dutch people [..]. The origins of this kind of foolish worshipping of
former illegal workers, can also be found in the messages spread by former illegal
workers themselves [..]. The unfavourable outcome of this is that former illegal
workers are isolated from the Dutch society at large’. 146
After the introduction of the WBP, the definition of who qualified for support
became stricter; the term ‘active resistance’ surfaced. As was formulated in the
regulations:
‘Participants of resistance are those who during the occupation of the German
enemy have participated in domestic resistance through their deeds and attitude,
including those who have been part of the Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten (BS – a
coordinating body of all Dutch illegal groups, established in September, 1944)
and have actively participated in the struggle against the occupying force in
Europe (emphasis by author).’ 147
The WBP furthermore ruled that the applicant was supposed to have behaved in
an ‘honourable’ way from the national viewpoint. 148 Also, someone only qualified
for a Buitengewoon Pensioen in case of physical harm or other ailments resulting
from resistance activities.149 In case the illegal worker had died during the war, the
146
Stichting 1940-1945, Notulen Dagelijks Bestuur statement of H. Wiersma Nov., 10 1947. ‘Hoe
vaak beluistert men niet in de propaganda de klank: “Zij gaven hun leven, wat doet gij voor hun
nabestaanden?” Zo wordt dus, zij het onbewust, een scheiding gemaakt tussen de oud-illegalen en
het Volk [..]. De oorzaak van deze dwaze heldenverering zijn ook het gevolf van de voorlichting
van de oud-illegaliteit zelf. Het ongewenste resultat is that oud-illegalen afgezonderd worden van
het Volk’.
147 Artikel
1 Wet Buitengewoon Pensioen 1940-1945 (WBP), August, 22 1947. See: http://www.stab.nl/wetten/0440_Wet_buitengewoon_pensioen_1940-1945_WBP.htm.
148 Artikel
2 Wet Buitengewoon Pensioen.
149 Artikel
3 Wet Buitengewoon Pensioen.
45
pension could be allocated to his widow which implied that the widow either had
to have been married to the illegal worker, or that s(he) had to be officially
registered as partner.150 The most notable difference with the 1945 conditions
outlined by the Stichting is that the applicant now no longer had to indicate that
(s)he suffered from financial difficulties, but rather that he suffered from physical
disabilities resulting from illegal war activities.
Already before the actual implementation of this new definition of
‘resistance participant’ in the WBP, criticisms were voiced. This was mostly due
to a lack of preciseness. Also, the regulations differed from the ones outlined by
Stichting 1940-1945 earlier. The government tried to remedy these criticisms by
stating that it had tried to complement the regulations outlined by Stichting
1940-1945. Besides, it had at least tried to be more precise than the previously
outlined regulations of the Foundation.151 Still, questions surfaced concerning the
way this definition should actually be applied in practice, particularly with
reference to the ‘active resistance’ part. Also, criticisms were voiced on the fact
that still only domestic resistance was included. This latter criterium was softened
in June, 1951 in order to support those individuals who had for example been
involved in acts of resistance in concentration camps in Eastern Europe. 152
The relation between the Stichting and the government in the period
around the introduction of the WBP was rather hostile. J. Th. A.H. van der Putten,
head of the Hulp aan Oorlogsslachtoffers, which was part of the Dutch Ministry
of Foreign Affairs and provided help to victims of the Second World War, did not
want the Stichting to fulfil an extensive role in the formation of the WBP. He
stated:
‘It is generally known that the Stichting is rather strict when it comes to the
recognition of individuals as victims of resistance [..] It is also said that the
Stichting is strict in its assessment of applications and that wartime
disagreements between individual resistance groups have an influence on this [..].
There will be no objections when it comes to the advisory role of the Stichting in
150 Artikel
1a Wet Buitengewoon Pensioen.
151
Elly Touwen-Bouwsma, Op zoek naar grenzen: toepassing en uitvoering van de wetten voor
oorlogsslachtoffers (Amsterdam: Boom, 2010), 20.
152
Touwen-Bouwsma, Op zoek naar grenzen, 21.
46
the allocation of pensions, or to its research function and the fact that it is
responsible for the actual distribution of money. However, additional powers can
hardly be awarded out of fear for unilaterality.153
Van der Putten argued that the Stichting was too strict, or too biased in its decision
of who was to be recognised as a resistance fighter, and who was not. In fact, as
the following section will show, an investigation of the post-war minutes of
Stichting 1940-1945 indicates the question who who be eligible for compensation
was a continuous and returning subject of discussion in which biases or prejudices
are absent. Besides, as Dutch historian Touwen-Bouwsma has argued, it was the
Dutch government that tried to limit the number of applications beforehand by
creating rather strict regulations to which a successful applicant had to conform. 154
Van der Putten’s remark should therefore be seen in light of the fact that the
government was weary of cooperation with this groups of former illegal workers
already in the first place as it obstructed the government’s freedom of action in the
formulation and execution of its regulations. However, as these workers had
played a crucial, heroic role during the war it was impossible not to give them a
voice in the post-war regulations that concerned former illegal workers.
The feeling of uneasiness with reference to the role of Stichting 1940-1945
was more generally spread. The minister of Social Affairs, Willem Drees was
critical of the functioning of the Stichting, just as the Raad van State (Council of
State, a constitutionally established independent advisory body of the
government). However, the Stichting remained closely involved with the
allocation of the pensions.155 For the government the problem was that they
considered Stichting 1940-1945 as the exclusive, recognised organisation of
former illegal workers. As a result, they had to at least allocate particular
153
“Het is wel bekend, dat de Stichting zeer critisch te werk gaat bij het erkennen van een persoon
als verzetsslachtoffer [..]. er wordt ook gezegd, dat de beoordeling te stroef is, ja zelfs, dat de oude
meeningsverschillen uit den vroegeren ondergrondschen strijd de beslissingen niet geheel
onbeïnvloed laten. [..] Er zal geen bezwaar tegen bestaan, dat de Stichting bij het toekennen van
een bijzonder pensioen een belangrijke adviseerende stem wordt gegeven, dat van haar
onderzoeksapparaat wordt gebruik gemaakt en dat zij met de uitbetaling van de toegekende
pensioenen wordt belast. Doch verdere bevoegdheden zullen uit gevaar voor eenzijdigheid
bezwaarlijk aan haar kunnen worden gegeven.” in: Piersma, Bevochten recht, 36. Ministerie van
Maarschappelijk werk, inv. nr. 862.
154
Touwen-Bouwsma, Op zoek naar grenzen, 23.
155
Piersma, Bevochten recht, 37.
47
freedoms to it as well. The Stichting was aware of its unique position, because of
which it could increase political pressure.156 It was therefore inevitable that some
demands of the Stichting had to be honoured, for example with reference to their
autonomy in the allocation of governmental subsidies to former illegal workers.
The fact that the Commission of Appeals was administered by the Stichting and
not by the government is exemplary of the Stichting’s self-governance. The role
of the Stichting’s director Jan Smallenbroek, who was by then a member of the
Dutch parliament, was key to the success of the Stichting in this regard. He is said
to have made every effort to accomplish the goals set by Stichting 1940-1945. As
one of his former colleagues has indicated: ‘he did a lot for the Stichting,
particularly as a representative of the interests of the Stichting and in order to
receive the necessary supplements to the WBP in parliament’.157
Despite the fact that the government secured a stable financial foundation,
Stichting 1940-1945 ensured that it remained autonomous in its functioning. This
was partly due to the fact that it kept receiving money from private individuals
and organisations. In 1950, for example, a larger sum of money was distributed
among former illegal workers than the Stichting had received from the
government.158 Also, Stichting 1940-1945 became independently responsible for
the distribution of the money provided by the government among those families
and individuals whose requests were honoured. Thus, the Foundation functioned
as an independent executive authority of the government. Furthermore, the
Stichting succeeded in introducing a new type of pension, allowing people to
maintain the standard of living they would have had in case there had been no
involvement in illegal activities during the war. The amount of money that was
distributed therefore differed per case because it partially depended upon the
income an illegal worker had earned before his activities during the war. This was
still an unheard of concept, and led to several disagreements with the government
seated in The Hague.159
156
Ibid.
157
Jan Vlam, member of the Central Board Committee of Stichting 1940-1945 between 1947 and
1956, in an interview with Florine Boucher. Boucher, Kalkman et al., Woord Gehouden, 79.
158
Ibid., 59.
159
Piersma, Getrouw aan hun Geloof, 106.
48
Almost one year after the implementation of the WBP, the Stichting was
supported by more than 12.000 voluntary workers which underlines the fact that
the Foundation was well-liked and received support from all over the country. 160
Not only did these volunteers help with the administrative undertaking of
processing information, they were in many cases also personally involved with
each of the applicants. They provided social care and, if necessary, health care as
well.161 An assessment of the personal files of successful applicants shows that the
help provided has been far-reaching. Grand-children of former resistance fighters
were, for example, assisted in finding new houses, institutional fees of children
were being paid for etcetera.162
Stichting 1940-1945 was initially not an institution governed at the
national level. Rather, it existed of many local committees that were controlled by
a provincial body of the Stichting. In order to make uniform decisions, however,
the Centrale Hoofdbestuurscommissie was established in 1948 which, amongst
others, dealt with the appeals made by people whose applications were initially
rejected.163 Also, in case local committees were unsure about the decisions they
ought to take in particular cases, the Hoofdbestuurscommissie formulated a
decision. Due to increasing disagreements between local bodies on the type of
cases that qualified for financial support, the individual bodies were eventually
fused to one, nationally operating organisation. In 1994, the number of local
committees was reduced to seven (Friesland, Groningen/Drenthe, MiddenNederland, Overijssel/Noord-Oost Polder/Flevoland-Noord, Amsterdam/NoordHolland, Zuid-Holland, Zuid). In 2000, the seven local committees were dissolved
and united in the national committee situated in Diemen.164
The processing of applications was a rather complicated process.
Individuals who wanted to apply for (financial) compensation, first had to sent a
160
Boucher, Kalkman et al., Woord Gehouden, 61.
161
Ibid., 68.
162
See for example the personal files of Mrs. Wagenaar–Hiensch, partner of the famous
communist illegal worker Gerben Wagenaar. Stichting 1940-1945, Persoonsdossiers G.C.
Wagenaar–Hiensch.
163
Boucher, Kalkman et al., Woord Gehouden, 81.
164
See http://www.oorlogsgetroffenen.nl/archiefvormer/Stichting_1940_1945. Accessed Jan, 24
2015.
49
letter to the government-led Buitengewoon Pensioenraad (BPR). The date at
which this letter of application was sent was important as, in retrospect, the
financial support would start from this date onwards in case the request was
honoured.165 The request for support was sent from the BPR to Stichting
1940-1945 which thereafter sent questionnaires to the applicants. These
questionnaires mainly consisted of questions relating to the nature of the
resistance the illegal worker had been involved with during the war. Furthermore,
the names and addresses of witnesses who were able to testify on the story were
asked for.
As soon as these questionnaires were returned to the Stichting, it started an
investigation on the truthfulness of the information that was provided, for
example by exploring the archives of the RIOD Institute for War Documentation
and the Dutch Red Cross. As a result of these inquiries, a so-called Verzetsraport
– a report describing and evaluating the acts of resistance – was provided by the
Stichting. This report was sent to the Central Board of Directors of the Stichting
(Centrale Bestuurscommissie – CBC) which made two crucial decisions. First,
whether or not the extent and nature of resistance was proven and second, whether
the illegal worker had behaved ‘honourably’ during the war. 166 This more or less
meant that someone should not have been involved in dishonourable activities
such as trading on the black market, criminal activities etcetera.
The report of the CBC was sent to the BPR, which investigated whether
the illegal worker had demonstrably become disabled as a consequence of his
illegal activities during the war. If not, the case was rejected. If this was the case,
the percentage of invalidity was determined. In order to do so, the BPR was
supported by a medical expert.167 Eventually, the BPR Council decided whether or
not someone was eligible for financial support from Stichting 1940-1945. In case
of a rejection of the application, the applicant could file a complaint to the
Stichting and then the entire procedure started over again in a rather similar way.
There was one important exception, however: the Commission of Appeals of
165
Boucher, Kalkman et al., Woord Gehouden, 81.
166
See for example Stichting 1940-1945, ‘Handleiding ter beoordeling van de vraag of een geval
al dan niet in aanmerking komt voor bijstand door de Stichting 1940-1945’ (Amsterdam: Den
Ouden, 1948).
167
Boucher, Kalkman et al., Woord Gehouden, 80-81.
50
Stichting 1940-1945 treated the appeal and decided whether or not a different
conclusion should be drawn from the (new) information that had become
available. In short, the cases that had been dismissed by the BPR were
reconsidered by the Commission of Appeals of the Stichting because of which it
had a significant influence on the entire allocation process.
Only in 1952, official rules and regulations (Uitkeringsreglement) were
outlined concerning the course of action that ought to be taken in particular
(exceptional) cases. For the first time, detailed information was provided by 1952
on the nature of support that was supposed to be given in different cases, for
example with reference to the payment of institutional fees of (grand)children of
surviving relatives, whether the amount of money was supposed to increase with
the development of time (taking promotions into consideration), what the
percentage of invalidity actually meant, whether concubines would receive
money, etcetera. After the publication of the Uitkeringsregelement, it became
somewhat easier to implement particular regulations and to treat cases equally.
As the previously described process has shown, Stichting 1940-1945
played a central role in deciding who was, and who was not, eligible for financial
support. Because its local and national bodies were playing a decisive role in the
eventual decision by determining who was and who was not considered to have
been a ‘resister’ during the war through the so-called Verzetsrapport and who was
truly suffering from this either physically or psychologically, the task of the
government was reduced to a minimum.
1.2 ‘Resistance’: Inclusion and Exclusion
Compared to the rules formulated in the 1948 WBP regulations, somewhat
different criteria were discussed during a Central Board meeting in Amersfoort in
January 1949, which hints to the idea that the Stichting still followed its own path
when assessing individual cases. At least, it continued to discuss alternative
regulations. For example, whereas it was ruled in the WBP that pensions would
only be allocated to officially registered widows of illegal workers, in case the
latter had died during the war, 168 Stichting 1940-1945 extensively discussed
168
Wet Buitengewoon Pensioen, Artikel 1a.
51
whether or not applications of couples that were not officially married should be
taken into consideration as well. Particularly taking into account that it was
difficult or unpleasant to marry during the occupation, it was argued, it would be
reasonable to accept applications from concubines as well.169 The exact moment
at which this decision was made remains unclear but it must have been
somewhere between October, 1946 and November 1947 as the minutes of the
Commission of Appeals between this period indicate that concubines were
eligible for help as well. This is remarkable taken into consideration that the
marital bond was generally still considered sacred in this period.
The position of the Stichting vis-à-vis the government, and the WBP
regulations specifically was a returning subject of discussion. The sole task of the
government in the allocation process was to make the final decision, based on the
verzetsrapport and the waardigheidsverklaring (whether or not someone had
behaved honourably) provided by Stichting 1940-1945. Although the Foundation
already fulfilled a crucial consultive function as it produced and presented the
necessary documents to the WBP, Smallenbroek emphasised during a meeting in
February, 1949 that the Stichting could certainly add an extra letter to the reports
clearly indicating whether they considered the applicant eligible for support. In
doing so, the Stichting would in fact intervene in the sole task of the governmentled WBP as it advised on the decision the latter was supposed to take. 170 Clearly,
the Stichting wanted to emphasise and strengthen its autonomous and prominent
function.
In the Committee of Appeals of Stichting 1940-1945, many cases on which
a decision was not easily taken (randgevallen) were thoroughly discussed. 171
Returning subjects of discussion were for example cases in which individuals had
enriched themselves during the war, but still had managed to play an active role in
the fight against the Nazis, the role of the Communists, the position of Jews, those
who had only spread illegal newspapers during the war, those who had
participated in the strike of May 1943, those who had sheltered people but had
169
Stichting 1940-1945, Notulen Beroepscommissie 1/tm 35 zitting 8/10/’46 tot en met 17/11/’47.
IIe dossier H.G. de Raat, 30.
170
Hoofdbestuur Vergaderingen, 26/2/1949, 2.
171
Interview with Jan Driever, current director of Stichting 1940-1945 on Sept, 12 2014.
52
asked for (significant amounts of) money in return, those who were still only
eleven years or younger when they had somehow played a role in resistance
activities etcetera. 172
In the meeting report of January, 12 1949 a remarkable example of one of
the many border cases that was discussed in the Commission of Appeals is
outlined.173 Herman S. and his girlfriend (A.B.) has been hiding five Jews in their
house from the summer of 1943 until January, 20 1944.174 Also, they had
possessed a radio which was by then declared illegal by the Germans.175 S. had a
criminal past; he was eight times convicted for a variety of crimes (mainly
burglary and theft). In total, he had been imprisoned for seven years and three
months before the outbreak of the war.176 In short, he was a well-known figure
among the Dutch police forces. On January, 12 1944 – while he was hiding Jews
in his house – S. broke into the house of the local goldsmith. Although he was
‘successful’ in his attempt to steal a large amount of gold and jewellery, he was
caught eventually. When the police arrested him and searched his house for the
valuables, they stumbled upon the five Jews who were in hiding. As a result, S.
was first transferred to concentration camp Vught, and thereafter transported to
Oranienburg-Saschsenhausen, where he was murdered. The five Jewish hiders
were transported as well and only one of them survived the war.177 This survivor
(Ms. F.) declared after the war that she and her fellow Jewish hiders had been
treated very well by the S. family. She did not refer to the fact that she and the
four other Jews were caught as a result of S.’ foolish action. She only emphasised
that S. and his girlfriend had been righteous people. Of course, she stated, ‘we had
to pay a small amount of money for the food they were providing us and the risk
172
Stichting 1940-1945, Hoofdbestuur Vergaderingen 26/2/1949, 1.
173
Stichting 1940-1945. Notulen Beroepscommissie zitting 1 t/m 163. Notulen van de veertigste
zitting van de beroepscommissie van de Stichting 1940-1945. Gehouden 12 januari 1948 des
avonds om 9 uur op het Hoofdbureau, Herengracht 597 te Amsterdam, 1-2.
