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The February strike (Dutch : Februaristaking) of 1941 was a general strike in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II. It was organized by the outlawed Communist Party of the Netherlands in defence of persecuted Dutch Jews and against the anti-Jewish measures and the activities of Nazism in general.
The direct causes were a series of arrests and pogroms held by the Germans in the Jewish neighbourhood of Amsterdam, the Jodenbuurt. It started on 25 February 1941 and lasted for two days. On 26 February, 300,000 Amsterdam people joined the strike. The strike was harshly suppressed by the Germans after three days. [1]
Although the February strike is considered to be the first public protest against the Nazis in occupied Europe, [2] it was quickly suppressed. There was no major citizen action public action after the top Nazi official, Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart, warned the Dutch public that there would be draconian consequences. [3] There was a smaller public action against the deportation of Jews to be organized by non-Jews in Berlin, known as the Rosenstrasse protest. [4]
The Netherlands surrendered to Nazi Germany in May 1940, and the first anti-Jewish measures—the barring of Jews from the air-raid defence services—began in June 1940. In November 1940 all Jews were removed from public positions, including universities, which led directly to student protests in Leiden and elsewhere. Meanwhile, there was an increasing feeling of unrest by workers in Amsterdam, especially the workers at the shipyards in Amsterdam-Noord, who were threatened with forced labour in Germany.
As tensions rose, the Dutch Nazi party Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging and its militant arm, the WA ( Weerbaarheidsafdeling ), were involved in a series of provocations in Jewish neighbourhoods in Amsterdam. This led to a series of street battles between the WA and Jewish self-defence groups and their supporters, and culminated in a pitched battle on 11 February 1941 on the Waterlooplein. WA member Hendrik Koot was badly wounded and died of his injuries on 14 February.
On 12 February, German soldiers, assisted by Dutch police, encircled and cordoned the old Jewish neighbourhood from the rest of the city by putting up barbed wire, raising bridges, and setting up police checkpoints. The neighbourhood was now forbidden for non-Jews.
On 19 February, the German Grüne Polizei stormed into the Koco ice-cream parlour on Van Woustraat in Rivierenbuurt. In the fight that ensued, several police officers were wounded. Revenge came in the weekend of 22–23 February, when a large-scale pogrom was undertaken by the Germans in which 425 Jewish men of age 20–35 were taken hostage and imprisoned in Kamp Schoorl and eventually sent to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps, where most of them had died within a year. Of the 425, only two survived the war.
After the pogrom, on 24 February, an open-air meeting was held on the Noordermarkt to organise a strike to protest against the pogrom and the forced labour to Germany. The Communist Party of the Netherlands, which was made illegal by the Germans, printed and spread a call to strike throughout the city the next morning. The first to strike were the city's tram drivers, followed by other city services as well as companies like department store De Bijenkorf and schools. Eventually 300,000 people joined in the strike, which brought much of the city to a halt and caught the Germans by surprise. [5]
The strike grew spontaneously as other workers followed the example of the tram drivers, and spread to other areas, including Zaanstad and Kennemerland in the west; Bussum, Hilversum and Utrecht in the east; and in the south. [6]
In response, a curfew was declared and a German police battalion and two SS Totenkopf regiments were drafted into the city. Protests were violently quelled, often by gunfire. Four strikers were later executed by firing squad, 22 sentenced to prison, and the city was ordered to pay five million guilders in restitution. [7] : 257–258
The suppression was successful, and most strikers were back at work by 27 February. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the strike was significant in that it was the first and only large-scale direct action against the Nazis' treatment of Jews in Europe.
The next strikes would be student strikes in November 1941 and the so-called "milk strike" (because of the farmers’ refusal to supply milk) in April–May in 1943, which ushered in a period of armed covert resistance on a national scale.
The rest of Nazi-occupied Europe also went on strike later on, the Greeks in April 1942, [8] the Danes from the summer of 1943, the Luxemburgers in August 1942, the Belgians in May 1941, a strike in Norway in September 1941 when shipyard workers lost their daily quota of milk, and the Northern French miners in May–June 1941. However, the February strike 1941 in Amsterdam was the only strike against how Jews were treated by the Germans in Nazi-occupied Europe.
