by Anna Hajkova
Master thesis (Magisterarbeit), chair for Social History, Humboldt-University Berlin, 2006.
My master thesis is a microstudy in the social history of the Holocaust. I analyse the deportations from the... more
My master thesis is a microstudy in the social history of the Holocaust. I analyse the deportations from the Nazi-occupied Netherlands to the Theresienstadt ghetto, and how was their life of the deported Jews here. The study is based on wide source basis from the Dutch, Israeli, Czech and other archives, in combination with thirty oral-history interviews I conducted with Theresienstadt survivors. I examine why the Nazis decided to deport people to Theresienstadt, and who “qualified” to be deported here, the Jewish settlement for those with merits. I also show the agency of the individuals in the deportation process. In the second step, I describe how did the Jews from the Netherlands adapt in the forced community of Theresienstadt. I analyse the reasons of their specific isolating behaviour here, and I also show what consequences did it have.
The Dutch Jews – all of them, not only those deported to Theresienstadt, had a shatteringly high mortality after their deportation to concentration camps. Ironically, although Theresienstadt was the deportation site from which most Dutch Jews returned alive, it indicates us to crucial insights about the Holocaust in the Netherlands and in particular, helps us to understand why so many Dutch Jews did not survive their deportation.
At the same time, Theresienstadt remains a conspicuously under-researched topic in the Dutch historiography: one of the reasons may have been the language barrier. Knowledge of Czech and German is indispensable for scholarship on Theresienstadt. The lacuna on Theresienstadt is symptomatic of a wider scholarly trend in the Netherlands, neglecting what happened to those Jews from the Netherlands who were deported “to the East”.
The SS decided to deport Jews from the Netherlands to Theresienstadt in order to create the illusion of a better alternative, thus creating an exception form the deportation routine to Auschwitz and Sobibór. Those who won a military award in the First World War, were important scholars or had other civilian merits, the prisoners-functionaries from Westerbork and employees of the Joodse Raad among other categories: all these people could apply to get on the so-called T-Liste. These lists were administered by Gertrud Slottke, a clerk at the IVB4 Den Haag, a Dutch pendant of Eichmann’s office in Berlin. Slottke was assisted by the prisoners-functionaries in Westerbork, the collected the inmates’ applications and advised how to improve them. Such an improvement could mean a lot of things: some people bought falsified certificates, others used their networks and claimed different credentials. The last but one transport encompassed two large groups which were long protected by high-ranking Dutch places, the so-called Protestant and Barneveld group. Many of the deportees to Theresienstadt were German or Austrian emigrants, and between 30-40% were native Dutch Jews. Although many of the emigrants, particularly children, considered Holland their home, the native Dutch Jews were keen on pointing out that they didn’t belong here. This was to play a crucial role throughout the time of incarceration in Theresienstadt.
After a brief chapter introducing the Terezín ghetto, I discuss the demography. Altogether, 4,897 people were deported from the Netherlands to Theresienstadt with eight transports. Theresienstadt was thus for the Netherlands a much smaller destination than Auschwitz or Sobibór. From these, about 1,287 were liberated in Theresienstadt, 434 in Switzerland, and 2,948 were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. From the people deported to Auschwitz, between 500 and 600 survived. 157 deportees from the Netherlands died in Theresienstadt, and six children were born here. Apart from these demographical information, the Jews from the Netherlands were usually middle and upper middle class. Due to their class and education background, most of the native Dutch could speak or understand German well. They were, compared with the average ghetto population, relatively young. For several months, the Jews from the Netherlands lived unlike other inmates in a separate housing of the Hamburg barracks.
The everyday life in Theresienstadt brought out the differences between the native Dutch and the Dutch emigrants. I examine this on several defining features of the quotidian life in the ghetto: labour, food, children, religious and cultural life and romantic relationships. The inmates society in Terezín was fairly integrative to the newcomers, who were sought out by the Jewish self-administration and tied in into the existing facilities. The German Dutch integrated quickly. They got involved in their jobs, made friends and fell in love. German-Dutch children went to the children’s homes, their parents, if they sought religious life, participated, correspondingly to their faith, in Jewish, Catholic or Protestant organised rites. -- Incidentally, this is an ample evidence of the race madness of the Nazis: a huge proportion of the Theresienstadt inmates were atheist, one fifth was Christian. The Dutch group is a perfect example of this frequently overlooked aspect, namely that although the Nazis marked their victims as Jews, they did not necessarily see themselves as such. It would be a logical consequence of the Nazi mentality to follow that Holocaust made its victims Jewish.
The native Dutch, on the other hand, were something different altogether. They were oblivious to the ghetto infrastructure, and didn’t send their children to the youth homes, so that they had to stay at home without supervision. They felt uncomfortable speaking German, and stayed at distance to the job assignments. This was in so far problematic, as most of the labour in the ghetto was used for upkeeping of the old town. Soon, the Dutch Jews were rumoured to be unhappy, lazy and dirty. The group remained isolated, collapsed to lone families and individuals. The only activity where the native Dutch developed considerable energy was food acquisition. In short, their adaptation can be in reference to Erving Goffman’s model of total institutions described as regression.
This regressive adaptation had a tragic impact after the deportation to Auschwitz and other camps with brutal conditions. The Dutch died quicker and in higher numbers than everyone else. While indications were known thanks to the Dutch postwar survival statistics, I analysed this aspect in detail, applying a quantitative analysis of the Theresienstadt to Auschwitz transports. The reasons for this disastrous development lay in the common culture of the Dutch Jewry (discussed in ch. 2), based in the verzuiling, and also the specific Jewish acculturation which triggered an isolated position and low intermarriages, and comparably little foreign contacts and immigration. The reaction of Dutch Jews to the new, unknown and threatening was regression, isolating the self from the danger. This historical experience worked well throughout the times, but failed during the one development of modernity, being the Holocaust. It is interesting that this does not apply only to the Dutch Jews, but apparently to the non-Jewish Dutch as well, as indicated by a brief view at the situation of Dutch political prisoners in Neuengamme. Hence the specific, regressive adaptation of the Dutch Jews was a mutual feature of the Dutch population, rather than a consequence of being a Jewish minority in the verzuild society. Thus the case of the Dutch Jews in Theresienstadt tells us that although all people deported here came because they were marked as Jewish, the way they lived shows how much they shared with places and people they had considered home.
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