174
Due to privacy regulations, only the initials of both name and surname are provided.
175
Stichting 1940-1945, Soc. Oud nr. 3279. A.A.F. B.
176
Stichting 1940-1945, Notulen Beroepscommissie zitting 1 t/m 163, 1.
177
Stichting 1940-1945, Persoonsdossiers, Soc. Oud nr. 3279. A.A.F. B.
53
they were taking, but this was no problem at all – they were kind people’. 178
Clearly, S. had never exploited these people.
When S.’ girlfriend after the war asked Stichting 1940-1945 for financial
support, however, the case was considered extremely complicated. On the one
hand, S. had behaved honourably by providing these Jewish people with a hiding
place, without wanting to benefit from this financially.179 On the other hand, S.’
reckless actions ensured that the Jewish hiders has been caught. Naturally, he
should have been more careful. In principle, theft was not seen as a dishonourable
act (in vaderlandsche zin onwaardig), but in this case things were more
complicated. 180 On December, 3 1947, Ms. B. was refused support from the
Stichting because ‘she could have known that S., with whom she was already
living together for more than eight years, was committing small crimes almost on
a weekly basis’.181 For example, because he had already been sentenced for theft
twice in 1938. Stichting 1940-1945 ruled that, although they could not prove with
certainty that Ms. B. had known of these crimes, at least she must have been
aware that the man she was living with was not the type of person capable of
taking the responsibility of several Jews in hiding. 182 Furthermore, the only
Jewish woman who had survived the war (Ms F.) had declared that although Mrs.
B. had kindly returned many of her belongings after the war, she had become
rather aggressive when she had asked for her tablecloths as well at a later stage.
Mrs. B. had shouted to Ms. F. that she was the reason her husband was killed.
Therefore, the Committee ruled, Ms. B. was not eligible for help.
178
Ibid.
179
The case of financial exploitation was a returning subject in the post-war Appeals Commission
as well. Although some argued that, despite the sometimes huge amounts of money that was asked
for, these people had still risked their lives by taking fellow Jewish citizens in hiding. On the other
hand, others argued, one could wonder whether this was indeed a ‘righteous act’ since the main
aim was probably not to help these people, but to benefit financially from the situation. To what
extent had these people actually resisted the Nazis, anyway? was a question posed by one of the
members of the Commission. See: Stichting 1940-1945, Hoofdbestuur Vergaderingen 1945 t/m
23/12/’52, 6. “Een volgende vraag is: is het herbergen van onderduikers altijd verzet? De heer
Smallenbroek zou dit altijd verzet willen noemen. Wanneer het gebeurde tegenover grove
vergoedingen, is het onwaardig, maar verzet blijft het. De heer van Schaik vindt dat geen
onwaardigheid, maar ook geen verzet (..). De heer Kruisinga meent dat er tocg ook geen
onderscheid gemaakt wordt tussen groot en klein verzet.”
180
Soc. Oud nr. 3279. A.A.F. B.
181
Ibid.
182
Ibid.
54
Clearly, the Foundation did not follow its own regulations in this regard as
Ms. B. met all requirements in order to be eligible for help. A problematic factor
might have been that the two had not been officially registered as partners. As
other cases have proven, however, the Foundation took a rather lenient stance
because it had been difficult to marry during the war. The S. case was reopened a
few years later, in 1950 when Ms. B. again applied for financial support. In
December of that same year it was acknowledged that S. was deported and
murdered because he had been hiding Jews, and that in itself was considered an
act of resistance.183 As a result, Mrs. B. eventually received the financial help she
had asked for.
Some other border cases in this period can be identified. For example, J.N.
G., a self-employed house painter living in Amsterdam dissolved his company
after the German invasion of the Netherlands. In his application for financial
support, he has justified this by stating he feared he would be forced to work for
the Germans, for example for camouflage activities. However, because he could
no longer work, his financial situation became dire. This, as well as the outlook of
having to work in Germany, made him decide to work for the Nederlands
Arbeidsfront (NAF) which was a National-Socialist labor union confederation
established in 1942 by decree of Reichskommissar Arthus Seyss-Inquart. In his
function as a NAF-employee, G. was involved in acts of resistance. For example,
he stamped cards that were not supposed to be stamped and distributed official
papers to people who were not supposed to see them. Furthermore, he distributed
the illegal communist newspaper De Waarheid.184 On December, 3 1947, it was
decided that the illegal activities G. has been involved in, did not weigh against
his voluntary application at the NAF – he was not considered to have been a
‘resister’.185 Despite an appeal, the case was closed.
Theodoor V. had a leading position at the Nederlands Steunfonds (NSF) –
the organisation that distributed money among illegal groups. He was furthermore
involved in the distribution of illegal newspapers. On May, 12 1941, he was
arrested by the Germans because he was seen as one of the organisers of the
183
Stichting 1940-1945. Notulen Beroepscommissie zitting 1 t/m 163, 1.
184
Stichting 1940-1945, District Amsterdam nr. 6280. J.N. Van G.
185
Ibid.
55
workers strike (Februaristaking) of February 1941. First, he was sentenced to
death by the Nazis, but he was later dismissed of all charges because of a lack of
evidence. On February, 25 1945, V. was arrested because he had been involved in
the destruction of German defences at Diemerdam. As a result, he was transported
to concentration camp Oranienburg but managed to escape and thereafter went
into hiding. As early as 1945, Stichting 1940-1945 agreed to provide financial
support to V. At the end of 1946, however, new information reached the Stichting:
V.’s son had voluntarily worked for the Kriegsmarine, the National-Socialist
Navy, from April 1944 onwards. Although he openly distanced himself from his
son’s choice, V. had remained in contact with him. Therefore, Stichting 1940-1945
ruled, he had been able to profit from his son’s collaborative attitude, particularly
in the last winter of 1944 when the food was scarce. 186 Although it had been
proven that V. senior had behaved courageously during the war, he was exempted
from any form of support from the Foundation from this moment onwards.
In some of the mentioned examples, it has already become clear that the
Foundation not only drew different conclusions after it had received new
information, but also revised some of its decisions sometime later, based on
exactly the same material. In the case of Jacob (Jaap) R., the Committee of
Appeals changed its verdict three times. R. had divorced his first wife in 1937. In
that same year, he met Ms. V. with whom he got engaged. Due to administrative
difficulties, two unsuccessful attempts to marry were made in 1938. Due to the
outbreak of the war and the fact that R. supposedly became involved in illegal
activities in a Communist illegal organisation, the marriage was postponed. On
December, 26 1940 and January 29, 1942, two children were born. On February,
20 1942, R. was arrested and sent to prison at the Weteringsschans in Amsterdam,
from where he was sent to Utrecht. The day they wanted to get married in prison,
R. was sent as Schutzhäftling to concentration camp Vught. On an unknown date,
he was deported as “Nacht und Nebel” prisoner – a prisoner who had threatened
the German security – to Natzweiler and died there on April, 15 1945.187
After the war, the first application for financial support was made
somewhere between 1945 and 1946. This application unfortunately no longer
186
Stichting 1940-1945, District Amsterdam nr 2332. Th. G. V.
187
Stichting 1940-1945, District Amsterdam nr. 13, M.J. V.
56
exists, but her request was honoured because Ms. V. received a monthly
contribution for her children during the first post-war years. Taken into
consideration that only on May, 9 1948 extensive documents reporting on the
illegal activities of R. were sent to the Foundation, this initial verdict most likely
hardly had any evidential foundation. In 1948, several witnesses testified that R.
indeed had been an active participant in the Dutch Underground. As Joop Z.
indicated: ‘R. had been ardently against the Germans and the Dutch Nationalist
Socialist Party and combatted them with all the means at hand.’188 In this report it
is also indicated that Mrs. V. had little knowledge on the illegal war activities of
her fiance.
On September, 6 1949 a letter was sent to Stichting 1940-1945 by one of
the members of the former illegal Communist Waarheidsgroep, probably in
response to an earlier letter of investigation from Stichting 1940-1945, as was the
general procedure. In this letter, S.S. de L. stated the following with reference to
Jacob R.: ‘In our circle, R. is not known as an illegal worker but rather as a black
market trader who brought the leader of De Waarheid in contact with a
provocateur, Harry M. who delivered weapons to us’.189 He continued his letter by
outlining how Jacob R. had come to known M. through his connections among the
circle of black market traders, and that R. had not at all been a member of the
illegal Waarheidsgroep but rather a charlatan and someone who exclusively
misused the war as an opportunity to enrich himself. De L. even hinted at the
notion that R. might have been a betrayer and collaborator. It is furthermore
argued that R.’ concubine, Ms. V., must have been be aware of these facts since
she received letters from him continuously while he was imprisoned in Utrecht.190
The Stichting notified Ms. V. on Sept, 7 1949 that they had ruled, after
having conducted additional research, that R. had not been active in the Dutch
illegality during the war and that, as a result, the financial help that had been
provided would be terminated immediately. On Sept., 14 1949, Ms. V. sent a letter
of objection to the Stichting, questioning why Joop Z.’s testimony, which was one
of the positive testimonies, was all of the sudden completely ignored. She was
188
Ibid.
189
Ibid.
190
Ibid.
57
visibly frustrated that, after all the positive messages she received from former coworkers of her husband and the initial positive evaluation of the Stichting, one
negative letter caused that she and her children were immediately refused
financial support. In order to make her case stronger, she informed the Stichting
that she knew even more people who had closely worked together with R., and
who would be able to testify on his case; for example Arie V., David T. and Simon
de L. She ends her letter with a request to the Stichting to start a new
investigation, or to draw a different conclusion from the existing material
available on her husband’s case.191
Her request was honoured and again different individuals were approached
to testify on the R. case. The Secretary of the National Social Commission of expolitical prisoners N.W. Wijnen wrote to Stichting 1940-1945 that he could not
provide any information on the people referred to by Ms. V. in her letter of
objection. However, since he had been involved in post-war Missie tot Opsporing
van Vermiste Personen, a undertaking aimed to find missing persons after the war,
he knew that those people who had received the ‘Nacht und Nebel’ classification
had unmistakably been involved in illegal activities during the war. Therefore, he
concluded, his dead must have been result of his involvement in illegal activities
during the war.192
On February 21 1951 an extensive report was written on the case, based on
new testimonies, and a reinterpretation of the earlier negative testimony of Z.,
with the final verdict that R. indeed had been actively involved in illegal activities
during the war. Ms. V. was again awarded financial support. The four conclusions
were, 1) It could be safely assumed that R. indeed had participated in Dutch
(organised) resistance, 2) that it could be reasonably assumed that the arrest was a
direct consequence of the participation in the “Auener-group”, 3) that it could not
be proven that the aim of these illegal activities was to gain financial benefit, 4)
that it could not be proven that R. was involved in black market activities.193 In
september 1958, the case was reopened again. This time because Mrs. V. not only
wanted financial compensation for her children, but also for herself taken into
191
Ms. V. continuously refers to her ‘husband’ while they were not officially married.
192
Stichting 1940-1945, District Amsterdam nr. 13, M.J. V., bijlage 4.
193
Ibid.,. Tweede vervolg bijlage 11a.
58
consideration that she and R. eventually would have married in case there had not
been a war. Without too many problems, her request was (partially) honoured at
the end of that same year. 194
The previous examples show that the Stichting was continuously
reinterpreting the conditions one had to meet in order to receive (financial)
support. Also, it is clear that the regulations were not always uniform, and that
similar cases that were dealt with in almost the same period could lead to different
outcomes. This may have been the result of the fact that the Stichting was not a
centrally regulated body: local representatives of the Stichting could make
different choices. Furthermore, particular definitions that were used both by the
Stichting and the WBP could be interpreted in many different ways.
Discussions were not limited to individual cases exclusively. For example,
a returning question was whether Jehovah’s witnesses could be qualified as
‘resisters’ and, as a result, whether they were eligible for support from the
Foundation. In the statutes of the Stichting, formulated between 1947 and 1949,
members of the resistance are qualified as those who through their deeds or
attitude against the Nazis – in both cases the struggle against the occupier was
supposed to have been a conscious and active one – have participated in domestic
resistance during the occupation.195 This also included those who had fostered
spiritual resistance, provided that the person who had physically suffered as a
consequence of the expression of his religious beliefs, had also resisted against the
occupier by virtue of this belief or political affiliation.196
This notion of
‘resistance’ against the occupier, was again a problematic term in itself, because
having been arrested and deported to a concentration camp outside the
Netherlands – obviously having suffered severely – solely on the basis of one’s
religious belief was not sufficient to qualify for (financial) support, as the
194
Stichting 1940-1945, District Amsterdam nr. 13, M.J. V.
195
Tineke Piersma, Jan Driever et al., Getrouw aan hun geloof, 106. As can be read in the minutes
of the Central Board of Directors (Hoofdbestuur), ‘domestic resistance’ did not exclusively have to
include acts that were carried out within the borders of the country. As long as acts of resistance
outside the Dutch borders had least somehow supported domestic resistance, Stichting 1940-1945
was willing to provide help. Stichting 1940-1945, Hoofdbestuur Vergaderingen 1945 t/m
23/12/’52, 5.
196
Ibid.
59
Committee of Appeals ruled in 1949.197 The most important argument used to
defend this position was that supposed acts of resistance from Jehovah’s
Witnesses were not exclusively aimed at resisting the occupier, but originated
from certain religious convictions. These people were not considered to have
expressed a significantly different attitude during the occupation than they had
before.198 Consequently, their actions – although resistant in nature – were not
seen as acts in defence of the honour of the nation. Even the of case a Jehovah’s
Witness who had been arrested and transported to a German concentration camp
and had refused to work in a munition factory, was rejected. This was not
considered an act of resistance because it originated from a pacifistic conviction,
and not from an anti-German stance.199 Dissenting voices were raised, however,
and the case of the Jehovah’s Witnesses surfaced several times.
As the discussion kept surfacing in different meetings between 1946 and
1950 and because the Stichting generally began to reconsider individual Jehovah’s
Witness cases, the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (RIOD), was asked to
conduct research on the extent to which Jehovah’s Witnesses could be considered
resistance fighters in order to solve the matter. Isaäc Arend Diepenhorst, who
became Professor of Law at the Free University of Amsterdam after the war and
was a prominent member of the ARP party (the same political party the Stichting’s
head Jan Smallenbroek belonged to), established the a report on the case, Rapport
Diepenhorst (1950). Diepenhorst claimed that the allocation of help could not,
and should not be dependent on the motivations for acting against the enemy, be it
either because of religious motives or patriotism, either moral convictions or selfinterest or motives related to the lust for adventure.200 Rather than particular
convictions or beliefs that inspired these actions, the acts themselves should be
evaluated, was the conclusion.201 The BPR accepted this conclusion, but Stichting
1940-1945 still had its reservations. The Foundation kept emphasising that they
197
Piersma, Getrouw aan hun Geloof, 108.
198
Hoofdbestuur Vergaderingen, 26/2/1949, 8.
199
Ibid.
200
NIOD, 249-0360 a3. Dossier: Jehovah’s Getuigen. Mr. I.A. Diepenhorst, “Jehovah’s Getuigen
en hun aanspraak op verzetsuitkeringen”, Rapport uitgebracht aan het Rijksinstituut voor
Oorlogsdocumentatie (1950).
201
Ibid., 4.
60
would only qualify for financial support in case Jehovah’s Witnesses had been
arrested as a consequence of their resistance actions. As a result, Jehovah’s
witnesses were generally still not provided with financial support.202 Despite the
clear conclusions of the report, it was only until the late 1970s that the discussion
was finally closed and that Jehovah’s witnesses were officially eligible for help
from Stichting 1940-1945 because of their essential anti-German attitude.203
The case of the Jehovah’s Witnesses was only one of the many topics
related to the definition ‘resistance’ leading to heated discussions among the board
members of the Central Committee of Stichting 1940-1945. Other topics were for
example whether the so-called Spoorwegstaking – the strike of those who worked
for the Dutch railways in 1944 – should be considered as an act of resistance. The
outcome of the discussion was that it was, in principle, not considered as such. 204
The motivations remain somewhat unclear but can probably be found in the fact
that these workers had first of all had kept receiving their salaries during the
strike. Second, they had initially cooperated with the Nazis; it was only during
one of the latest stages of the war that this strike was initiated (from September
1944 onwards) on request of the Dutch government in exile.205
The case of the Engelandvaarders – an honorary name for those who after
the Dutch capitulation on the 15th of May 1940 and before the Allied invasion in
Normandy on the 6th of June 1944, had escaped to England (many did so order to
join the Allied forces in their fight against the enemy) – was a returning subject of
discussion as well. Some members of the Committee argued that many of these
illegal emigrants left the country out of pure self-interest, and not with the aim to
fight against the Nazis. Others emphasised that these people had, through joining
202
Of course, there were always exceptions. See for example: Stichting 1940-1945, Sociaal
Dossier 10253: brief van de CHBC aan de BPR, May, 21 1962. This case concerned a divorced
woman who had to take care of her children all by herself after the war. One of her children was
impaired. The woman, a Jehovah’s Witness, was arrested in September 1942 because she was
spreading illegal papers. She was sent from the prison of Scheveningen to concentration camp
Ravensbrück, where she signed a paper in which she declared not to undertake any actions against
the Nazis anymore which she indeed no longer did after she was released on May, 31 1943. This
was something the Stichting condemned. However, because she did it out of fear for the safety of
her children whom were still very young, the Foundation supported her case.
203
Piersma, Getrouw aan hun geloof, 112.
204
Stichting 1940-1945, Hoofdbestuur Vergaderingen 26/2/1949, 2-3.
205
NIOD, Rapport betreffende de Spoorwegstaking, door L. de Jong, Chef van het RIOD Afschrift Regeringsoproep tot algemene spoorwegstaking, 17 september 1944.
61
the Allied forces, actively fought against the enemy. Eventually, the flight of these
Engelandvaarders was considered an act of resistance.206 The fact that the motives
of these Engelandvaarders, who were protégés of the Dutch Queen, were
questioned in the first place can be considered a daring step of Stichting
1940-1945. It shows that the Foundation was functioning as an independent body,
formulating its own views and regulations without taking the views of their own
patroness, the Dutch Queen, into consideration.