The strike is remembered each year on 25 February, with a march past the De Dokwerker , the memorial made for the strike in 1951 and first unveiled in December 1952. This statue was made by Dutch sculptor Mari Andriessen. All political parties, as well as the city public transport authorities and organizations of Holocaust survivors, participate in the remembrance. Three communist organizers were shot to death after the strike and 12 communist organizers were sent to jails in Germany, but during the Cold War, the communists were forced to remember the strike separately from other political groups. For many years after the war, Dutch officials publicly denied contributions by the communists to the strike.[ citation needed ] In 2010, the Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem collectively awarded the strikers the title Righteous Among the Nations. [9]
Arthur Seyss-Inquart was an Austrian Nazi politician who served as Chancellor of Austria in 1938 for two days before the Anschluss. His positions in Nazi Germany included deputy governor to Hans Frank in the General Government of Occupied Poland, and Reich commissioner for the German-occupied Netherlands. In the latter role, he shared responsibility for the deportation of Dutch Jews and the shooting of hostages.
During World War II, some individuals and groups helped Jews and others escape the Holocaust conducted by Nazi Germany.
Despite Dutch neutrality, Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940 as part of Fall Gelb. On 15 May 1940, one day after the bombing of Rotterdam, the Dutch forces surrendered. The Dutch government and the royal family relocated to London. Princess Juliana and her children sought refuge in Ottawa, Canada until after the war.
The Rosenstrasseprotest is considered to be a significant event in German history as it is the only mass public demonstration by Germans in the Third Reich against the deportation of Jews. The protest on Rosenstraße took place in Berlin during February and March 1943. This demonstration was initiated and sustained by the non-Jewish wives and relatives of Jewish men and Mischlinge,. Their husbands had been targeted for deportation, based on the racial policy of Nazi Germany, and detained in the Jewish community house on Rosenstrasse. The protests, which occurred over the course of seven days, continued until the men being held were released by the Gestapo. The protest by the women of the Rosenstrasse led to the release of approximately 1,800 Berlin Jews.
The Iași pogrom was a series of pogroms launched by governmental forces under Marshal and Conducător Ion Antonescu in the Romanian city of Iași against its Jewish community, which lasted from 29 June to 6 July 1941. According to Romanian authorities, over 13,266 people, or one third of the Jewish population, were massacred in the pogrom itself or in its aftermath, and many were deported. It was one of the worst pogroms during World War II.
The Dutch resistance to the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II can be mainly characterized as non-violent. The primary organizers were the Communist Party, churches, and independent groups. Over 300,000 people were hidden from German authorities in the autumn of 1944 by 60,000 to 200,000 illegal landlords and caretakers. These activities were tolerated knowingly by some one million people, including a few individuals among German occupiers and military.
The Lwów Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto in the city of Lwów in the territory of Nazi-administered General Government in German-occupied Poland.
The history of the Jews during World War II is almost synonymous with the persecution and murder of Jews which was committed on an unprecedented scale in Europe and European North Africa. The massive scale of the Holocaust which happened during World War II greatly affected the Jewish people and world public opinion, which only understood the dimensions of the Final Solution after the war. The genocide, known as HaShoah in Hebrew, aimed at the elimination of the Jewish people on the European continent. It was a broadly organized operation led by Nazi Germany, in which approximately six million Jews were murdered methodically and with horrifying cruelty. Although the Holocaust was organized by the highest levels of the Nazi German government, the vast majority of Jews murdered were not German, but were instead residents of countries invaded by the Nazis after 1938. Of the approximately 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, approximately 160,000 to 180,000 were German Jews. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, more than one million Jews were murdered in gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp alone. The murder of the Jews of Europe affected Jewish communities in Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Channel Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Moldova, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
Jewish resistance under Nazi rule took various forms of organized underground activities conducted against German occupation regimes in Europe by Jews during World War II. According to historian Yehuda Bauer, Jewish resistance was defined as actions that were taken against all laws and actions acted by Germans. The term is particularly connected with the Holocaust and includes a multitude of different social responses by those oppressed, as well as both passive and armed resistance conducted by Jews themselves.
