Dutch Christians Atone for Treatment of Jews

Kneeling between rows of moss-streaked graves with Hebrew epitaphs, Tineke Arentse seeks to atone for what her faith and country have done to Jews.

She and other Christian volunteers, as they do every year, are refurbishing a Jewish cemetery. Working with sponges and brushes, they wash the wafer-thin granite and marble headstones, glue back broken fragments, repaint Hebrew letters, pull weeds.

“As Christians, we bear a lot of guilt for the terrible way Jewish people have been treated,” says Arentse, a hospital nurse who belongs to the Dutch Reformed Church. “The more I read about it, the more I am motivated to help make up for their suffering in a small way--not just in words, but in deeds.”

Arentse’s personal crusade is one way in which Dutch Gentiles--both religious and secular--are increasingly questioning the Netherlands’ once-shining image as a historical haven for persecuted Jews.

That image dates back to the refuge given to Iberian Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 20th century it centered on the story of Anne Frank, who wrote her diary while hiding from the Nazis in the loft of an Amsterdam canal house.

But as other European nations belatedly confront their roles in abetting the Nazi genocide in World War II, a series of official commissions in the Netherlands has exposed maltreatment of Jews and the plundering of their assets after liberation from German occupation.

In a report published in January, the latest commission offered the Jewish community 250 million guilders, or about $114 million, in compensation. That has sparked a debate over the value of the misappropriated assets and doubts about the government’s motives in redressing past injustices with cash.

Of the Netherlands’ prewar population of 140,000 Jews, more than 100,000 died in Nazi death camps during World War II or on the trains taking them there.

While many Christians in Holland risked their lives to hide Jewish children like Anne Frank, some did it because they wanted to raise them as Christians.

Holland also had one of the highest rates of collaboration with German occupation forces in western Europe. Police and civil servants were rewarded with bonuses for every Jew they turned in.

But while the mixed record of the Dutch during the war has been well documented, the official commissions have shifted attention to the mistreatment of Jews after the war.

Dutch Jews have taken to dubbing that period the “Second Shoah” or “Small Shoah,” using the Hebrew word for Holocaust.

“The Jews were not hanged or gassed or physically harmed, but they were still robbed and neglected,” recalls Isaac Lipschits, a retired professor of contemporary history.

The latest commission, led by the governor of North Holland province, Jos van Kemenade, criticized the “unjust and unfair” way that Jews were treated when they straggled back from the death camps and tried to piece together shattered lives.

Many found strangers living in their homes and running their businesses. Furniture had been looted by neighbors who were counting on the Jews’ not returning from the camps, Lipschits says.

At the same time, the Dutch government, focused on rebuilding the war-ravaged country, ignored and at times exacerbated the suffering, according to the Van Kemenade commission.

Fiscal authorities refused to waive inheritance taxes on bequests of Jews who died in the gas chambers. The Finance Ministry offered no compensation for gold confiscated by the Nazis or for the cash that Jews were ordered to pay to run deportation camps in the Netherlands.

“Society and government in that period were insufficiently persuaded of the horrors that had been brought upon the Jews and of the necessity to bring about a quick and efficient rehabilitation,” the commission said.

Many Jewish organizations consider the compensation offer too little, too late. Their estimates of the current value of the misappropriated assets range as high as $450 million.

Some Jews suspect that the government is trying to get off easy, while others were outraged by reports that committee members feared a more generous offer might play into the anti-Semitic stereotype of the money-grubbing Jew.

“This is exactly the same thing that the government said in 1945,” Jewish writer Evelien Gans says.

Jews and many non-Jews also were angered when Prime Minister Wim Kok balked at a formal apology. He was at an international Holocaust conference in Sweden on the day the report was published.

“I would rather say, ‘It was regrettable’ than ‘I’m sorry,’ ” Kok told reporters in Stockholm.

But he reversed himself the next day after his refusal was emblazoned across the front pages of Dutch national newspapers. He extended an apology to all victims of the Nazis: Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and disabled people.

“An expression of remorse on the part of the government is in order for all of those affected,” he said.

It remains to be seen how far the gestures will go in restoring confidence between Dutch Jews and non-Jews.

Jews themselves are divided over how to react to offers of redress and expressions of regret.

Even the Expiation and Reconciliation Foundation, the religious group that refurbishes Jewish cemeteries, often is met with mistrust from Jews who suspect its ultimate aim is to convert them to Christianity.

“I can understand the mistrust,” says the Rev. Cornelis Peter Sybrandi, leader of the group. “Many activities of the Christians in the past with respect to Jews had this goal. But it is not ours.”

Lex Wolf, who heads the small Orthodox Jewish community in Haarlem, has no qualms about the Gentiles’ help. In addition to the foundation’s work at the Netherlandish-Israelite Cemetery, its members spent two years rebuilding a kitchen, boardroom and reception hall in the local synagogue.

“It’s incredible. It’s fantastic,” Wolf says. “I can’t imagine that any Jew would have a problem with this.”