Another discussion was whether people who had gone into hiding during
the war were eligible for support. A few archival documents give us some insight
in the post-war views on this particular question. The term principiële
onderduiker – someone who went into hiding out of certain moral beliefs – is a
returning subject of discussion. In the early post-war years, the Board of Directors
of Stichting 1940-1945 argued that individuals who ‘only’ went into hiding out of
self preservation, could not be considered resisters.207 Consequently, these people
were not eligible for help from the Stichting. Jewish citizens who went into hiding
because they feared what was awaiting them in Eastern Europe, had not done
enough to be considered ‘resisters’. This must have been difficult for the Jewish
citizens who either returned from the camps or for those who had survived the war
in hiding. The case of E.H. K., who was refused help because he was arrested first
and foremost because he was a Jew and not because of his resistance activities, is
a painful example in this regard.208 The choices made by the Stichting in that
sense played an important role in the post-war social order: it had a large impact
on who was, and who was not to be considered a true resister.
1.3 The Communists
In light of the Cold-war, the position of Communists became increasingly
jeopardised in Dutch society which makes it interesting to research whether the
Stichting treated applications from Communists similar to other applications. The
tensions between Communists and Social-Democrats in the Netherlands already
206
207
208
Stichting 1940-1945, Hoofdbestuur Vergaderingen 26/2/1949, 2-3.
See for example Stichting 1940-1945. Hoofdbestuur Vergaderingen 26/2/1949, 3.
Stichting 1940-1945, District Amsterdam nr. 6 E.H. K.
62
dated back to the establishment of the Dutch Communist Party in 1918. Although
these opposing political groups were somehow united in their fight against the
Nazi oppressor during the war, the Communists were still regarded as
undemocratic. Besides, they were considered to have fulfilled a rather dubious
role during the war. After the Molotov-von Ribbentrop pact between Hitler and
Stalin, they had in the eyes of many failed to resist the Nazis.209
Despite this, the Communists regained strength in Dutch politics after the
war. In period 1946 Communist CPN party was endowed with 10 percent of the
available seats in the Dutch parliament, the Tweede Kamer. According to Lagrou,
the government in power did everything it could to exclude these Communists
from politics and the social reality of Dutch society at large. 210 The fact that CPN
chairman Paul de Groot had openly approved of the Communist coming to power
in former Czechoslovakia in that sense helped the government to reach its goals
because it isolated the CPN from the rest of society; anti-Communist regulations
toughened increasingly. For example, civil servants were no longer allowed to be
involved in the CPN, party members were banned from public functions and the
CPN Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam was discharged. 211 The question of whether or
not this particular group would be eligible for financial compensation gained
importance in this period.212 Historical anthropologist Elly Touwen-Bouwsma has
indicated that although Stichting 1940-1945 had always distanced itself from the
Communists, the tendency to actively oppose this group increased. In her view,
this was due to the fact that the Foundation’s head Smallenbroek had strong antirevolutionary ideas, blaming Communists for serving unpatriotic ideals. 213
According to Lagrou, non-Communist politicians were actively supporting this
stance taken by the Stichting.214
If we go back to the initial regulations concerning the allocation of support
from the Stichting to Communists, a rather ambiguous picture emerges. Records
209
Touwen-Bouwsma, Op zoek naar Grenzen, 30.
210
Lagrou, “Patriotten en regenten”, 37.
211 Annet
Mooij, De strijd om de Februaristaking (Amsterdam: Balans, 2006), 33.
212
Piersma, Bevochten recht, 60.
213
Touwen-Bouwsma, Op zoek naar grenzen, 30.
214
Lagrou, “Patriotten en regenten”, 37.
63
of the first post-war period are absent but the first struggles already emerge with
the implementation of the WBP in 1947. Only a few weeks before the WBP was
formally established, an addendum was made by the government including
‘victims of spiritual resistance’ in the WBP regulations.215 What exactly this
terminology encompassed remained unspecified and a debate on its exact meaning
ensued. The government tried to clarify that this concerned individuals who either
through their religious beliefs or because of their political conviction had taken an
anti-German stance and were injured as a consequence thereof.216 Interestingly, it
was the same government that took an active anti-Communist stance around the
same period.
With reference to the Stichting’s stance vis-à-vis Communist resistance,
extensive discussions were common during meetings of the Central Board
(Hoofdbestuur). One of the issues that surfaced after the implementation of the
BPR was that Communists handed in reports of resistance activities that were
suspiciously similar, which disturbed the BPR. 217 From meeting reports of the
Dagelijks bestuur (the Board that occupied itself with the daily administration of
the Foundation) becomes clear that this suspicion was not entirely unfounded as
the Advisory Commission of the Communist CPN supported communist illegal
workers with their application, leading to rather similar answers to the questions
posed.218
A returning question among the Board members of the Foundation was
whether the attitude of Communists could be headed under the term ‘resistance’.
Contrary to what has been argued by Touwen-Bouwsma, a much more objective
and unbiased view appears from the minutes of the Hoofdbestuur with reference
to the allocation of support to Communist former illegal workers. In a meeting
held at the end of January, 1949 is for example stated that the particular group to
which the applicant belonged was not supposed not play a role in the eventual
decision of whether or not support would be allocated. As Smallenbroek
indicated: it would be wrong to investigate either before or during assessments of
215
Touwen-Bouwsma, Op zoek naar grenzen, 24.
216
Kamerstukken Tweede Kamer, 1946/1947, nr. 449, mvt 3.
217
Touwen-Bouwsma, Op zoek naar grenzen, 30.
218
Stichting 1940-1945. Notulen Dagelijks Bestuur June, 11 1948.
64
individual cases to which particular groups the applicant belonged.219 In an
extensive passage somewhat later during the meeting, Smallenbroek thoroughly
underlined that (political) sympathies or antipathies for particular individuals or
groups should never play a role in the assessment of individual cases.220
When another member of the Central Board Committee asked whether
spreading the illegal Communist newspaper De Waarheid in itself had been
sufficient in order to qualify for support, Smallenbroek stated that this was the
case indeed. Particularly taken into consideration, he argued, that these kind of
illegal newspapers often encouraged people not to work for the Germans. The
Communists in his view had most certainly inflicted harm on the Nazis. 221 Also,
as one of the other Central Committee members argued, each of the cases should
be seen in the context of the Nazi occupation, and not in light of the post-war
situation in which the Cold War increased tensions between Communists and nonCommunists.222 The conclusion of the meeting was that in case a Communist had
actively contributed to anti-German actions, he should be provided support from
the Stichting.223 As was the common procedure in other cases as well, the actual
actions were eventually considered of greater importance than the intentions.
An assessment of the personal files of Communists who applied to
Stichting 1940-1945 for financial support shows that Stichting 1940-1945 indeed
did not take a biased stance with reference to applications of Communists. Both
Gerben W., who suffered from heart problems after the war, and his wife G.V. W.,
who both had been actively involved in illegal activities of the Communist
Waarheidsgroep, for example, were honoured a pension. The first request for a
pension was sent around the mid-1950s, but because Gerben W. himself failed to
provide a medical report on the percentage of invalidity he was suffering from, it
took some years before the pension was allocated.224 The examples also extend
beyond this rather famous illegal worker. In 1946, the widow of Jan Hendrik V,
219
Stichting 1940-1945. Hoofdbestuur Vergadering 26/2/1949, 9.
220
Ibid.
221
Ibid..
222
Stichting 1940-1945. Hoofdbestuur Vergadering 26/2/1949, 10.
223
Ibid, 11.
224
Stichting 1940-1945, Sociaal Dossier 1668, G.C. W–H.
65
Mrs. V. made an application to Stichting 1940-1945. From the various witness
reports that were sent to the Stichting, the image appears of an ardent anti-Nazi
who used every opportunity to spread his anti-German views. Although it
becomes not entirely clear from the 1946 reports whether Vet, who had died in
concentration camp Neuengamme during the war, was associated with the
organised Communist underground, he was at least known to have been a true
Communist.
As his wife was unsure about the exact illegal activities Jan Vet had been
involved with during the war, Stichting 1940-1945 kindly asked the Communist
CPN whether they had any information on this particular case. A letter of inquiry
was also sent to the Raad van Verzet (RvV), which had been a coordinating body
of a large number of resistance groups. The latter provided a rather general
positive report on the attitude of Vet during the war. His precise activities,
however, remained unspecified. The CPN could not verify that Vet had been
involved in Communist illegal activities; in a letter sent by the CPN to the
Foundation, it was outlined that the name Jan Vet did not appear in any of their
databases. From an inquiry they had been carried out among CPN members, no
one turned out to have been familiar with Vet during the war. Therefore, Ms. Vet
was initially informed that the Foundation could ‘unfortunately’ not provide her
financial support because there was no proof of the fact that her husband had died
as a direct consequence of his resistance activities. However, the case was
reopened at a later stage and her request was belatedly honoured. 225 Significant in
this regard is not necessary the outcome of the application, but rather the way the
Stichting dealt with this ‘Communist’ case. Similar to the way other cases were
treated, all possibilities were researched and inquires were made to the relevant
parties involved, in this case the CPN and the RvV. Even after the CPN declared
not to be familiar with the activities of Vet, the Stichting did its best to find prove
that could help the case of Ms. Vet since they considered the case to be
‘appealing’ (sympathiek), as was stated in a letter dated June, 4 1946.226
As disagreements between the Stichting and the BPR continuously
surfaced on the way the ‘resistance activities’ of Communists should be assessed,
225
Stichting 1940-1945, Sociaal lopend nr. 2777. T.D. B.
226
Ibid., bijlage 2.
66
the BPR started its own investigation in order to be able to assess individual cases
in a univocal way. It asked RIOD employee Ben Sijes, who would later publish an
important work on the February strike (Februaristaking) of 1941 and the role of
Communists herein, to establish a report on the topic. 227 Loe de Jong, by then
head of the RIOD had already formulated his view on this sensitive subject; he
argued that Communists, as an organised group, had most certainly contributed to
domestic resistance.228 Sijes concluded in his report that indeed the Communist
CPN had been involved in illegal activities during the war; their crucial role in the
Februaristaking undoubtedly played a role in his conclusion.
Due to conflicts of opinion between members of the RIOD Directory on
the value and accuracy of the report established by Sijes, it was only until January
1950 tat the BPR made a definitive decision on the issue of the Communists.
Some argued the the Communists had not behaved intrinsically different during
the war than they had before; the same argument that was brought up in the case
of the Jehovah’s witnesses. Therefore, their attitude was not to be considered
inherently anti-German in their view. 229 Interestingly, Loe de Jong – who would
later be considered an anti-Communist – continued to fight for the rights of these
Communist illegal workers during these years. De Jong’s recent biographer
Boudewijn Smits for example has indicated that De Jong had once and for all
turned against the Communists after they had supported the Communist Clement
Gottwald in Czechoslovakia in 1948.230 As De Jong actively advocated the right
of Communists on financial retribution less than two years later, this break was
not as definitive as Smits has claimed. Eventually, De Jong’s view was accepted
by all. On January, 19 1950 Stichting 1940-1945 and the government-led CVBO
agreed upon the notion that Communists had contributed to Dutch domestic
resistance activities. Membership of the CPN alone, however, was not sufficient to
227
Letter of A.J.P. Koster to L.de Jong, 24-5-1948, NIOD Correspondentiearchief 1948-1949 BPR.
228
Touwen-Bouwsma, Op zoek naar grenzen, 33.
229
Ibid.
230
Smits, Loe de Jong, 193.
67
qualify for support.231 By then, there numerous application of Communists
waiting for a final verdict. 232
Although the 1949 meeting reports of the Central Board indicate that Jan
Smallenbroek in particular, and with him the large majority of other board
members wanted the Stichting’s support to be available to all without excluding
particular (political) groups, a discussion ensued as as soon as official regulations
were to be established by the government-led BPR. The ‘pro-Communist’ stance
of Stichting 1940-1945 is surprising in light of the Cold War tensions. Particularly
taken into consideration that the Foundation was a executive power of the
government. Although the anti-revolutionary Jan Smallenbroek did not consider
the Communist view or attitude during the war patriotic personally as TouwenBouwsma has indicated,233 he most certainly did take an amenable stance when it
came to the actual allocation of support to Communist illegal workers.
To conclude, on the one hand Stichting 1940-1945 was contributing to the
government’s wish not to extricate individual illegal workers because it was
against any form of official recognition alongside the financial support that was
provided through the Stichting by the WBP. This probably resulted from the fact
that illegal workers did not consider their own illegal activities to have been
exceptional because it was simply something you were supposed to do for your
country in a period of crisis. Due to the refusal to publicly highlight individual
cases, the myth that all but a few collaborators had resisted the Nazi occupier,
could flourish rather easily. In that sense, the Foundation was instrumental to the
myth of resistance: the recognition for illegal wartime activities remained limited
to the very existence of Stichting 1940-1945 exclusively.
However, the Stichting was certainly not a mere continuation of the
government’s policies. By formulating its own regulations and by taking a rather
autonomous stance vis-a-vis the government, which the government had to abide
by, the Stichting was a largely independent functioning body. Although official
regulations were outlined in the WBP, discussions in the Stichting’s Board
continuously emerged with reference to the validity and fairness of the WBP
231
Pensioen en Uitkeringsraad Documentatie. Notulen Buitengewone Pensioenraad, 19-1-1950.
232
Touwen-Bouwsma, Op zoek naar grenzen, 35.
233
Stichting 1940-1945, Notulen Vergadering Dagelijks Bestuur, 6-7-1950.
68
regulations. As the discussions of the Beroepscommissie with reference to
individual cases indicate, the Stichting also continued to interpret the regulations
according to its own norms. This led to different decisions at different stages in
the post-war period. Particularly with reference to the evaluation of illegal
activities of Communists, the stance taken by the Foundation is remarkable.
Rather than following the widespread anti-Communist approach and despite the
fact that the political right-wing was over-represented in the Stichting’s Central
Board, the Stichting’s Director stated that Communists should be treated like
anyone else. The actions counted rather than anything else.
In that sense, Lagrou’s view of a successful government-imposed
widespread myth of resistance, was not as successful as he argues. The Stichting
formulated its own norms when it came to the definition ‘resistance’, and was also
willing to call attention to illegal activities performed by groups the government
was actively trying to abolish from both the social and political life, of which the
Communists are the most telling example. In short, the Stichting formulated its
own ideas of inclusion and exclusion. According to Lagrou, the role of former
resistance fighters in this Foundation was only passive, as beneficiaries of charity
and not, as in France or Belgium, as spokesmen and women of national
martyrdom or as a privileged milieu de mémoire. 234 This research challenges this
notion by arguing that although the role of the Foundation may have been passive
in Lagrou’s view, at least it played an active role in the formulation of dissenting
notions of resistance.
234
Lagrou, “The politics of memory”, 536.
69
– Chapter 2 –
Loe de Jong: Shifting Approaches to Resistance
The Dutch historian Loe de Jong (1914-2005) in several respects played a crucial
role in the way the Second World War has been remembered in the Netherlands.
Thanks to his newspaper articles, radio speeches, television performances and
most of all due to the publication of his magnum opus Het Koninkrijk der
Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, he was not only considered to be an
expert on the topic but also fulfilled the role of ‘moral educator’ by demonstrating
to the Dutch people that the past serves as a lesson for the future. This raises some
questions on the goals De Jong was pursuing as an historian. In fact, a friction can
be identified between the various roles De Jong fulfilled and the different interests
he was serving. This becomes amongst others visible in the different ways De
Jong himself reflected upon the goals he was pursuing. On the one hand, he
emphasised that he always wanted to serve a certain ‘moral task’, by educating the
Dutch citizens and by developing their sense of norms and values, amongst others
through his popular television series De Bezetting.235 On the other hand, however,
he tried to be the distant, objective historian – his claim that he had never written
his work with a didactic purpose in mind is illustrative of this more distant role he
indicated to have served.236
Pieter Lagrou has indicated that Loe de Jong functioned as a mere puppet
of the post-war government, playing an instrumental role in the construction and
maintenance of the myth of resistance in which the entire Dutch nation, with the
exception of a few despicable traitors, was considered to have played a heroic and
resistant role during the war.237 As the previous antagonisms already indicate,
however, the role of Loe de Jong in the post-war Dutch society has been more
complicated than that. In this chapter, De Jong’s functioning as an historian will
be closely investigated by analysing the way he has constructed the image of
235
Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005, Historicus met een Missie, 780.
236
Madelon de Keizer, ‘Een dure verplichting en een kostelijk voorrecht’: Dr. L. de Jong en zijn
Geschiedwerk (Den Haag: SDU Uitgeverij Koninginnegracht, 1995), 17.
237
Pieter Lagrou, “Historiographie de guerre et historiographie du temps présent: cadres
institutionnels en Europe occidentale, 1945-2000 in: Bulletin du Comité International d’histoire de
la deuxième guerre mondiale Vol. 30 (1999), 195.
70
Dutch resistance at large, and (members of) Dutch organised groups specifically.
The central question will be what image De Jong consciously presented to his
readers on this particular topic and whether a discord can be identified between
his knowledge of resistance in the Netherlands during the war, and the image he
portrayed at different moments in time. Answering this question can lead to a
more intimate insight in the role De Jong himself considered he was fulfilling,
both as an historian and as the benchmark of Dutch collective memory. Also,
Lagrou’s notion that De Jong consciously contributed to the maintenance of the
‘myth of resistance’ can be closely investigated.
3.1 A benchmark of Dutch Collective Memory
Louis (Loe) de Jong was born on April 24, 1914 in Amsterdam. His family was
Jewish, but has been characterised as relatively assimilated: ‘[his parents] wanted
to abandon the Jewish religion and their Jewish identity’.238 Like many other Jews
living in the pre-war Dutch society, they felt more Dutch than Jewish.239 De
Jong’s aunt, who was a true Marxist and first female representative of the socialist
SDAP party in Dutch parliament, had a large impact on his political upbringing.
