In March 1939, Edith’s mother, Rosa, arrived from Aachen to take up residence at 37 Merwedeplein. Then, in the summer of 1940, Edith’s brothers, Walter and Julius, were finally able to emigrate to the United States and promised to obtain visas for them all. There was again hope of a route to freedom.
7
The Onslaught
It was Friday, May 10, 1940. Miep remembered everyone being crowded around the radio in Otto’s office. The mood was one of desolation and shock. The announcer reported that German troops and planes had swooped across the Dutch border at dawn. Some of the troops were said to be dressed in Dutch uniforms, as ambulance crews, or riding bicycles. Was this true? Was it rumor? But when Queen Wilhelmina spoke that morning, urging calm, it was clear that the German invasion was in progress. Three days later the queen fled to England; four days later the Germans bombed and virtually destroyed the core of the port city of Rotterdam, killing an estimated six hundred to nine hundred people, even as the terms of surrender were being negotiated. Adolf Hitler blamed faulty radio communications for not calling off the bombing in time. However, the day after the bombing of Rotterdam, he threatened to bomb Utrecht if the Dutch did not surrender. The Netherlands capitulated on the fifteenth. The whole “war” lasted five days. Expecting the Germans to honor their neutrality, the Dutch had been spectacularly unprepared.
At first the German occupation seemed nearly benign. The Nazis treated the Dutch like their lesser cousins and anticipated that they would be easy converts to the tenets of National Socialism. German orders for Dutch goods created something of an economic boom, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart’s velvet-glove approach even meant that some Dutch welcomed the occupation.
But slowly things changed. On January 10, 1941, Decree no. 6/1941 mandated the registration of all Jews. Local authorities set up offices in every community to ensure compliance. Registration had to be in person at the cost of one guilder a head. Cases in which the definition of “Jew” was challenged were to be referred to the generalkommissar’s office in The Hague and adjudicated by Dr. Hans Georg Calmeyer, a German lawyer and the head of the Nazi-controlled Internal Administration Department, under whose auspices Jews were registering.
The vast majority of Dutch Jews complied, concluding that their names and addresses already existed in local population registers and in the records of synagogues. Nonregistration carried a prison sentence of up to five years.1 Furthermore, they had been deceived into believing that registration with the Central Agency for Jewish Emigration （Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung; JA） would facilitate their emigration to countries outside Europe.
As Miep Gies described it, “From out of their ratholes appeared Dutch Nazis, who were cheering and waving and welcoming.”2 The Dutch Nazi Party （Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging; NSB）， established in 1932, had been banned in 1935, but after the occupation it returned in strength. By 1943, it would have 101,000 members. Under Seyss-Inquart’s directive, the NSB created a paramilitary arm called the Resilience Department （Weerbaarheidsafdeling; WA）， which acted as an auxiliary police force.
By February 1941, hatred of the Jews percolated into the streets and NSB gangs roamed the neighborhoods of Amsterdam, spreading terror. Jews were violently removed from trams and windows were smashed. The owner of Café Alcazar was one of the last to refuse to display the sign “Jews not wanted” and continued to allow Jewish cabaret artists to perform in his venue. However, on Sunday, February 9, in midafternoon, a group of about fifty WA men attacked the Alcazar, throwing a bicycle through its front window. They were outraged that the owner had permitted a Jewish singer, Clara de Vries, to perform the previous night. They beat up the customers, Jews and non-Jews alike, and smashed the furniture. Preventing the Dutch police from intervening, the Grüne Polizei stood by and enjoyed the vandalism, which soon spread to other cafés.3
Seyss-Inquart’s velvet-glove approach had seduced the Dutch into thinking that the Germans would be friendly and aloof in their occupation. But that dream ended on February 11, 1941, when a group of about forty Dutch Nazis invaded the Waterlooplein market in the center of Amsterdam, a shopping area run mostly by Jewish shopkeepers, and sang anti-Jewish songs. Breaking into the market storage areas, they armed themselves with heavy objects. A violent confrontation then erupted between the Dutch Nazis and a small commando group of young Jews who had formed to defend themselves. Locals, mostly Communists, responded in solidarity with the Jews. After the fight ended, Hendrik Koot, a WA man, was found unconscious and died three days later. The NSB had found its perfect propaganda tool in the “martyrdom” of Koot. On February 18, more than two thousand uniformed NSB members marched in Koot’s funeral procession through the streets of Amsterdam.