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Amsterdam

Amsterdam and Jews-A strike, raids and terror

Introduction

Amsterdam and jews contents

The wipeout of the
Jewish area
First Jews

Evoluating to
integration

20th century progress
and Jewish humour

A nightmare begins

Strike, raids and terror

A scar on city's face,
winter of desolation

Amsterdam and Jews

Kroller Muller Museum

Often, things can happen in one spot of the city and remain unnoticed everywhere else. But tram conductors and mailmen had seen the Meijerplein people being loaded, with open brutality, on to German trucks.

Sheer terror in the streets

On February 24, 1941 city workers of all religions met and discussed a protest strike. Some individual communists, called a general strike. The following morning, no trams operated, no garbage trucks appeared, no mailmen stirred. Within hours, virtually every single factory, office and workshop in Amsterdam emptied. The city felt silent….
In the afternoon, the strike spread in a 10-to-15 mile circle around the city—to Haarlem, Zaandam, and the Hilversum area. The Germans declared a siege, dissolved the Municipal Council of Amsterdam, and sent troops all over town. Strikers were arrested and shot on the spot and within a few days the strike had been suppressed. But it had been the first and only time the population of a city in occupied Europe went on strike—a capital offence against the Reich—in solidarity with their Jewish citizens.
After the strike the deportation of the Jews was taken up systematically. Of more than 80,000 Jewish Amsterdammers, almost 70,000 died in concentration camps and an estimated 12,000 went into hiding, of who about 7,000 were still free at the end of the war.
One of those NOT to survive was ANNE FRANK, whose diary of a secret life in occupied

Anne Frank peers wistfully

Amsterdam—published in 1947—would stir the hearts of millions of people around the world. She and her family went hiding in a now famous concealed “achterhuis” on Prinsen gracht. They were arrested (denounced by neighbours) on August 4, 1944. Going into hiding was practised not only by the Jews, but also by men who had been called up for labour service in Germany, and by resistance workers. Vats numbers of people lived through the war in cupboards and attics, spending hours every night with the little crystal radio sets that brought news via the BBC in London. Hiding was far from easy in a country as open and flat as Holland, and luck played a major part in survival. Those who hid the “onderduikers” also risked their own lives, of course. Some were eminently brave, others demanded large sums of money from their guests. Wartime Amsterdam had its heroes, but inevitably it had also its cowards and its greedy or indifferent people.

Ordinary Amsterdammers faced the challenge in whatever way seemed appropriate to them. Amsterdam boys have always been used to writing their own comments on posters. When the Germans posted bills saying: “Germany is fighting for a new Europe”, the boys wrote underneath, “Doet U voor mij geen moeite”. (Don’t bother for my sake!) Had they been caught they had been shot on the spot, regardless how young they were.
Time seemed to stand still as German soldiers in a hundreds of kinds of uniforms shunted around in buses, while their grey-clad female auxiliaries, who were called “grey-mice” bought up everything in the shops. All the cinemas featured a deadening fare of musicals and comedies. The resistance was only beginning and the city seemed just to sit there, silent, dark, filthy, crumbling.