Fabrikaktion is the term for the last major roundup of Jews for deportation from Berlin, which began on 27 February 1943, and ended about a week later. Most of the remaining Jews were working at Berlin plants or for the Jewish welfare organization. The term Fabrikaktion was coined by survivors after World War II; the Gestapo had designated the plan Große Fabrik-Aktion. While the plan was not restricted to Berlin, it later became most notable for catalyzing the Rosenstrasse protest, the only mass public demonstration of German citizens which contested the Nazi government's deportation of the Jews.
Hans Georg Calmeyer was a German lawyer from Osnabrück who saved thousands of Jews from certain death during the German occupation of the Netherlands from 1941 until 1945. On 4 March 1992, Yad Vashem recognised Hans Calmeyer as Righteous Among the Nations.
The Reichskommissariat Niederlande was the civilian occupation regime set up by Germany in the German-occupied Netherlands during World War II. Its full title was the Reich Commissariat for the Occupied Dutch Territories. The administration was headed by Arthur Seyss-Inquart, formerly the last chancellor of Austria before initiating its annexation by Germany.
In the early modern era, European Jews were confined to ghettos and placed under strict regulations as well as restrictions in many European cities. The character of ghettos fluctuated over the centuries. In some cases, they comprised a Jewish quarter, the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews. In many instances, ghettos were places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos had narrow streets and small, crowded houses. Residents had their own justice system. Around the ghetto stood walls that, during pogroms, were closed from inside to protect the community, but from the outside during Christmas, Pesach, and Easter Week to prevent the Jews from leaving at those times.
Abraham Asscher was a Dutch Jewish businessman from Amsterdam, a politician, and a leader of his community who attained notoriety for his role during the German occupation of the Netherlands (1940–1945).
During the Holocaust, the Catholic Church played a role in rescuing hundreds of thousands of Jews from persecution by Nazis. Members of the Church, through lobbying of Axis officials, provision of false documents, and the hiding of people in monasteries, convents, schools, among families and the institutions of the Vatican itself, saved hundreds of thousands of Jews. The Israeli diplomat and historian Pinchas Lapide estimated the figure at between 700,000 and 860,000, although the figure is contested.
Hendrik Evert Koot was a Dutch collaborator with the German occupying forces during World War II. A member of the WA, the paramilitary wing of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB), he was beaten up by members of a local knokploeg in Amsterdam on 11 February 1941. His injuries were so severe that he died a few days later. His death was seized by the German authorities to start raids in the Jodenbuurt, the Amsterdam Jewish quarters, which in turn led to the February strike. Another element of Nazi retaliation was the installation of a Judenrat in Amsterdam: the Jewish Council of Amsterdam.
The Weerbaarheidsafdeling was the paramilitary arm of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB), the fascist political party that collaborated with the German occupiers of the Netherlands during World War II. The organization, roughly equivalent to the German SA, was founded in 1932 by Anton Mussert, co-founder of the NSB in 1931 and its leader until the end of the war. Members wore and marched in black uniforms and were thus called "blackshirts". In 1933 the Dutch government banned the wearing of uniforms, and the WA was disbanded in 1935 in order to forestall the Dutch government's banning it. In 1940, after the German invasion, the WA became openly active again, and more ruthless than before. They specialized in violent attacks, particularly on the Dutch Jewish population.
The Holocaust in the Netherlands was organized by Nazi Germany in occupied Netherlands as part of the Holocaust across Europe during the Second World War. The Nazi occupation in 1940 immediately began disrupting the norms of Dutch society, separating Dutch Jews in multiple ways from the general Dutch population. The Nazis used existing Dutch civil administration as well as the Dutch Jewish Council "as an invaluable means to their end".
The Committee for Jewish Refugees was a Dutch charitable organization that operated from 1933 to 1941. At first, it managed the thousands of Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Nazi regime in Germany. These refugees were crossing the border from Germany into the Netherlands. The committee largely decided which of the refugees could remain in the Netherlands. The others generally returned to Germany. For the refugees permitted to stay, it provided support in several ways. These included direct financial aid and assistance with employment and with further emigration.
Like other areas under Nazi Germany, Jews were persecuted in the northernmost German state Schleswig-Holstein. Before the Nazis came to power in 1933, an estimated 1,900 Jews lived in Schleswig-Holstein, mostly in Lübeck and Kiel. By the time of Nazi Germany's defeat in 1945, many of Schleswig-Holstein's Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust.
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