On September, 7 1925, De Jong went to the Vossiusgymnasium – Loe and his
brother Sally were part of the first group of 93 students of the newly established
high school. It was a progressive college, attracting students from the poorer
families and in particular social climbers from the Jewish community.240 The first
group of students to which both Loe and his brother belonged has been referred to
as het knappe klasje, alluding to the fact that some of these students had later
become distinguished scholars (Loe, Sally, Sem Dresden and Marius Flothuis).
This, combined with the fact that Jacques Presser, a renowned Jewish historian
who would after the war publish his famous work Ondergang: de vervolging en
verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom 1940-1945 (1965), taught these
238
Conny Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht: Abel Herzberg, Jacques Presser en Loe de
Jong over de Jodenvervolging (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1998), 67.
239
Hans Blom and Joel Cahen, “Joodse Nederlanders, Nederlandse Joden en de Joden in
Nederland” in: Blom, Geschiedenis van de Joden in Nederland (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans,
1995), 301.
240
Smits, Loe de Jong, 40.
71
students during their time at the Vossiusgymnasium, contributed to the fact that
this klasje still functions as the hallmark of the school.
During his high school period, De Jong became a member of the Youth
Organisation for Socialistic Studies.241 The year he started his study History at the
Gemeentelijke Universiteit in Amsterdam, he became member of the Amsterdam
chapter of the Social-Democratic Student Association. He was in close contact
with the Socialist theoretician and Zionist Sam de Wolff (1878-1960), whose ideas
he also used for his booklet titled Hedendaags Marxisme (1937), contemporary
Marxism.242 In this booklet, De Jong provided a comprehensible summary of the
traditional Marxist theory. He argued that Karl Marx’ ideas of the existence of the
Socialistic ideal state had been mere guidelines rather than a political dogma as
the Communists in his view had mistakenly interpreted Marxist theory.243
In his BA thesis on historical materialism, De Jong also followed the
Marxist historical tradition. He argued that the working classes in France, England
and Germany already formed a social-political power, while the working class in
the capitalist Dutch society was still unaware of its own potentials. 244 After
successfully finishing his studies in 1938 but failing to obtain a research position
at the Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (ISG), De Jong became assistant-editor
of the Dutch Groene Amsterdammer, a renowned progressive, anti-fascist
newsmagazine. In his memoirs De Jong has indicated that he once had to write an
article on the birth of Beatrix, daughter of Queen Wilhelmina for this magazine.
As he was raised an anti-monarchist which was in line with the sentiment the
SDAP conveyed, he found it difficult to write this article. Eventually, he managed
to publish a rather objective and distanced article, indicating that the news of
Beatrix’ birth was less important to the proletariat than to any of the other social
241
Loe de Jong, Herinneringen I (Den Haag: Uitgeverij Koninginnegracht, 1993), 37.
242
Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht, 69.
243
Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005, 60.
244
IISG Bibliotheek, De Jong, ‘Nederland en Het Haagse Congres der Eerste ArbeidersInternationale’, Unpublished BA thesis, Gemeentelijke Universiteit (1936), 7 and 63.
72
groupings.245 In the beginning of 1939, De Jong promoted to editor in chief of De
Groene Amsterdammer.246
In the May days of 1940, when the Germans invaded the Netherlands and
occupied the country after a struggle that only lasted five days, De Jong – by then
26 – managed to flee with his wife Liesbeth to England, leaving his entire family
behind. None of them would survive the war; the exact fate of his twin brother
Sally (Salomon) even remains unknown until today. In London, the most
important function De Jong fulfilled was his role as anchorman at Radio Oranje, a
daily radio broadcast of the BBC (run by the Dutch government in-exile),
reporting on a variety of themes to citizens living in the occupied Netherlands. De
Jong’s speeches made him very popular among the Dutch public.247 Next to his
function as presenter at Radio Oranje, De Jong published propagandistic works
on the situation in the Netherlands during his stay in London. In addition to
Holland Fights the Nazis (1941) and The Lion Rampant (1943) – both
commissioned by an English publishing house – he published a series of four
books on the Netherlands during the war under the title Je Maintiendrai (I will
uphold – the motto of the House of Orange).248 All of these can be considered
propagandistic works as they merely underlined the heroic attitude of Dutch
society at large. Having published these titles, De Jong considered himself to be
better capable than anyone else to publish a thorough work on the years of
occupation in the Netherlands. 249
Different theories have been put forward on the way De Jong perceived his
stay in London. On the one hand, he was criticised after the war for pretending to
have experienced the war in the nearest possible way. In that sense, one could
argue he felt proud about the role he had fulfilled in London. Annie Romein–
Verschoor, Dutch Marxist sociologist and historian, for example indicated she felt
angry that De Jong pretended to have experienced the ‘real war’ while she had
245
De Jong, Herinneringen I, 69.
246
Boudwijn Smits, Loe de Jong: Historicus met een Missie 1914-2005 (Amsterdam: Boom), 69.
247
Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht, 71. Smits, Loe de Jong, 128.
248
Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht, 72.
249
Loe de Jong. Herinneringen I (Den Haag: SDU Uitgevers, 1996), 140-141.
73
actually suffered from the occupation in the Netherlands.250 Due to their political
views, she and her husband had to go into hiding during the war. Her husband Jan
Romein was imprisoned in concentration camp Amersfoort, situated in the
Netherlands, for three months. Loe de Jong had been close to the government in
exile, and to the Dutch queen Wilhelmina who had fled to London after the
outbreak of the war as well, but he had not actually suffered from the Nazi
occupation the way Jews in the occupied territories had done. This somewhat
presumptuous attitude of De Jong must have hurt those who had actually lived
through the war in the Netherlands.
De Jong also openly wondered in the ninth part of his Koninkrijk der
Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, however, whether he had done
everything he could to help the Jews during his stay in London. 251
He
contemplated upon his role during the war and a sense of guilt emerges from this
passage - a rather different attitude than identified by Annie Romein. Despite the
fact De Jong stated he had somehow distanced himself from his subject, he must
have struggled with the fact that he and his wife had escaped to London, while
everyone that was dear to him had been left behind.
Towards the end of the war, De Jong formulated the plan of establishing an
institution which would function as a research centre exclusively aimed at
investigating the war period in the Netherlands. Eventually, the proposed institute
was to report on its findings to the larger general public.252 What he did not know
by then, however, was that Prof. dr. N.W. Posthumus, one of his former teachers
who had been living in the Netherlands during the war, had already formulated a
similar idea. In fact, Posthumus’ plans were in a more advanced stage by then. 253
When De Jong visited the latter in Amsterdam (in July 1945) to inquire about his
plans, De Jong suggested that he himself would be the ideal candidate for a
leading position at the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (RIOD) – which
250 Annie
Romein-Verschoor, Omzien in Verwondering 2 (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij de
Arbeiderspers, 1971), 82.
251
Loe de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog 9, first part (Den
Haag: Staatsuitgeverij, 1979), 630.
252
Jaarverslag RvO, 1945-1956, ‘De Voorgeschiedenis’ 5-10, there: 9; Max Pam, De onderzoekers
van de oorlog. Het RIOD en het werk van Dr. L. de Jong (Den Haag: SDU, 1989), 14.
253
De Jong, ‘Problemen van Oorlogsdocumentatie’ in: Verslag van het 19de Nederlandse
Bibliotheek Congres, (Utrecht: May 1949), 36-40, there: 37.
74
was already established by then. His inquiry was successful and Loe de Jong
became the head of the RIOD on October, 1 1945 officially.254
Political reorientation characterised this early post-war period. The leftist
illegal newspapers Vrij Nederland and Het Parool had indicated in 1944 that they
wanted to get rid of the pillarization (verzuiling) of Dutch society. Instead, they
wanted a government-led economy providing social security, a security policy in
which the allied, democratic countries would cooperate and they wanted the
colonies to be treated according to principles of equality.255 These ideals,
‘socialism without marxism’, were also formulated by the political elites of
internment camp Sint-Michielsgestel. They established the Dutch Volksbeweging
(NVB), a new political movement. 256 On February, 9 1946, this movement
developed into the social-democratic Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA), which was the
continuation of three pre-war political parties: the Sociaal-Democratische
Arbeidspartij (SDAP), the Vrijzinnig Democratische Bond (VDB), and the
Christelijk-Democratische Unie (CDU). Like the editors of Het Parool and Vrij
Nederland, De Jong became member of this newly established political party.257
In 1953, De Jong obtained his long desired doctorate. The topic of his PhD
thesis had been the so-called Vijfde Colonne. The extraordinary military and
political successes of Hitler made citizens believe that these successes could be
explained by the ‘invisible hand’ of intelligence agents of the Fifth Column. De
Jong provided an overview of the hysteria surrounding this Vijfde Colonne and
proved that it had been a mere projection of the fears in the Netherlands.258 The
central conclusion was that the Colonne had not played a significant role in the
German military victories between 1939-1940.
After he finished his PhD thesis, De Jong was asked the honourable task of
writing the Dutch history of the Second World War. 259 Initially, the Directory had
254
Smits, Loe de Jong, 134.
255
Ibid., 192.
256
Ibid.
257
Ibid.
258
De Jong, De Duitse vijfde colonne in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff,
1953), 447.
259
Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht, 77.
75
preferred a construction with four authors, each representing a pillar (zuil) C.D.J.
Brandt (the social-democratic PvdA), I.J. Brugmans (VVD), J.C.H. de Pater (the
Reformed ARP) and L.J. Rogier (the Catholic Rooms Katholieke Staatspartij).
However, this structure in which four authors were working on one main work
proved unfeasible.260 Therefore on May, 1 1955, Loe de Jong officially became
the sole author of what was referred to as either Het Hoofdwerk (The Main Work)
or Het Geschiedwerk (The Historical Work). Functioning as the ‘Board of
Supervision and Editors’, Brandt, Brugmans, De Pater and Rogier remained
involved in the work, but only Brugmans lived to see the last volume of Het
Koninkrijk published.261
Loe de Jong was, and still is, a true icon in the Netherlands. Not only as
the reporter of Radio Oranje, the well-known journalist and the author of Het
Koninkrijk, but also because he was a liked guest in a variety of television
programs. His opinion was valued and followed by many. With his successful
series De Bezetting (“the Occupation”), telling the story of the Netherlands under
occupation, broadcasted between 1960 and 1965 and rebroadcasted between 1966
and 1967, his position as an authority and educator was firmly established.262 The
series were positively reviewed by the large majority – the general view was that
it had a unprecedented monumental character.263 Also, the general public
considered the broadcasted series as well as the pocket-editions containing the
literal texts of the series, an ‘utterly objective portrayal’ of the war and a ‘sublime
way of describing history’.264
Because of his journalistic activities as well as his successes on Dutch
national television, De Jong’s opinions became increasingly decisive for the way
the majority of the citizens viewed particular phenomena. As Smits has indicated,
particularly after the the success of De Bezetting, De Jong became an important
benchmark in the collective memory of the Dutch nation.265 In a similar vein,
260
Boudewijn Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005, 264-267.
261
Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht, 77. Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005, 513.
262
Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005, 342-343.
263
Trouw 6-5-1965, Het Binnenhof 6-5-1965.
264
Algemeen Handelsblad 22-4-1961. Nieuwe Eindhovense Courant, 28-4-1961.
265
Smits, Loe de Jong: Historicus met een Missie, 339.
76
Hans Blom stated that De Jong in fact functioned as the ‘conscience of the
nation’.266
Although De Jong spread a positive image of the behaviour of Dutch
society at large in De Bezetting, as he had previously done in his propagandistic
works Holland Fights the Nazis and The Lion Rampant, he also vented his first
serious criticisms in this period. He developed a more critical stance towards the
role of the establishment during the war. For example, he criticised the
functioning of the Nederlandse Unie in the ninth episode of the series.
The Nederlandse Unie was a political movement established by the
triumvirate of the Chief Superintendent of Police Louis Einthoven, the politician
and Queen’s Commissioner Johannes Linthorst Homan and Professor and later
politician Jan de Quay. On July, 24 1940, the Nederlandse Unie appealed to the
Dutch citizens through a manifesto. The aim was to commonly fight for the Dutch
ideals, while accepting the new reality of the Nazi occupation as a given. It was a
rather dubious aim that was neither collaborative nor resistant. Because many felt
this party was an alternative against the Dutch National Socialist Party (NSB), the
party initially received a lot of support from the Dutch society at large: around
600.000 members at its peak. 267
Although De Jong had been rather lenient towards the Union leaders in his
1941 publication Holland Fights the Nazis, his approach in De Bezetting was
much more critical. Already a few years before, he had rejected the role of its
leaders by arguing that the Nederlandse Unie had had ‘a dubious program and
some dubious leaders’. 268 In De Bezetting, De Jong used Professor of History
Pieter Geyl, who had already voiced some severe critiques at earlier stages on the
functioning of the Nederlandse Unie, in particular on De Quay who had become
Prime-Minister of the Netherlands in 1959.269 Geyl emphasised that the Unie
leaders, although they had acted with the right intentions, had been immensely
266
Hans Blom, “L. de Jong: geschiedschrijver en volksopvoeder” in: De Keizer, Een dure
verplichting en een kostelijk voorrecht, 79.
267
Wichert ten Have, De Nederlandse Unie: aanpassing, vernieuwing en confrontatie in de
bezettingstijd 1940-1941 (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1999), 321.
268
De Jong, “Anti-Nazi resistance in the Netherlands” First International Conference on the
History of Resistance Movements, held at Liege–Bruxelles–Breendonk (Sept, 14-17 1959).
269
Smits, Loe de Jong, 321.
77
naive – their actions had been everything but heroic. 270 Clearly, although he used
Geyl to take this critical stance, at least with reference to this part of the history of
the Second World War, an anti-establishment position was adopted by De Jong.
This critical stance correlated with a shift in De Jong’s personal and
political life in which he clashed with the political left of his PvdA party. With the
exception of the years between 1947-1949 (in this period he disagreed with the
fact that the large majority of his party approved of the government’s stance – the
Politionele Acties – vis-a-vis the Dutch Indies), De Jong had always been an
active member of this political party. The clash with the left wing of the PvdA first
of all clear materialised in the different views on the situation in Israel. Whereas
the political left became increasingly critical of the State of Israel, De Jong
supported its policies. Wouter Gortzak, son of the communist leader Henk
Gortzak and editor of the Groene Amsterdammer, had for example proclaimed in
May 1967 that the State of Israel was futile (een onding) – a view De Jong
rejected.271 In addition, De Jong’s views with reference to the situation in Vietnam
also differed from those at the PvdA’s left wing. De Jong defended the American
undertakings in Vietnam whereas the ‘New Left’ rejected this.272 Four prominent
members of the PvdA, amongst whom Loe de Jong, took a firm anti-communist
stance and stated that Communism should be forcefully contested.273 The
contrasting opinions with reference to this topic divided the entire party. In March
1970, this led to the establishment of a new party in which the conservative
socialists united themselves: DS’70. Although the manifesto of this party
correlated with De Jong’s views, De Jong did not became a member of DS’70 as
he did not believe in the usefulness of small political parties (splinterpartijen) – in
270
Loe de Jong, De Bezetting. Episode 2 00:14:59- 00:28:46. Can be viewed online at http://
www.npogeschiedenis.nl/nieuws/2011/December/Bekijk-De-Bezetting-van-Loe-de-Jong.html.
271
Wouter Gortzak, “Voor de Israëliers is er geen weg terug” in: De Groene Amsterdammer, May,
27 1967. “Begrip en sympathie doen echter niets af aan de omstandigheden dat de staat Israël,
tegen de achtergrond van de twintigste-eeuwse ontwikkelingen, in feite een onding is. Alleen al
door zijn bestaan temidden van een naar afschaffing van koloniale verhoudingen emanciperende
wereld provoceert Israël tot veel van de moeilijkheden die zich in het Midden-Oosten voordoen.”
272
Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005, 398-405; there: 403.
273
De Jong, ‘Balans van Vietnam’, Vrij Nederland, 7 mei 1966.
78
2001, De Jong again repeated that he had from the beginning considered these
democratic socialists to have served a ‘lost cause’.274
3.2 Resistance in Het Koninkrijk: Reality versus Ideal
In Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, De Jong had a
chance to refine and finalise the ideas he had articulated throughout the years.
Like all previous works he had written, he followed a particular method when
working on Het Koninkrijk; he used so-called fiches – notes written down on
small pieces of paper – which he ordered (by numbering them) prior to the writing
process.275 These fiches formed the foundation of his work.276 This way of
working never changed and, as comparative research on the fiches of Het
Koninkrijk and the actual published volumes indicates, De Jong usually strictly
followed the arrangement he had previously made. In the case of Het Koninkrijk,
he numbered all fiches in the left upper corner, with a follow-up number
indicating the subject to which the fiche belonged. Following this method,
120.000 fiches were produced for Het Koninkrijk.277 De Jong’s magnum opus is
not only valued for its magnitude, but also because it reached a large public; the
average amount of prints was 85.000 per volume.278 This is partly the result of the
fact that it was not written in a academic, usually somewhat boring and distant
manner but in a highly accessible style.279
In 1969, the first volume of Het Koninkrijk was published; much later than
had been agreed upon beforehand as the aim had been to have all volumes
274
Shirley Haasnoot and Johannes Houwink ten Cate, “Loe de Jong: ‘De oorlog begrijpelijk
maken voor iedereen, dat is wat ik wilde.’” in: Historisch Nieuwsblad Vol, 10 No. 2 (Feb. 2001),
12-19; there: 15.
275
Piet Koenes, “Prof dr L. de Jong, terug in Holland” in: Patrimonium, Vol. 84 (Augustus 1973),
221-267, there: 257.
276
Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht, 72.
277
Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005, 502.
278
Jan Bank, Cees Fasseur et al., (eds), Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede
Wereldoorlog. Part 14 Reacties en Recensies (Den Haag: SDU Uitgeverij, 1991), 269.
279
Blom, “L. de Jong: geschiedschrijver en volksopvoeder”, 66.
