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 Overloon War Museum is located in Overloon, Netherlands.
The Dutch resistance to the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II can be mainly characterized as non-violent, partly because, according to “Was God on Vacation?”, written by Jack van der Geest who was in the Dutch resistance during WWII, a 1938 Dutch law required all guns to be registered. When the Nazis entered, they found the registration list and went house-to-house knowing exactly what guns to demand. As a result, the Dutch resistance had no guns.
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.
The Joods Museum, part of the Jewish Cultural Quarter, is a museum in Amsterdam dedicated to Jewish history, culture and religion, in the Netherlands and worldwide. It is the only museum in the Netherlands dedicated to Jewish history.
The History of the Jews in Amsterdam focuses on the historical center of the Dutch Jewish community, comprising both Portuguese Jews originally from both Spain and Portugal and Ashkenazi Jews, originally from central Europe. The two separate groups have had a continuing presence since the seventeenth century. Amsterdam has been called a Jerusalem of the West and the "Dutch Jerusalem". The Holocaust in the Netherlands devastated the Jewish community, with the Nazis murdering some 75% of the approximately 80,000 Jews at time present in Amsterdam, but the community has managed to rebuild a vibrant and living Jewish life for its approximately 15,000 present members.
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.
Plantage is a neighbourhood of Amsterdam, Netherlands located in its Centrum borough. It is bordered by the Entrepotdok to the north, Plantage Muidergracht to the east and south and Nieuwe Herengracht to the west. In the centre of the neighbourhood lies the Natura Artis Magistra zoo. It had a population of 1,980 in 2017.
Walraven "Wally" van Hall was a Dutch banker and resistance leader during the occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. He founded the bank of the Resistance, which was used to distribute funds to victims of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and fund the Dutch resistance. Van Hall was executed by the German occupier in Haarlem shortly before the end of the war and buried at the Erebegraafplaats Bloemendaal.
The February strike 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 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.
Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co. or LiroBank originally a Dutch Jewish bank, was seized and used by Nazis for looting Jewish property during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II.
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". In 1939, there were some 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands, among them some 24,000 to 25,000 German-Jewish refugees who had fled from Germany in the 1930s. Some 75% of the Dutch-Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust. The 1947 census reported 14,346 Jews, or 10% of the pre-war population. This further decrease is attributed to massive emigration of Jews to the then British Mandate of Palestine. There is debate among scholars about the extent to which the Dutch public was aware of the Holocaust. Postwar Netherlands has grappled with construction the historical memory of the Holocaust and created monuments memorializing this chapter Dutch history. The Dutch National Holocaust Museum opened in March 2024.
Hendrika Jacoba "Kiky" Gerritsen-Heinsius was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations on 15 September 1989, and was also awarded the Verzetsherdenkingskruis by the Dutch government.
Catharina Aaltjen Boekbinder was a member of the Dutch Resistance during World War II. Known to family and friends as "Ina Boekbinder," she used the alias, "Catharina Weesing," during her resistance work. In 1981, she was awarded the Verzetsherdenkingskruis by the Dutch government for her work as a freedom fighter and for her efforts to protect Jewish men, women and children in the Netherlands from persecution and deportation by Nazi officials.
The 1943 bombing of the Amsterdam civil registry office was an attempt by members of the Dutch resistance to destroy the Amsterdam civil registry (bevolkingsregister), in order to prevent the German occupiers from identifying Jews and others marked for persecution, arrest or forced labour. The March 1943 assault was only partially successful, and led to the execution of 12 participants. Nevertheless, the action likely saved many Jews from arrest and deportation to Nazi extermination camps.
A national liberation skirt or national celebration skirt is a style of skirt, handmade of patchwork and embroidery, in celebration of Dutch Liberation Day on 5 May 1945. The style was invented by resistance fighter and feminist Mies Boissevain-van Lennep. The feestrok has been described as "a female mode of political expression ... [which] explicitly linked gender to the reconstruction of a ravaged country and the general striving for 'breakthrough' and social renewal."
Gisèle d'Ailly van Waterschoot van der Gracht, also known by the mononym Gisèle, was a Dutch visual artist. During World War II, she operated a safe house out of her home for a group of young Jewish people in Amsterdam.
The Network of War Collections is a partnership of over 250 archival institutions, museums, remembrance centers and libraries in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the former Dutch colonial empire, and internationally to bring together scattered collections of resources pertaining to World War II. The network is financed by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport and receives a contribution from the National Fund for Peace, Freedom and Veteran Care.
The Dutch National Holocaust Museum is the first official Holocaust museum in the Netherlands, opened in March 2024 by the Dutch monarch, Willem-Alexander. The king began his speech saying the museum "brings to life the stories of people who were isolated from the rest of Dutch society, robbed of their rights, denied legal protection, rounded up, imprisoned, separated from their loved ones and murdered," identifying the root cause as antisemitism. "It is up to us all to stop antisemitism before it causes a hurricane that blows away everything that we hold dear. Let us never forget that Sobibor began in the Vondelpark with a sign that read ‘Forbidden for Jews’. There is no excuse for ignorance – no place for relativism, no room for ‘ifs and buts’. Knowledge of the Holocaust is not optional." The opening was broadcast live on national television and covered extensively by the international press. The opening ceremony on 10 March was held in the Portuguese Synagogue and attended by foreign dignitaries. There was extensive reporting in the international press, largely due to the presence of the President of Israel Isaac Herzog. About a thousand demonstrators gathered near the site, kept at a distance by police. They were protesting Israel's conduct in the Israel-Hamas War in Gaza. Protesters’ target was the Israeli official and were not protesting the establishment of the museum or its opening.