79
published by January, 1 1961.280 In 1988, the last part of the 27 volumes was
issued; by then the entire work comprised over 15.000 pages.281 The first fourteen
years after the official allocation of the task, De Jong had solely used his time to
gather together all information he needed in order to write the entire history of the
Netherlands in de Second World War. From 1970 onwards, he almost exclusively
dedicated his time to the writing process. 282 The extreme losses De Jong had
suffered during the war, obviously had an impact on him personally as well as on
his later career. However, as he indicated himself, rather soon he somehow found
a way to deal with these painful losses. That is, in his professional career he was
able to distance himself from the subject he was writing about, in contrast to for
example Jacques Presser whose writings De Jong characterised as too emotional
and involved.283 Despite the fact De Jong felt he distanced himself from his
subject, he was not the detached historian one nowadays would generally expect.
One of the most characteristic examples thereof is that De Jong continuously
included his own experiences in his work – something the members of the reading
commission were highly critical of.284
The volumes and corresponding chapters discussing resistance in the
Netherlands are mainly part four, chapter 15 and some sections of chapter 18; part
six chapters 3, 9 and 10; part seven chapters 6, 7 and 8. Whereas the story of
resistance had dominated the Bezetting series, this topic clearly was very marginal
in Het Koninkrijk. Out of the a little more than 16.600 pages in total, around 800
pages (around 5%) were dedicated to the topic. Relatively seen, much more space
was given to the topic of collaboration. This already hints to the notion that De
Jong had seriously revised his approach to the resistance subject in this period.
280
Van der Leeuw, ‘Loe de Jong: het Koninkrijk en het Instituut’ in: Madelon de Keizer, J.C.H.
Blom et al., (eds), ‘Een dure verplichting en een kostelijk voorrecht’: dr L. de Jong en zijn
geschiedwerk (Den Haag: SDU), 32-40.
281
Veerle van den Daelen, “Loe de Jong en Maurice de Wilde: twee oorlogsmonumenten” in”
Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent / Bijdragen tot de Eigentijdse Geschiedenis No. 22 (Brussel:
2010), 165.
282
Kristel, Geschiedschrijving als opdracht, 77.
283
Interview met Ischa Meijer, Vrij Nederland (15 en 22 september 1984).
284
Kristel, “‘Men kan niet over die massamoord spreken zonder persoonlijk te worden’: Loe de
Jong over de teloorgang van het Nederlandse jodendom” in: Madelon de Keizer (ed), Een dure
verplichting en een kostelijk voorrecht: Dr. L. de Jong en zijn Geschiedwerk (Den Haag: uitgeverij
Koninginnegracht, 1995), 85.
80
From the way De Jong developed his writing on resistance in the Netherlands
becomes clear that the heroic image he had portrayed most prominently in his
propagandistic wartime publication but also in De Bezetting series, was no longer
a view he supported at this stage. De Jong himself used to talk somewhat scornful
about these early publications because he, in his own view, had only known so
little about the war by then.285 In his Memoirs, he indicated that particularly with
reference to the way he had portrayed the behaviour of Dutch society at large, he
had highly overestimated the magnitude of the resistance of ‘our suppressed
countrymen’.286 It had, according to his own wording, been a ‘primitive image’. 287
In order to assemble information on (organised) resistance in the
Netherlands for Het Koninkrijk, De Jong partly depended upon works already
written by others. An important source of information was Het Grote Gebod:
Gedenkboek van het verzet in LO en LKP (1951) which was a book of
remembrance of the illegal LO-LKP group. 288 He also used information he had
already gathered for his earlier works on Dutch resistance. In contrast to the
existing notion that De Jong had no time to have conversations or interviews with
people on the subject, the fiches indicate that De Jong contacted people in the
vicinity of former resistance fighters and asked them to inform him of their
opinion of the people he was writing about. He also approached former resistance
fighters themselves to check particular facts and asked for their views on
particular resistance members they had been working with during the war.289 In
the arrangement of his ‘fiches’, De Jong made a clear distinction between the
existing information in historiography and the results of his personal inquiries, of
which he headed the latter under ‘impressions of’ – indicating that these
concerned the general impressions he had gained from the interviews he had
conducted with former illegal workers.
285
Hans van der Leeuw, “Loe de Jong, Het Koninkrijk en het Intituut” in: De Keizer, verplichtnig
en een kostelijk voorrecht, 38.
286
Loe de Jong, Herinneringen I (Den Haag: uitgeverij Koninginnegracht, 1993), 139.
287
Ibid.
288
This information can be deduced from De Jong’s organization of his fiches, and the continuous
references to this particular work in these fiches to Het Grote Gebod NIOD, Fiches L. de Jong.
289
NIOD, Secretariaatsarchief – Correspondentie. See for example Nov, 15 1972: Erik HazelhoffRoelfzema; July, 16 1974: Pim Boellaard.
81
With reference to the use of the definition ‘resistance’, De Jong’s
biographer Boudewijn Smits has indicated that De Jong formulated this in the
fifth volume of Het Koninkrijk – a definition on which elaborated in the next
volumes. De Jong chose to work with a broad understanding of the term in which
everyone who had somehow resisted against the occupier was included. 290 The
term ‘illegal’ in De Jong’s view only included the acts that had been considered
punishable crimes under German law.291 As a result, the definition ‘resistance’ was
considered to cover all other activities aimed at obstructing the policies and
actions of the Nazis. This broad use of the term did not mean, however, that De
Jong returned to the image of oppression versus resistance he had portrayed in the
early (post-)war years. Much more than any previous publication, or the way De
Jong approached the subject in De Bezetting series, De Jong’s approach is
considered to be nuanced and carefully weighed in his Hoofdwerk.292
At several instances, the reading commission was critical of De Jong’s
approach of the definition ‘resistance’. After De Jong had given a first version of
his fifth volume to the reading commission, Harry Paape, Lodewijk Rogier and
Bernardus Hermesdorf argued that, particularly with reference to the way De Jong
had portrayed the resistance of the Church, his approach could almost be
considered to be hagiographic.293 Prior to the publication of the seventh part of
Het Koninkrijk, a debate emerged on De Jong’s use of the terms ‘illegality’ and
‘resistance’. Hans van der Leeuw, who had taken part in the formation of the
national student resistance during the war and whose father – Gerardus van der
Leeuw – was the Minister of Education in the first post-war cabinet, disagreed
with the ‘resistance versus illegal’ terminology used by De Jong. He claimed that
it would be much more logical to make a distinction between ‘underground’ and
‘aboveground’ resistance.294 The difference between De Leeuw and De Jong is
striking. In contrast to De Jong, De Leeuw emphasised that the decision of some
290
Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005, 528.
291
Ibid. See De Jong, Het Koninkrijk part 5 (2), 216-217.
292
Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005, 383.
293
Bank, Fasseur et al., Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog: Reacties (1),
250.
294
Ibid., 464.
82
government officials to remain in power in order to prevent worse was not
dubious as it had been a form of resistance as well. Thereby, as the son of a
minister in cabinet, he voiced the stance taken by the government that wanted to
ensure that the attitude vast majority of the population could be headed under the
term ‘resistance’. Despite the criticisms, De Jong remained loyal to his own
views.295
Concerning the actual application of the term, criticisms were voiced after
the publication of the sixth volume of Het Koninkrijk. As was stated under the
heading ‘De Jong attacks resistant attitude of the Dutch citizens’ in the communist
(former illegal) newspaper De Waarheid:
‘While he (Loe de Jong – LV) still concluded in one of his prior volumes that [..]
the “large majority” of Dutch citizens has been in a anti-German mood [...],
which was particularly visible when all these people gathered together and
expressed their views, he now comes to the ‘scientific’ conclusion that most
Dutch citizens had hardly been involved in resistance activities and had never
taken notice of the deportation of Jews, of which more than 100.000 have not
returned from the camps.’ 296
Indeed, in the early volumes De Jong had portrayed an image of a widely spread
anti-German attitude, for example by describing large-scale resistance activities:
making and spreading illegal newspapers, wearing military buttons with a lion’s
head (the Dutch national symbol, a distinctive sign of unity) on it etcetera.297 He
also indicated in these early volumes that there has been large-scale solidarity
visible among the people, with the NSB as the spoilsport of this widespread
attitude.298 In these publications, De Jong indeed portrayed the anti-National
Socialist image of the Dutch population he had provided in De Bezetting as well;
albeit in a less dramatised manner. It is remarkable that despite the nuanced image
he had provided in Warmbrunn’s foreword in 1963, De Jong again returned to the
295
Ibid, 465.
296
NIOD, Secretariaatsarchief – Correspondentie Geschiedwerk part 7 (1975) – Diversen. De
Waarheid, 16 april 1975 “De Jong doet aanval op Volksverzet tegen Nazi-bezetters’.
297
De Jong, Het Koninkrijk part 4 (2), 601-603.
298
De Jong, Het Koninkrijk part 5 (1), 18.
83
image of the Netherlands as an essential heroic and resistant nation in these early
volumes. As the newspaper article indicates, his approach changed again in the
sixth volume. Clearly, De Jong was struggling to find a balance between the
heroic image he had provided in De Bezetting and the more distant and objective
approach he had shown in Warmbrunn’s foreword in which he claimed that
‘unwilling adjustment’ had been the rule and active resistance the exception. The
shift in the sixth volume can be explained by the fact that De Jong dealt with the
persecution of the Jews in this volume which must have served as a reminder to
the fact that the large part of the population had remained passive.299 The
struggles with the application and meaning of the term ‘resistance’ illustrate that
De Jong was aware of the implications of the employment of this term. The way
De Jong portrayed attitude of the majority of the population as well as former
illegal workers impacted the way the war was perceived by his contemporaries.
Then, what was the image De Jong actually wanted to portray with
reference to the topic ‘resistance’ in the Netherlands and to what extent did he
consciously adapt this image? By comparing the information De Jong possessed
on the fiches with the way he put this information into wording in Het Koninkrijk,
one can research this question more thoroughly. It gives an insight in the way De
Jong tried to find a balance between heroism and reality – between the image
people liked to see and the actual facts.
From the Secretariaatsarchief – the archive of the Secretariat – of the
NIOD becomes clear that De Jong’s contact with some former resistance fighters
was rather intimate.300 The correspondences between Pim Boellaard – whose role
as illegal worker and commanding officer of the Ordedienst (OD) was well
known – and Loe de Jong indicate that Boellaard played an advisory role in De
Jong’s portrayal of the actions of the underground in which Boellaard had been
involved.301 For example, he provided detailed information on the way he was
betrayed by one of his former illegal workers ‘Pasdeloup’ as well as on his
299
De Jong, Het Koninkrijk part 6. In chapters 1 and 4 the first and second phase of the deportation
of the Dutch Jews are discussed respectively.
300
301
Ibid.
For a well-documented overview of Pim Boelaard’s life, see: Jolande Withuis, Weest manlijk,
zijt sterk: Pim Boellaard (1903-2001), het leven van een verzetsheld (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij,
2009).
84
conversation with both Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich.302 When
Boellaard asked De Jong to leave out a particular agonising sentence on one of the
people he had closely worked with during the war, De Jong honoured his request.
De Jong’s clemency was not unlimited, however; when Boellaard asked to
remove certain harmful information of his cousin from Het Koninkrijk, De Jong
did not give in.303
If we take a closer look at the impressions Loe de Jong possessed of
individual resistance fighters and the way he wrote about them in Het Koninkrijk,
there are clear signs of omitting harmful information. In part six, chapter 3, for
example, De Jong wrote about Communist resistance fighter Gerrit Kastein. In his
fiches it becomes clear that a certain W. De Jong-Weber, the wife of an illegal
worker Kastein had closely worked with during the war, had stated in a personal
interview with De Jong on July, 14 1965, that Kastein had made a very
unsympathetic impression on her. He was continuously longing to carry out
attacks. She thought Kastein and his companions had been shooting way too
easily, and were in fact craving to be arrested.304 He was not careful at all and had
an arrogant attitude. Also, with regard to the recruitment of younger boys for the
armed CS-6 resistance group Kastein was part of, De Jong-Weber states that she
had found the way Kastein talked about these boys dreadful – he had said that
those kind of ‘baby-face-boys’ were perfect recruits, since these were the kind of
people who do everything they can in order to prove that they are ‘tough men’. 305
In Het Koninkrijk, nothing of the negative characterisation of Kastein can be
found back. With reference to the younger boys Kastein was working with, De
Jong even states: ‘[Kastein] very much welcomed the contact with juveniles from
302
NIOD, Secretariaatsarchief – Correspondentie Geschiedwerk part 6 (1974) – Diversen. Pim
Boellaard.
303
Ibid.
304
NIOD. Fiches L. de Jong. Part 6, chapter 3. Fiche 24. CS-6 en Kastein – mevr. W.C. De JongWeber, 15 juli 1965.
305
Ibid. Kastein maakte op mij een heel onsympathieke indruk, maar hij wist wat hij wilde. Hij
wilde aanslagen uitvoeren. Mijn man bracht hem in contact met Hans Katan en Leo Frijda. Dat
waren heel jonge jongens. Toen ze na de eerste kennismaking weg waren zei Kastein: “Ze zijn
prima. Het zijn van die echte baby-face jongetjes. Dat soort wil altijd bewijzen dat ze heel flink
zijn”. Ik vond het afschuwelijk dat hij zo sprak[..]. Achteraf gezien, vind ik wel dat ze te
gemakkelijk waren met schieten. Ze zaten te dringen op gearresteerd te worden.
85
Amsterdam: they were courageous boys!’ 306 Clearly, the tone significantly differs
from the description of his informant, W. De Jong-Weber.
Another example is that of the Knokploeg (KP) from Meppel, a town in
one of the northern provinces of the Netherlands (Drenthe). The local
Knokploegen were sections of the centrally organised LO-LKP. It was an armed
section of the resistance which busied itself with stealing ration cards, falsifying
personal documents, stealing weaponry, liberating arrested resistance fighters,
sabotage, and liquidating betrayers and opponents. The members of this local
group in Meppel were extremely reckless.307 In a conversation De Jong had had
with Liepke Scheepstra (one of the central figures in the LO-LKP) on June, 25
1946, the latter stated that these men were driving with a truck through the
province thereby shooting ‘everything that was wearing a uniform’, which he had
found terrible.308 In his view, this group had consisted of over-adventurous people
who did the most thoughtless things: ‘I considered that reckless’.309 In fact, their
actions had nothing to do with actual resistance. Rather than fighting for the
greater good and obstructing the Nazis in their aims, they made the situation
unnecessarily dangerous for their fellow country-men.
Another point of critique on this particular group was they way in which
they impeded cooperation with the central body of the LO-LKP. For example,
they refused to transfer ration cards to the group operating Amsterdam, while the
latter was very much in need of these.310 Instead, they used them only for their
own benefit. This is not the only example of a local group that seriously
misbehaved and caused more problems than that it actively provided support in
the struggle against the Germans. In some cases, the ration cards that were stolen
from distribution centres were sold on the black market rather than distributed
306
De Jong, Het Koninkrijk part 6 (1), 167. [H]et contact met de jeugdige Amsterdammers van de
groep CS-6 was hem zeer welkom: jongens die wat durfden!
307
NIOD Fiches L. de Jong. Part 7, chapter 6, VI-14
308
Ibid.
309
Ibid.
310
NIOD. Fiches L. de Jong. Part 7, chapter 6 VI-14.
86
among the needy, which was for example the case in Amsterdam. 311 None of these
qualifications can be found back in Het Koninkrijk.
With reference to one of the most well known resistance fighters, Johannes
Post, several remarks can be made as well. First, there are indications that
Johannes and his brother Marinus Post were continuously trying to surpass one
another in their fight against the Germans. Rather than jointly fighting the Nazis,
they were first and foremost struggling to outdo each other. ‘Remarkable’, De
Jong wrote down on one of the fiches concerning this subject, ‘was the continuous
struggle between both brothers, they were both advocates of the highest form of
justice, as they said themselves’.312 Particularly Johannes Post seemed to suffer
from an inferiority complex – he wanted to show how brave and strong he was
because he was ‘only’ a farmer in his daily life.313
One of Posts’ heroic actions was the raid of Het Huis van Bewaring – a
prison – in Amsterdam on the night of July, 15th 1944. His attempt to set free the
illegal workers that were imprisoned there proved fatal, however, because he had
misjudged the SS-er Jan Bogaard by trusting upon his help. Post and his men were
caught, and Post was executed not too long thereafter. In retrospect, the plan
seemed particularly ill-considered bearing in mind that Johannes Post had been
warned more than once, from different sides that his undertaking was fraught with
danger.314 Gerben Wagenaar, for example, one of the other major players in the
Dutch underground, declared to De Jong that he, Wagenaar, had had his own plans
to release the prisoners of the Weteringsschans.315 During one of the first meetings
between the Raad van Verzet, Ordedienst (OD) and the Knokploegen (KP) –
meetings that were organised with the aim to create a central organ under which
all illegal organisations were headed – Wagenaar realised that Post had formulated
a similar plan. Both men exchanged plans and Post admitted that his group was in
contact with someone from the prison who was willing to help them – although he
311
NIOD. Fiches L. de Jong. Part 7, chapter 6, VI-33.
312
NIOD. Fiches L. de Jong. Part 7, chapter 6, VI-21.
313
NIOD. Fiches L. de Jong. Part 7, chapter 6, VI-42.
314
Ibid.
315
NIOD. Fiches L. de Jong Part 7, chapter 6. Number is missing. Verklaring Gerben Wagenaar, 6
Mei 1958.
87
not even acknowledged by then that this was an SS-man, Wagenaar indicated to
De Jong that he already warned Post that he seriously mistrusted the situation. 316
Particularly when he heard that there was an SS-er involved and realised that the
success of the entire plan depended upon someone who could not be trusted.
Gerben Wagenaar claims: ‘the evening before the robbery I warned Post, but he
was confident that everything would work out well’.317
Dutch historian Geert Hovingh has noted in his 1995 biography of
Johannes Post that the latter was involved in more reckless and irresponsible
actions during the war: he set fire to farms of farmers that were member of the
National Socialist NSB party and carried out several risky liquidations. 318
Hovingh refers to Post as a true freebooter, who formulated his own plans, chose
his own path and was unwilling to cooperate with others in a larger cooperative.
He could not stand criticism, was impatient and demanded too much from his coworkers. This resulted in a poor communication between Post and other key
figures of the LO-LKP group.319
Taking these characteristics in mind, it becomes evident why Post, despite
the warnings, decided to continue his plan. Loe de Jong gives a rather different
explanation for Posts’ determination to do so. In the seventh part of his Koninkrijk
he writes:
‘From different sides, Post is being warned: German Wagenaar indicates that he
completely mistrusts the entire plan [..]. Mr. Wassenbergh informs Post via
someone else that Lages (the local chief of police and intelligence service – LV)
has inspected the ‘Huis van Bewaring’ and that extra security measures have been
taken. However, Johannes Post, entirely convinced of his plan and continuously
thinking of Jan Wildschut (one of the men that was held in the prison – LV),
could not bear the idea to call off the plan. He would have considered that
316
Ibid.
317
Ibid. ‘Nog de avond voor de overval heb ik Post laten waarschuwen, maar hij had er enorm
vertrouwen in, dat alles goed zou lopen.’
318
Geert C. Hovingh, Johannes Post: Exponent van het Verzet (Kampen: Kok, 1995), 383.
319
Ibid., 395-396.
88
geloofszwakheid (a weakness of his belief in God). He was convinced of the idea
that if things would go wrong, this would be God’s will.’320
In spite of the ideas uttered by De Jong’s informants, De Jong gives an entirely
different portrayal of him. Posts’ willingness to set his plans through at the
Weteringgschans were according to De Jong not the result of recklessness or the
idea that he wanted to prove himself, but rather informed by his strong character
and his conviction that he should help his friends who were held prison at the
Weteringsschans. As becomes clear from the fiches, De Jong attributed Posts’
miscalculation also to the extreme fatigue and the use of Pervitine; this drug
generally ensures that someone stays awake but constant use can lead to the loss
of concentration.321 In Het Koninkrijk, De Jong left out this latter explanation.
The passage in which De Jong claimed that Johannes Post was exclusively
thinking the fate of Jan Wildschut and considered it geloofszwakheid when he did
not set his plans through, was criticised by some members of the reading
commission. Economic historian Peter Klein stated in a Board meeting of 1975
that De Jong’s choice of words was highly suggestive and that his ideas were
based on false assumptions. Particularly taken sources that were available to De
Jong into consideration as well as the ideas that were brought up by the people
whom he had interviewed, the reading commission considered the story to be
romanticised.322 ‘Do you really know the motives of Johannes Post?’ Klein asked
De Jong – ‘Well, you don’t’, he immediately answered for him.323 De Jong
responded by claiming that what he wrote about de motives of Johannes Post is
based on what the Dutch novelist Anne de Vries had stated about Post. In 1948
Anne de Vries had written a book on Johannes Posts’ life which according to
320
De Jong, Het Koninkrijk part 7 (2), 761. Waarschuwingen komen binnen: Van Gerben
Wagenaar die van het plan vernomen en er geen grein vertrouwen in heeft, ook van anderen [sic].
Mr. Wassenbergh doet via een tussenpersoon weten dat Lages die middag in het Huis van
Bewaring is geweest en dat de wacht er versterkt is. Maar Johannes Post, innerlijk steeds met zijn
plan, steeds ook met Jan Wildschut bezig, brengt het niet op, de operatie af te gelasten. Dat zou hij
ook als geloofszwakheid ervaren hebben. Zou het misgaan, dan zou ook dat, aldus zijn
overtuiging, Gods wil zijn.’
321
Ibid.
322
NIOD. Secretariaatsarchief – Correspondentie Geschiedwerk part 7 (1975) – Diversen.
Geschiedwerk deel 7. Memorie van Punten opgestled voor de discussie op 3 november 1975
(Hsken 4,5,6).
323
Ibid.
89
Posts’ later biographer Hovingh was rather dubious as De Vries had left out some
crucial passages on the questionable role Post had played at several occasions. 324
Also, De Vries downplayed the role of people in the vicinity of Johannes Post, for
example his brother Marinus, who played a crucial role in the success of his
resistance activities. Hovingh blamed De Vries for having consciously contributed
to some serious misconceptions when it comes to the heroism of Johannes Post. 325
Despite the fact that De Vries’ work on the life of Johannes Post was clearly
romanticised as he is portrayed as having been an almost sacrosanct individual, 326
De Jong used this work for his Koninkrijk:
‘The only thing I added myself is that [Post] was continuously thinking of Jan
Wildschut. Well, I am convinced of the fact that Post had a tremendous feeling of
guilt regarding the arrest of one of his best friends to whom he had delegated a
dangerous operation. Without doubt, this was one of the factors that must have
encouraged him to carry on with his plans at the Huis van Bewaring through,
‘coute que coute’. 327
Of course, De Jong stood in his right when claiming that this was his
interpretation of the available material on Posts undertaking at the
Weteringsschans. However, the fact that he chose not to follow the line of the
historian whose work was of fundamental importance for Het Koninkrijk – Rogier
van der Aerde, co-author of Het grote gebod – but rather that of Anne de Vries,
whose work is so obviously part of a all too heroic form of history writing is
remarkable. Also, when looking at the material De Jong had assembled in addition
to the already existing historiography on the subject – the interviews with people
who had witnessed the particular event – it seems surprising that he did not opt for
a more nuanced wording. These are a few examples in which De Jong evidently
decided to leave out particular unfavourable information, and chose instead to
interpret the information available to him in the most positive way possible.
324
Hovingh, Johannes Post, 383.
325
Ibid.
326
De Vries, De Levensroman van Johannes Post, 14.
327
Ibid.
90
De Jong also reflected upon the more disadvantageous side of organised
resistance. Illustrative is, however, that he used the negative characterisation to
put a more positive one forward. For example, in the case of Gerrit Jan van
Heuven Goedhart who had been responsible for the editorial control of the illegal
Parool newspaper during the war. After he had fled to London in 1944, Van
Heuven Goedhart became Minister of Justice for the government in exile. A first
observation is that De Jong used an excessive amount of space and words to
describe what he personally thought of Van Heuven Goedhart. These impressions
were the result of two meetings he had had with the latter. It almost seems as if De
Jong was extremely close to Van Heuven Goedhart – as if he knew him better than
anyone else:
“ A highly intelligent man. Is able to correctly remember data. Does not like it
when someone addresses him for a mistake he has made. He is sharp, a fighter,
en without doubt a brave man. Lively, and a man of action. Missing is a centre
of stability. He sometimes makes the impression of being a condottiere. Too
much facade. You cannot really connect with him on a personal level. He is
ambitious and imaginative (this can be deduced from sentences like: ‘And then I
uttered the famous words’). He is also antagonistic, and wants to dominate. He
loves to fight for the underdog because he loves to fight [sic, emphasis in
original]. He is an Einzelgänger, distrusted by politicians. However: he is a tough
man. No doubt about that.”328
This quote provides an insight in the way De Jong wanted to understand
someone’s personality. It is a rather detailed and passionate description of
someone De Jong hardly knew personally. The fiches indicate that the attitude of
Van Heuven Goedhart was often beyond arrogance. During his escape to London
via Spain in 1944, Van Heuven Goedhart was assisted by a certain man named
Herzberger. Van Heuven Goedhart was continuously complaining that he was not
taken care of well enough. He had to sleep, for example, in the car of
Herzberger’s wife while the latter himself slept in a hotel. As it turned out, this
had of course everything to do with safety measures.329 As witness reports state,
328
De Jong, Het Koninkrijk part 9 (2), 1497. A characterization noted down on a fiche, which De
Jong decided to copy literally in Het Koninkrijk.
329
NIOD Fiches L. de Jong. Part 9, Chapter 19, XIX–10.
91
Herzberger did everything he could to make sure Van Heuven Goedhart was
comfortable. Still, the latter threatened to send a telegram to London to complain
about his conditions, which was of course a very dangerous thing to do (and rather
silly taking all precaution measures that were taken, into consideration).330 He was
seriously condemned by his co-workers for doing this. In the entire passage on
Van Heuven Goedhart – extending beyond the previously quoted qualifications –
De Jong does not include any of these characterisations.
The case of Carel Frederik Overhoff, who had been the chairman of the
Beurs (Stock Exchange) from 1942 onwards and on October, 2 1944 became the
Commander of the Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten (BS), and was generally
considered to have been an honest man and a true hero of the nation, is yet
another example of De Jong’s conscious glorification of illegal workers. In several
volumes, De Jong has written about the activities of Overhoff, mainly describing
his role as the leader of the BS. Several instances in which Overhoff in De Jong’s
view played a crucial role, are outlined. For example through his intervention
during the shooting incidents at the Dam Square and the Central Station in
Amsterdam. Overhoff and his men were able to prevent further incidences, De
Jong stated.331 Any negative characterisations of Overhoff are absent. In order to
outline the Overhoff’s activities, De Jong used the former’s memoirs.
Interestingly, De Jong does not at all reflect upon the circumstances under
which these memoirs were written. In 1949, Overhoff was namely accused of
having embezzled money (as much as 197.000 guilders) from private individuals
in order to live a comfortable life on his own.332 Overhoff was charged guilty on
December, 21 1950 and was imprisoned for 18 months – the news was widely
publicised in newspapers.333 Dutch historian Joggli Meihuizen concluded from
this case that Overhoff did not become the chairman of the Beurs due to reasons
of ‘good patriot-ship’, but rather because he wanted to make sure his illegal
activities would remain hidden. In december 1939 the Board of Directors had
330
Ibid.
331
De Jong, Het Koninkrijk part 10 (2), 1424.
332
Joggli Meihuizen, ‘Goed fout’: Het criminele verleden van beursvoorzitter en verzetsman Carel
F. Overhoff in de doofpot van historici (Amsterdam: Academische Pers, 1995), 27-33.
333
See for example Algemeen Handelsblad 1-3-1951 and 28-4-1951 and Het Parool 21-12-1950
and 1-3-1951.
92
namely proposed to introduce a check on the accountants of the Beurs. By
becoming the chairman, Overhoff could ensure that this proposal would not be
implemented. In addition, his appointment as Commander of the BS has made
increasingly unlikely that his activities would be unmasked.334
Loe de Jong, who in this period was political commentator for the Vrij
Nederland newspaper,335 must have been well aware of the Overhoff case as the
topic was covered by several newspapers. 336 Also, Overhoff’s memoirs were
written in commission of the RIOD in the period between January and July 1949
which was the period in which a judicial pre-examination on the Overhoff case
was executed. In his memoirs, Overhoff tried to condone his actions and even
kept denying that he had embezzled money. 337 Apparently, De Jong as the formal
commissioner of the memoirs (as he headed the RIOD), accepted these
recollections as a probable source of information as he made no reference to any
of the controversies surrounding Overhoff in his Koninkrijk.
The way De Jong decided to include or abandon certain characterisations
tell us that De Jong most certainly wanted to uphold the positive image people
had of illegal workers during the war. Although not as straightforwardly and
unbiased as in his early (post)-war writings, De Jong had not lost the tendency to
embellish the image of the war, as he had also done in De Bezetting. This did not
mean that Loe de Jong still contributed to the idea of a national myth of
resistance. As his foreword to Warmbrunn’s work in 1963 had already indicated,
De Jong also became increasingly critical of the attitude of the Dutch society at
large under occupation. Furthermore, De Jong had already voiced several antiestablishment criticisms in De Bezetting series in which underlined the
shortcomings of the Nederlandse Unie leaders.
In Het Koninkrijk, De Jong has taken these criticisms a step further. In the
fourth volume on the period between May 1940 and March 1941, De Jong gives a
negative characterisation of the role of the Dutch Secretaries General during the
334
Meihuizen, Goed fout, 43-46.
335
Smits, Loe de Jong, 203.
336
Meihuizen, Goed fout, 50.
337
Carel Frederik Overhoff, Oorlogsherinneringen 1946-1949. Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire
Historie Inv. No. 447, 83.
93
occupation. A Secretary General is the highest official of a Dutch Ministry (e.g.
Foreign Affairs and Education). During the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands,
the Secretaries-General had an exceptional position as the Queen and Ministers
had been forced to flee to London. After a meeting with Secretaries-General
Hirschfeld and A.M. Snouck Hurgronje (Internal Affairs), Minister Steenberghe
handed the governmental power over to the Commander-in-Chief of the armed
forces, General Henri Winkelman on May, 13 1940 and asked the SecretariesGeneral to follow the orders of Winkelman.338 The first aim was to take care of
the new situation (the government was in exile) until the arrival of the German
administration. Consequently, the Secretaries-General continued their work 339 On
May, 29 1940, the Germans installed Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart. As a result,
the Secretaries-General fell under his authority. As the Dutch Secreatries-General
were allowed to remain in power, the initial mood and perspective was positive
because they felt they could execute a policy of the lesser evil – it was always
better to have a Dutch rather than a Nazi functionaries, it was argued.340 However,
conflicts soon emerged and Minister of Defence C. Ringeling was fired by SeyssInquart in June 1940. This fate also befell A. Scholtens, Minister of Social Affairs
in August of that same year.341 One month later, G. van Poelje (Education) was
fired as well. At a later stage this also counted for J. Tenkink, Secretary-General
of Justice and A.M. Snouck Hurgronje.
Those Secretaries-General who had remained in power, as De Jong has
argued, had apparently agreed amongst themselves that the critical situation the
country was facing justified far-reaching collaboration with the Germans, ‘for the
sake of the Dutch nation’. The Secreataries-General were working hard during the
Nazi occupation, ‘maybe harder than they had ever done before’.342 They had a
tendency to reject everything that would cause unrest or instability. The
Secretaries-General considered it to be their task, De Jong argued, to actively
338
Peter Romijn, Burgemeesters in oorlogstijd: Besturen onder Duitse bezetting (Amsterdam:
Balans, 2006), 95.
339
Ibid, 96.
340
Ibid., 139.
341
De Jong, Het Koninkrijk part 4 (1). 127-129.
342
Ibid., 129.
94
combat any form of resistance – the entire country, including the government in
exile, was supposed to trust upon their leading capacities.343 The SecretariesGeneral did not want to provoke the Germans and they had already made some
crucial concessions in a rather early phase of the occupation. For example, in the
beginning of July that had accepted that Dutch Military Officers enlisted for the
Waffen-SS.344 Also, the Secretaries-General were responsible for the discharge of
Jewish civil servants (an order of Seyss-Inquart) in November 1940. At a later
stage, the Secretaries-General amongst others wilfully cooperated in the
reorientation of the economic system that would be beneficial to the German war
effort.345
While the position of the Secretaries-General was rather strong as SeyssInquart largely depended upon their cooperation for a successful implementation
of his plans, as De Jong has argued, this body did not make use of its position at
all. To the contrary, they cooperated to the fullest extend and actively combatted
any form of resistance. Even Seyss-Inquart was surprised about the level of
cooperation provided by the Secretaries-General.346
De Jong refers to the
cooperation as a ‘symbioses’ between the Germans on the one hand, and
important departments such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of
Justice on the other.347
De Jong has also voiced criticism on the attitude of the Protestant Church
which had not voiced any form of critique after the beginning of the deportation
of the Dutch Jews in the first chapter of the sixth volume.348 In addition, with
reference to the stance of the government in exile in this period, De Jong has
remarked that the government had failed to encourage the Dutch people to help
their fellow Jewish citizens. Although it was difficult to assess at that moment
what effect such an encouragement would have, De Jong has underlined that this
lack of support must have been terrible for those Jews that were still listening to
343
Ibid., 131–132.
344
Ibid.
345
Ibid., 199.
346
Ibid., 139.
347
Ibid., 140.
348
De Jong, Het Koninkrijk vol. 6 (1), 20.
95
Radio Oranje.349 The failure of both Dutch police and the Dutch Railways who
transported the Jews and received money to so to provide resistance to the
German regulations has been criticised as well in this chapter.350 These were
criticisms De Jong had not voiced before. Clearly, De Jong became increasingly
critical of the attitude of the establishment during the war.
3.3 Historian versus Moral Educator
In his Memoirs, Loe de Jong has indicated that he had become aware of his
incorrect, heroic view of the attitude of the majority of the population, as
expressed in Holland Fights the Nazis and The Lion Rampant, during the last year
of the war. In London, he was in 1944 confronted with illegal newspapers in
which the attitude of the Dutch population at large was condemned. After this,
according to his own words, it was difficult to listen to Queen Wilhelmina who
still emphasised during radio broadcasts how brave the Dutch citizens were. 351
Despite the fact that he knew that the attitude of the majority of the Dutch citizens
had been less heroic than he had previously anticipated, De Jong still decided to
portray a mostly favourable image up until the mid 1960s, for example in De
Bezetting. In light of the knowledge De Jong indicated to have possessed on the
real attitude of the Dutch people, we should wonder why he still decided to
portray this favourable image, even more than a decade after the war. Was he
indeed an instrument of the government’s policies and the myth of resistance it
wanted to create, as Pieter Lagrou has indicated? What were the aims De Jong had
with the publication of both the works prior to, and Het Koninkrijk, itself?
As De Jong has indicated himself, his work was never meant for a limited
group of experts on the topic – his aim was to reach a large public.352 The major
role he fulfilled on Dutch television as well as his journalistic articles caused that
de Jong in fact stood beyond the boundaries of his profession. He was, as Hans
Blom has indicated, a historian as well as a moral-political ‘educator of the
349
Ibid., 22-23. For an overview of the policies of the Dutch Railways see pp. 37-41.
350
Ibid., 30-31.
351
De Jong, Herinneringen I, 140.
352
Haasnoot and Houwink ten Cate, ‘Loe de Jong’,15.
96
people’ – and he was aware of that.353 Exemplary thereof is that he engaged
himself in major political debates. In 1970, on the congress of Vereniging van ExPolitieke Gevangenen (Expogé – an association of ex-political prisoners), making
a connection between his recently published third volume of Het Koninkrijk in
which he had argued that the Dutch military defence had been too weak when de
Nazis invaded the country in May 1940, De Jong pleaded for an increase of the
governmental expenses on the Dutch army.354 As the SDAP, and later the PvdA
had always had a pacifistic tradition this stance could be considered remarkable
from a social-democrat. Next to the fact this indicates that De Jong as an historian
was thoroughly involved in current-day politics, this example is illustrative of two
central characteristics of De Jong in this period. First, that he was increasingly
moving up to the right in the political left in this period, as an increase of military
expenses was a more conservative standpoint. Second, it shows that he tried to
write a history of the war that was agreeable to all; by underlining that the defeat
had not been a societal but rather a military problem.
The so-called “Aantjes” affair, named after its protagonist Willem Aantjes,
illustrates the crucial influence of De Jong on contemporary politics. In 1978, the
career of Dutch politician Willem Aantjes was demolished because of De Jong’s
accusation that the former had voluntarily applied for the Waffen-SS. In a rather
dramatic way, De Jong shared his findings with millions of Dutch citizens during
a press conference which was broadcasted live on Dutch television. He openly
accused Aantjes of a betrayer of the Dutch national honour. To a certain extent, De
Jong had been right, although Aantjes had not applied at the Waffen-SS, he had
applied at the Germaansche SS, about which he had remained silent after the war.
Because of De Jong’s theatrical accusal, Aantjes was immediately charged guilty
and disdained.355 This example is telling of the extent to which De Jong’s
influence reached. How can we correspond this image of De Jong as a ‘public
prosecutor’ to that of the objective historian?
353
Hans Blom, “L. de Jong: Geschiedschrijver en Volksopvoeder”, 72.
354
Henk Wesseling, Onder historici: opstellen over geschiedenis en geschiedschrijving
(Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1995), 103.
355
Smits, Loe de Jong: Historicus met een Missie, 630-652.
97
First, we need to understand De Jong’s underlying motives for writing his
magnum opus. What did he want to teach his readers about the way the
Netherlands lived through the Second World War? From the title of the recently
published biography of De Jong, Loe de Jong 1914-2005: Historicus met een
Missie can be deduced that he generally operated towards a specific goal, a
mission. In 1949, De Jong outlined the aim and nature of his work as following:
‘Only with the use of Het Geschiedwerk, an academically justifiable and
authoritative conception of one of the most important and turbulent periods in
Dutch history can be formulated to the Dutch
public and its offspring. I
consider that important out of moral as well as educational motivations: Het
Geschiedwerk will play an indirect role in lower, middle and higher education.’356
In a 1980 television interview, De Jong stated that Het Koninkrijk had in his view
been written in commission of contemporaries who had consciously lived through
the war: the aim, he indicated, was to record their views on the war.357 In that
sense, it should be approached as a typical representation of the ‘war generation’
of which De Jong himself was obviously part. Het Koninkrijk, viewed from this
perspective, is functioning more as a monument than anything else. In 1985, De
Jong emphasised this again by indicating that he had always wanted to serve a
certain ‘moral task’ – he wanted to ‘educate’ Dutch citizens and develop their
norms and values.358 This is a view that is shared by Dutch historian Henri
Beunders who indicated that De Jong already in a very early stage must have
formulated his task to be similar to that of priests-historian of the nineteenth
century, explaining that the past serves as a lesson to the future.359 A function that
was not uncommon by that time. 360 In a similar vein, the Dutch historian Peter
Raedts has referred to the role of Loe de Jong not as a mere researcher of past
events but, as a guardian of the ideals of the Dutch nation. Even more than the
356
Quoted in a nota of De Jong dating from 1949, which was published in a series in 1977. De
Jong, Tussentijds. Historische Studies (Amsterdam: Querido, 1977), 14.
357
VPRO television series H.J.A. Hofland ontmoet prof. dr. L. de Jong , May, 11 1980.
358
Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005, Historicus met een Missie, 780.
359
H. Beunders, “Van Dr. L. de Jong tot ‘Zeg maar Loe’ : de macht van de moderne media”, in: M.
de Keizer (ed.), Een dure verplichting en een kostelijk voorrecht, 146.
360
Hans Blom, “L. de Jong: geschiedschrijver en volksopvoeder”, 70-71.
98
priests, philosophers and reverends all together, De Jong in his fulfilled this role
as he continuously urged the Dutch people to act in a proper ethical manner.361
However when he was publicly honoured for having fulfilled his major
task in 1988, De Jong stated that he had not written Het Koninkrijk with a didactic
purpose in mind.362 He had simply wanted to show what war could do to
mankind, and what people in distressing situations are capable of. ‘I simply
wanted to make the war understandable to everyone who reads my work’ is what
De Jong claimed in an interview with Shirley Haasnoot en Johannes Houwink ten
Cate in 2001:
‘I do not have the illusion that this (Het Koninkrijk - LV) is the definitive version
of the way the Netherlands lived through the Second World War. I have never
had these kind of foolish thoughts. There is not a single subject in which
something like a “definitive history” exists. It is nothing more than a useful
summary of everything that was known about the war at that particular moment –
but neither is it less than that. Without doubt, next generations will focus on
different aspects of the war and write different histories of it. That is something I
knew from the outset.’363
From this perspective, De Jong exclusively wanted to write an overview of all
material available on the Second World War in the Netherlands and make sure
future generations would understand what war can do to people. This is slightly in
contrast to his earlier proclaimed notion that he wanted to teach his public certain
moral lessons and develop their norms and values. On the one hand, De Jong
indicated to have fulfilled a particular educational and moral function, whereas on
the other hand he stated that he never had didactic purpose in mind when he was
writing his work.
361
Peter Raedts, De ontdekking van de Middeleeuwen: Geschiedenis van een illusie (Amsterdam:
Wereldbibliotheek, 2011), 19.
362
Madelon de Keizer, ‘Een dure verplichting en een kostelijk voorrecht’: Dr. L. de Jong en zijn
Geschiedwerk (Den Haag: SDU Uitgeverij Koninginnegracht, 1995), 17.
363
‘Ik zeg niet: mijn boek is de definitieve versie van Nederland in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Die
dwaze gedachte heb ik nooit gehad, van geen enkel onderwerp bestaat een definitieve
geschiedenis. Het is niets meer dan een nuttige samenvatting van alles wat er op dat moment
bekend was. Maar ook niets minder. Volgende generaties zullen ongetwijfeld andere accenten
leggen en andere oorlogsgeschiedenissen schrijven. Dat is iets waarvan ik me altijd bewust ben
geweest.’ Shirley Haasnoot and Johannes Houwink ten Cate, Loe de Jong: ‘De oorlog begrijpelijk
maken voor iedereen: dat is wat ik wilde’ (Amsterdam: Historisch Nieuwsblad No 1, 2001), 17.
99
In his struggle to do justice to the different functions he served – of which
those of volksopvoeder and historian were dominant – De Jong might have valued
his task to write the history of the ‘war generation’ in a way that was accessible to
everyone higher than his role as objective, nuanced historian. De Jong once
argued that being objective was entirely impossible with reference to the war – it
would, as he stated, lead to an approach to the war in which only descriptions of
the daily meteorological conditions could be outlined.364 However, it seems as if
he was deliberately naive in this. It is clear that objectivity is an impossible aim to
strive for, but there is still a difference between telling the story of what you think
is ‘the story of the generation’, and a more distant and critical approach to the
subject, in which room is made for sides to one particular phenomenon.
Apparently, De Jong decided to do the former which could be a good explanation
for his choice to leave out particular information on (members of) illegal
organisations in Het Koninkrijk. It was, in fact, a good way to satisfy his readers.
Pieter Lagrou had a clear view on the lessons Het Koninkrijk had been
supposed to teach. The very fact that it was written in commission of the Dutch
government, in his opinion contributed to the expectation that the ‘truth’ about the
war would appear from the assignment. Furthermore, it was supposed to create a
national consensus concerning the past in his view.365 Lagrou clearly related the
post-war governmental aims he formulated in The Legacy of Nazi Occupation:
Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe 1945-1965 (2000) –
the creation of a national myth of resistance and victory – to the publication of
Het Koninkrijk. 366 From this perspective, Het Koninkrijk is regarded as fulfilling
similar functions as the ones identified in De Bezetting. At first sight, it seems
Lagrou was right about this since the founding father of the NIOD (former
RIOD), Nicolaas Wilhelmus Posthumus in 1943 indicated that Het Hoofdwerk
was supposed to create ‘national unity’ and ‘pacification’ (nationale eenheid en
364
Smits, Loe de Jong, 418.
365
Pieter Lagrou, “Historiographie de guerre et historiographie du temps présent: cadres
institutionnels en Europe occidentale, 1945-2000 in: Bulletin du Comité International d’histoire de
la deuxième guerre mondiale No. 30-31 (1999-2000), 195.
366
Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in
Western Europe 1945-1965 (Cambridge: University Press, 2010), 22-30.
100
pacificatie).367 The large majority of the Dutch pillarized (verzuilde) Dutch
society was supposed to recognise itself in the image that was portrayed in Het
Koninkrijk in Posthumus’ view. 368 One of De Jong critics, the leftist journalist Jan
Rogier took this a step further by stating that Het Koninkrijk had a particular
social confirmative function. De Jong, in his view, was not writing independently,
but rather in command of the reigning powers in society – unfavourable aspects of
the contemporary world were legitimised through his work. 369 Lagrou clearly
copied this view when he discussed the function of De Jong in the establishment
and maintenance of ‘myth of resistance’.
De Jong himself does not refer to notions of creating a ‘consensus’, or a
‘national history’ with whom everyone was supposed to identify and we might
consider whether this was a goal he was consciously aiming for at all. From the
meeting reports with the Board of Supervision and Editors (also referred to as the
reading commission), by then in a different formation – Ad Manning, Peter Klein,
Izaak Johannes Brugmans, Ben Sijes, Hans van der Leeuw and Harry Paape – the
image appears of a rather authoritative historian with his own plans and goals. 370
For example, De Jong often did not incorporate any of the critique that was
brought up in the reading commission.371 He was highly reserved when it came to
reformulating the ideas he had framed after almost three decades of research, and
rightly so. He was the one who had to fulfil the almost inhumane task of writing
the entire history of the Netherlands during the Second World War, and he
probably was not guided by principles Posthumus had once formulated, despite
the fact that he highly respected the latter.
There have been many discussions about De Jong’s function of a
‘Rijksgeschiedschrijver’ – an historian working in commission of the government.
367
Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005: Historicus met een Missie, 786.
368
Ibid.
369
For an overview of the criticisms voiced by Roier, see: Jan Rogier, De geschiedschrijver des
rijks en andere socialisten. Politieke Portretten I (Nijmegen: Socialistische UItgeverij Nijmegen,
1979).
370
371
Ibid., 512-513.
For an overview of the criticisms voiced by the reading commission, see: Jan Bank, Cees
Fasseur et al., (eds), Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Part 14 Reacties
en Recensies (Den Haag: SDU Uitgeverij, 1991).
101
His objectivity and autonomy, for example, were seriously questioned. 372
Eventually it was clearly established, however, that the government had no
influence on the way De Jong represented the war – no ministerial approval was
needed before the publication of each of the volumes. As De Jong had already
indicated in the introduction to Het Voorspel, the first volume of Het Koninkrijk,
he alone was responsible for the content of each of the volumes that would
follow. 373 Thus, De Jong was not actually working in commission of the
government, although the latter paid him for his work and was therefore in
principle entirely autonomous. In that sense, it cannot be stated that De Jong
consciously and directly implemented the aims of the government, which Lagrou
has identified as the willingness to create a national myth with which a vast
percentage of the population could identify.374
Of course, De Jong was conscious of his role as public figure and the fact
that the large majority of the public wanted to hear the heroic history that was told
in De Bezetting. However, whether this was a story De Jong, as an historian, felt
he had to tell is a different question. The discord between on the one hand Loe de
Jong’s nuanced foreword in Werner Warmbrunn’s book, in which he claimed that
‘unwilling adjustment’ had been the rule and active resistance the exception, and
on the other hand his representation of more ‘appealing’ ideas of limited
collaboration and all-encompassing heroism in De Bezetting, indicates that De
Jong struggled with the different tasks he served.
It is always difficult to speculate about underlying motives. One could
argue that De Jong simply did not consider the negative portrayals for example of
illegal workers helpful or necessary for understanding Dutch resistance during the
Second World War. In the previous mentioned cases, however, De Jong did not
only leave out the more negative views, he carefully administered the
representations by turning every negative aspect in a positive, or, as in the case of
Johannes Post, attributed certain characteristics or feelings for which he had no
substantial evidential foundation. It would be tempting to argue that De Jong
wanted to tell the story the larger public desired to hear about the ‘resistance
372
Smits, Loe de Jong 1914-2005: Historicus met een Missie, 515-544, there: 516.
373
De Jong, Voorspel, v-vii, there: vii.
374
Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation, 22.
102
heroes’ they had been honouring for three decades by now. However, De Jong did
not seem to be a man who was led by anything else than his own views and
opinions. This is illustrated by the criticisms De Jong increasingly started to voice,
for example on the functioning of the Nederlandse Unie.
Het Koninkrijk on the one hand contains a nationalist historical vision on
the history of the Second World War, with an overt favourable portrayal of
resistance heroes. On the other hand, an almost hidden monograph on the
persecution of the Jews can be identified, in which an anti-establishment position
is taken, particularly focussed on the attitude of those who maintained in power
during the war such as the Secretaries-General, the Dutch police, the railways and
even the government in exile.375
De Jong’s magnum opus is in fact a symbiosis of these two elements (a
nationalist historical vision and an anti-establishment position). It was almost
impossible for De Jong not to take this anti-establishment stance as his colleague,
and rival, Jacques Presser had already done this quite a few years earlier. In
Ondergang: De vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom
1940-1945 (1965), Presser took a rather emotive stance and raised some critical
questions on the responsibilities of the Dutch government and the attitude of the
Dutch citizens during the persecution of the Jews between 1940 and 1945. 376
Published in the 1960s, this work was representative of the atmosphere of its time
– the new post-war generation started to ask fundamental questions on the
behaviour of their parents during the war. Thus, while Presser had been a man of
his time, De Jong had still represented rather outdated heroic in his Bezetting
series that were broadcasted between 1960 and 1965. In order to keep up, De Jong
had to take a more critical stance than he had done previously which is precisely
what has done in Het Koninkrijk. De Jong’s more critical stance must also have
been the result of a true conviction that the period of Nazi occupation had, for the
majority of the Dutch people, not been as glorious as he had previously indicated.
375
In chapter 16, volume 4 De Jong has described the first phase of the persecution of the Dutch
Jews. This story is continued in volume 6, chapter 1 and 4 and ends with a description of the last
phase of the persecution in part 7, chapters 2 and 3.
376
Jacques Presser, Ondergang: de vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse Jodendom,
1940-1945 (Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij, 1965).
103
The more critical approach to Dutch resistance in general in the sixth volume,
which was centred around the persecution of the Jews, underlines this.
This anti-establishment attitude which De Jong already displayed in De
Bezetting and extended in Het Koninkrijk, together with the fact that De Jong
clearly functioned as an independent historian following his own goals and ideals,
challenge Lagrou’s notion that De Jong has been instrumental to the views the
Dutch government wanted to spread. Although De Jong most certainly has
contributed to this image of the Netherlands as having been a heroic nation
through his early propagandistic works as well as through De Bezetting series, we
have seen that this was more the result of the continuous struggle between the
different roles De Jong was serving than a conscious choice put forward by the
government. As a result, we can argue that De Jong was neither consciously and
continuously contributing to the ‘myth of resistance’ in this period, nor a mere
erudite derivative of the message the government wanted to spread. In fact, from
the 1960s onwards, he even contested the idea of nation-wide resistance by
critically reviewing the role of particular (governmental) bodies and the society at
large during the war. Rather than a mere puppet of the regime, Loe de Jong
therefore functioned as a dissenting voice in the government-led myth of
resistance.
104
– Conclusion –
The continuous reformulations of the term ‘resistance’ by Stichting 1940-1945 has
created an intimate insight in the way this body has approached the history of the
war and the role of illegal workers herein in the immediate post-war period. The
constant flow of new applications showed that individual stories of heroism were
often difficult to assess with the existing use of the term. This ensured that the
term as such was often challenged, both by the Board of Directors as well as by
the Commission of Appeals. In doing so, the sole official representative body of
the former illegal workers receiving (financial) support from the government was
not a mere extension of the government’s policies. Rather than simply following
the regulations outlined in the Wet Buitengewoon Pensioen (WBP), the Stichting
formulated its own meaning of the term. By continuously reformulating and
challenging the use of the term ‘resistance’, the Stichting acted against the
government’s wish to create one unequivocal, uncontested heroic image of the
ideal resister with which everyone could identify himself. The Stichting has thus
played an active role in formulating an alternative definition of ‘resistance’ than
was beneficial to the government’s policies and created a conflicting milieu de
mémoire instead in which the actions of the veterans rather than their political or
social background mattered. This resulted in the inclusion of groups in the
Stichting’s policies which the government was aiming to expel both on the
political and on the social level. The Communists are the most telling example
thereof.
Albeit on a different level, Loe de Jong has expressed ideas that were not
instrumental to the proliferation of the myth of resistance either. In the early
1960s, he criticised the role of Dutch society at large in the foreword he wrote to
Werner Warmbrunn’s The Dutch under German Occupation. In the same period,
he also voiced criticisms on the actions and attitude of De Nederlandse Unie
through the Bezetting series. A decade later, De Jong took this a step further in Het
Koninkrijk: he denounced the role of the Dutch the Secretaries-General, the
railways, the Protestant Church and even the government in exile for their failure
to act during the persecution of the Jews. These findings challenge Lagrou’s
notion that the views expressed by De Jong were mere erudite derivatives of a
105
political memory as he cannot be considered an instrument in the hands of the
Dutch government. The close analysis that has been provided of De Jong has
indicated that he has struggled with the different roles he was fulfilling and that he
was well aware of the impact his writings had on the larger public. The very fact
that those volumes in which he discussed the persecution of the Jews contain
more critical views on the functioning of the establishment indicates that De Jong
was in fact affected by the topic he was writing about: his renditions were not the
result of a preordained path decided by the government.
A review based on these two case studies allows for more a more nuanced
perspective on the theories of Ceserani, Bossenbroek, Lagrou and Van Ginkel. As
Stichting 1940-1945 was the only representative body of former illegal workers
condoned by the Dutch government and because of the government’s conscious
policy of preventing former illegal to be singled out (e.g. by banning the use of an
honorary Resistance Cross) one can conclude that the government played an
important role in singling out former resistance fighters at the expense of other
groups. In doing so, the myth of resistance with which the majority of the Dutch
citizens was supposed to identify could flourish. This is underlined by the fact that
is was only in 1973 that other victims of the Nazi persecution were officially
recognised through the Wet Uitkering Vervolgingsslachtoffers (WUV). Stories that
were not useful to the idea of a heroic nation were thereby ignored and, contrary
to what Bossenbroek has argued, the government thus played a conscious role in
marginalising these groups. Ceserani has even more radically argued that there
was in fact a lot of attention for the persecution of the Jews – at least more than
has often has been acknowledged by historians. In the case of the Netherlands,
this notion can be contested. In some instances, scholarly works were published
that paid attention to the history of persecution, such as Herzberg’s Kroniek der
Jodenvervolging (1950). However, there was no official recognition for their
suffering – certainly not comparable to the support provided to resistance veterans
– by the government in the first two decades after the war. As the continuous
reapplications of individuals to Stichting 1940-1945 have underlined, pensions
provided by the government to illegal workers were an important form of
recognition either to those who had been left behind or those who were physically
suffering themselves as a consequence of their illegal war activities. The fact that
106
this form of recognition was denied to other groups, must have a cause of
disappointment to those who had been persecuted by the Nazi regime.
This conscious policy of marginalisation of particular groups is in line
with Lagrou’s argument that the government was carrying out an active policy of
exclusion in order to maintain the myth of resistance. However, it contrasts to Van
Ginkel’s idea that the role of the government in the construction of a national
memory of resistance was only marginal. At the same time, the case studies of
Loe de Jong and Stichting 1940-1945 have indicated that dissenting voices were
present as well; the analysis of De Jong has indicated that, contrary to what
Lagrou has argued, scholarly histories were not necessarily the same as political
memories in the first decades after the war. In addition, Stichting 1940-1945
created alternative definitions of resistance that amongst others did not fit in the
government’s wish to exclude particular groups from the national heroic memory
of the war. In that sense, Van Ginkel’s argument is legitimate as divergent stories
were formulated that challenged the national myth of resistance and the
government’s policies. In the case of Stichting 1940-1945 these alternative
perceptions of the past were even successful as Communists received a pension as
well. Even if the government was a dominant factor in providing the foundation
for the myth of resistance, it was at least not as all-encompassing and successful
as Lagrou has claimed.
This research has indicated that although it is crucial to recognise that the
government’s policy of marginalisation was conscious, alternative stories were
voiced as well. As the success of the government’s policies were not as allencompassing as Lagrou has claimed, the Dutch situation has shown more
likenesses with Belgium and France, where alternative milieux de mémoire
dominated society, than has been acknowledged by Lagrou. Still, these contesting
memories were much more peripheral in the Netherlands than in the two other
countries. Whereas in France and Belgium opposing milieux de mémoire resulted
in divisions within the country – Gaullists versus anti-Gaullists and Walloons
versus Flemings – the Dutch society was successfully united through the national
story of resistance up until the 1960s. The conclusion is therefore that the reality
of the functioning and success of the myth of resistance in the Netherlands lies in
between the views presented by Lagrou and Van Ginkel: the government was
107
largely successful in establishing and maintaining a myth of resistance but
dissenting notions challenging the government’s approach to the government and
to resistance in particular, were voiced as well.
The case of Stichting 1940-1945 has furthermore underlined that the
definition ‘resistance’ is elusive. Unlike any of the historians who have written on
the topic to date, the way Stichting 1940-1945 has tried to put the definition into
practice has indicated that the definition ‘resistance’ is too problematic and
slippery to put into wording. As the number of applications continued to grow, the
Foundation continued to problematise the term, resulting in several official
adjustments and endless unofficial rewordings. Taking this into consideration,
historians have taken the easy way out. Even Loe de Jong, whose approach to the
term and actual understanding of the definition as such has changed with the
development of time, held the illusion that he was capable of formulating an allencompassing meaning of the term. However, the gap between the practical
application of the term and the theoretical framework provided by historians can
hardly be bridged. This leads to the conclusion that whereas historians should
continue to strive for a more nuanced understanding of the term ‘resistance’, it
should be acknowledged as well that the term as such is actually too complicated
to provide a fixed definition for. There is, in fact, for historians not even a
necessity to do so as they do not function as the moral judges of the history they
are writing about.
The analyses of the role Stichting 1940-1945 and Loe de Jong fulfilled in
the Dutch post-war society and their position vis-à-vis the difficult history of the
war, has allowed for a more nuanced overview of the society Prime Minister
Schermerhorn was trying to rebuild. The dynamics of Dutch society were not
unequivocal and in some cases there were disruptive elements that hindered a
smooth rebuilding of the country. Rather than turning a blind eye to the difficult
past, questions were raised on the government’s approach to the term resistance,
alternatives were formulated and criticisms were voiced on the dubious role the
authorities had played during the German occupation. The 1960s were indeed a
breakpoint, as both Lagrou and Van Ginkel have argued, because it marked the
beginning of a widespread more critical approach to the myth that had been
cherished by the majority of the Dutch citizens up until then. However, the
108
foundation for this change was already provided almost immediately after the war,
most prominently by Stichting 1940-1945 because it created its own vision on the
history of the war and the functioning of illegal workers in particular. By
continuously redrawing the lines of what ‘resistance’ had included, it challenged
the government’s wish to create an uncontested consensus of heroism.
109
Archives
Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust-, en Genocidestudies (NIOD),
Amsterdam
- Fiches Loe de Jong
- Secretariaatsarchief – Correspondentie Geschiedwerk
- Archiefmap 249-0360. Dossier Jehovah’s Getuigen.
- Archiefmap 249-0859A, Verzetsplannen voor na de oorlog
- Archiefmap 263-7c Het Parool, 1 Sept, 1945.
Stichting 1940-1945, Diemen
- Handleiding ter beoordeling van de vraag of een geval al dan niet in
aanmerking komt voor bijstand door de Stichting 1940-1945.
- Hoofdbestuur Vergaderingen
- Notulen Beroepscommissie 1946-1950
- Persoonsdossiers
- Vergaderingen Dagelijk Bestuur Agenda’s en Notulen 1946-1950
Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire Historie, Den Haag
- Inv. No.447, 83. Carel Frederik Overhoff, Oorlogsherinneringen
1946-1949.
110
Bibliography
Baar, P. de. “Alida de Jong (1885-1943): Één knotje tussen de snorren” in:
Historisch Nieuwsblad (2014).
Bank, J. “Oorlogsverleden in Nederland”, Oratie. Baarn: AMBO, 1983.
Beunders, H. “Van dr. L. de Jong tot ‘zeg maar Loe’: de macht van de moderne
media” in: M. de Keizer (ed.), Een dure verplichting en een kostelijk
voorrecht, 145-175.
Blom, H. and Cahen, J. “Joodse Nederlanders, Nederlandse Joden en de Joden in
Nederland” in: Blom, R. Fuks-Mansfeld et al., Geschiedenis van de
Joden in Nederland. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 1995.
--., “In de ban van goed en fout? wetenschappelijke geschiedschrijving over de
bezettingstijd.” Inaugural lecture at the University of Amsterdam (1983).
Bossenbroek, M. De meelstreep: terugkeer en opvang na de Tweede
Wereldoorlog. Amsterdam: Bakker, 2001.
Boucher, F., Kalkman, E. et al. Woord gehouden: veertig jaar Stichting
1940-1945. ‘s Gravenhage: Staatsuitgeverij, 1985.
Daelen, V. van den. “Loe de Jong en Maurice de Wilde: twee
oorlogsmonumenten” in: Bijdragen tot de eigentijdse geschiedenis,
Vol 22 (2010), 161-196.
Drenth, P. “Illegalen in vredestijd: teleurstellingen en successen van
verzetsstrijders en politieke gevangenen” in: H. Piersma (ed),
Mensenheugenis: Terugkeer en opvang na de Tweede Wereldoorlog,
21-43.
Fenby, J. “The Man Who Said ‘Non’” in: History Today Vol. 60 No. 6 (2010),
35-41.
Galen Last, D. van. “The Netherlands” in: Bob Moore (ed), Resistance in Western
Europe, 211-227.
Ginkel, R. van. Rondom de stilte: herdenkingscultuur in Nederland. Amsterdam:
Bakker, 2011.
Gortzak, W. “Voor de Israëliers is er geen weg terug” in: De Groene
Amsterdammer (May 1967).
111
Haan, I. de. Na de ondergang: de herinnering aan de jodenvervolging in
Nederland, 1945-1995. Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers, 1997.
Haasnoot, S., and Houwink ten Cate, J. “Loe de Jong: ‘De oorlog begrijpelijk
maken voor iedereen, dat is wat ik wilde.’”in: Historisch Nieuwsblad Vol.
10, No. 2 (Feb. 2001).
Halbwachs, M. Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1925.
Have, W. ten. De Nederlandse Unie: aanpassing, vernieuwing en confrontatie in
bezettingstijd 1940-1941. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1999.
Helman, A. Een doodgewone held: de levensgeschiedenis van Gerrit-Jan van der
Veen 1902-1944. Amsterdam: Uitgeversbedrijf de Spieghel, 1946.
Houwink ten Cate, J. De kampen voor ‘foute’ Nederlanders na de Tweede
Wereldorlog” in: Historisch Nieuwsblad No. 7 (2001).
Hovingh, G. Johannes Post: Exponent van het Verzet. Kampen: Kok, 1995.
Jackson, J. France: The Dark Years, 1940-1944. Oxford: University Press, 2001.
Jong, L de. Herinneringen. Den Haag: Staatsuitgeverij Koninginnegracht, 1993.
--., Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. The Hague:
Staatsuitgeverij, 12 volumes (1970-1988).
--., “foreword” in: Warmbrunn, W., The Dutch under German Occupation
1940-1945. Stanford: University Press, 1963.
--., “Anti-Nazi Resistance in the Netherlands” Lecure held at the first
International Conference on the History of Resistance Movements.
Liege–Bruxelles–Breendonk (Sept 14-17 1959).
--., “Problemen van Oorlogsdocumentatie” in: Verslag van het 19de Nederlandse
Bibliotheek Congres (1949).
--., The Lion Rampant. New York: Querido, 1943.
--., Holland Fights the Nazis. London: Drummond, 1941.
Keizer, M. de (ed.). ‘Een dure verplichting en een kostelijk voorrecht’: Dr. L. de
Jong en zijn Geschiedwerk. Den Haag: Sdu Uitgeverij Koninginnegracht,
1995.
Koenes, P. “Prof dr L. de Jong, terug in Holland” in: Patrimonium, Vol. 84 (1973).
112
Kossman, E. “De Tweede Wereldoorlog: accommodatie en collaboratie” in:
Winkler Prins de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden: De Lage Landen van
1780-1970. Amsterdam: Elsevier: 1977.
Kristel, C. Geschiedschrijving als opdracht: Abel Herzberg, Jacques Presser en
Loe de Jong over de jodenvervolging. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1998.
--., “Men kan niet over die massamoord spreken zonder persoonlijk te worden’:
Loe de Jong over de teloorgang van het Nederlandse jodendom” in: De
Keizer, Een dure verplichting en een kostelijk voorrecht.
Lagrou, P. “The politics of memory. Resistance as a collective myth in post-war
France, Belgium and the Netherlands 1945-1965” in: European Review
Vol. 11, No. 4 (2003).
--., The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in
Western Europe 1945-1965. Cambridge: University Press, 2000.
--., “Historiographie de guerre et historiographie du temps présent: cadres
institutionnels en Europe occidentale, 1945-2000” in: Bulletin du Comité
International d’histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale Vol. 30 (1999).
--., “Victims of Genocide and National Memory: Belgium, France and the
Netherlands 1940-1965 in: Past and Present Vol. 154 (1997).
--., “Patriotten en regenten: het parochiale patriottisme van de naoorlogse
Nederlandse illegaliteit 1940-1945” in: G. Aalders et al., (eds),
Oorlogsdocumentatie ’40-’45: Zesde jaarboek van het Rijksinstituut voor
Oorlogsdocumentatie. Zutphen: Wallenburg, 1995.
--., “Herdenken en vergeten. De politieke verwerking van verzet en vervolging in
Nederland na 1945” in: Spieghel Historial Vol. 29 (1994).
Meihuizen, J. ‘Goed fout’: Het criminele verleden van beursvoorzitter en
verzetsman Carel F. Overhoff in de doofpot van historici. Amsterdam:
Academische Pers, 1995.
Mooij, A. De Strijd om de Februaristaking. Amsterdam: Balans, 2006.
Moore, B (ed). Resistance in Western Europe. Oxford: Berg, 2000.
Norel, K. and Eyck, C.H., Den vijand wederstaan: historische schetsen van de
Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers, Landelijke
Knokploegen en Centrale
Inlichtingendienst. Wageningen: N.V. Gebr.
Zomer en Keuning’s Uitgeversmij, 1946.
113
Piersma, H. Bevochten recht: politieke besluitvorming rond de wetten voor
oorlogsslachtoffers. Amsterdam: Boom, 2010.
Piersma, T, Driever, J. et al. Getrouw aan hun geloof: de vervolging van de
Nederlandse Jehovah’s Getuigen in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Westervoort:
Van Gruting, 2005.
Ribbens, K. Schenk, J et al. Oorlog op vijf continenten: nieuwe Nederlanders en
de geschiedenis van de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Amsterdam: Boom, 2008.
Romein, J. “Spieghel historiael. De geschiedschrijving over de Tachtigjarige
Oorlog” in: ibidem et al., In opdracht van de tijd. Tien voordrachten over
historische thema’s. Amsterdam: Querido, 1946.
Romein-Verschoor, A. Omzien in verwondering. Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 2
volumes (1970-1971).
Romijn, P. “Learning on ‘the job’: Dutch war volunteers entering the Indonesian
war of independence, 1945-1956” in: Journal of Genocide Research Vol.
14, No. 3 (2012).
--., Burgemeesters in oorlogstijd: Besturen onder Duitse bezetting. Amsterdam:
Balans, 2006.
Pam, M. De onderzoekers van de oorlog. Het RIOD en het werk van Dr. L. de
Jong. Den Haag: SDU, 1989.
Sas, N. van., De metamorfose van Nederland: van oude orde naar moderniteit
1750-1900. Amsterdam: University Press, 2004.
Siertsma, B., “Kampgetuigenissen. Herinnering in teksten” in: Van Vree and Van
der Laarse (eds), De dynamiek van der herinnering, 106-127.
Sijes, B. De Februaristaking 25-26 Februari 1941. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff,
1954.
Smits, B. Loe de Jong 1914-2005: Historicus met een missie. Amsterdam: Boom,
2014.
Swaan, A. de., “De maatschappelijke verwerking van oorlogsverledens” in: J.
Dane (ed), Keerzijde van bevrijding: opstellen over de maatschappelijke,
psychosociale en medische aspecten van de problematiek van
oorlogsgetroffenen. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1984.
Tops, E. “Lebendige Vergangenheit” in: Monica Flacke (ed.), Mythen der
Nationen. 1945 – Arena der Erinnerungen. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag
114
Philipp von Zabem, 2004.
Touwen–Bouwsma, E. Op zoek naar grenzen: toepassing en uitvoering van de
wetten voor oorlogsslachtoffers. Amsterdam: Boom, 2010.
Velaers, J. and Van Goethem, H., Leopold III: De Koning, het Land, de Oorlog.
Tielt: Lannoo, 1994.
Vos, C. Televisie en bezetting: een onderzoek naar de documentaire verbeelding
van de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Nederland. Hilversum: Verloren, 1995.
Vree, F. van and R van derLaarse (eds),
De dynamiek van de herinnering:
Nederland en de Tweede Wereldoorlog in een internationale context.
Amsterdam: Bakker, 2009.
--., “Televisie en de geschiedenis van de Tweede Wereldoorlog” in: Theoretische
Geschiedenis, Vol 22 (1995).
Vries, A. De levensroman van Johannes Post. Kampen: Kok, 1949.
Warmbrunn, W. The Dutch under German Occupation, 1940-1945. Stanford:
University Press, 1963.
Wesseling, H. Onder historici: opstellen over geschiedenis en geschiedschrijving.
Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1995.
Wielek, H. De oorlog die Hitel won. Amsterdam: Amsterdamsche Boek- en
Courantmij, 1947.
Withuis J. Weest manlijk, zijt sterk: Pim Boellaard (1903-2001), het leven van een
verzetsheld. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2009.
Zur, J. “Remembering and Forgetting” in: Kim. L. Rogers, Selma Leydesdorff et
al. (eds), Trauma and Life Stories: International Perspectives. New York:
Routledge, 1999.
115
Appendix
116
117
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Johannes Houwink ten Cate
for our extensive conversations, his useful remarks and his enthusiasm.
Furthermore, I want to thank the staff members of the NIOD Institute for War-,
Holocaust-, and Genocidestudies archive, who have always been helpful in
finding the right sources, and whose specific advise on the use of Loe de Jong’s
fiches proved invaluable. To Josine Oost, who coordinates the applications to
Stichting 1940-1945 in particular I want to express my gratitude for her time and
support. Without her help, it would have been impossible to explore the archives
of the Stichting. This also counts for Jan Driever, director of Stichting 1940-1945.
Lastly, I would like to thank my fellow students and colleagues for our inspiring
discussions and for their moral support.
118

Topics SOJA 25-9-2015

Writing a Bachelor Thesis in Computer Science

F. Watuseke Tondano and not Toulour In

Beating heart cells on a silicon chip

ANALECTA PRAEHISTORICA LEIDENSIA 29

Facilitaion of Learning 2

BDZONDERE VERGADERING

Karel Davids, publications in English

Chapter 20: Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Northern Europe

REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN LEGAL TEXTS