A LIBERATION REMEMBERED

On May 5, The Netherlands, the country in which I grew up, commemorated the 72nd anniversary of liberation from the brutal occupation by Nazi Germany during World War II. If my parents were still alive today, they would almost certainly have expressed relief, but most likely have declined to celebrate that moment in history. After all, liberation from intense war-time occupation differs fundamentally from gaining independence from colonial subjugation. Too many horrible, life-changing, memories clouded the experience removing the Nazi occupation force must have generated.

The Netherlands' involvement in WWII began when Nazi Germany invaded the country on May 10, 1940. Although it had attempted to remain neutral, Hitler ordered its invasion anyway. After only four days of intense fighting between an ill-equipped Dutch military and an overwhelming German force assembled to execute its "blitz Krieg," and after the May 4 bombing of Rotterdam, the Dutch army surrendered. During this "Rotterdam blitz," 800-900 Dutch civilians were killed, and 25,000 houses were destroyed. The royal family initially evacuated to London, and subsequently moved to Canada for the duration of the war. In a country with, at the time, had a population of less than 9 million people, 198,000 civilians were killed and 7,900 military lost their lives during this war. In addition, 102,000 Jewish citizens were exterminated.

Holland's total population included 140,000 Jewish citizens, 70 percent of which lost their lives in extermination camps throughout the five-year period. This was a much higher percentage than what was experienced in comparable countries like Belgium or France. The Nazis did not begin to deport the Dutch Jews until early 1941. When they did begin this process the Dutch protested by going on strike. This response was unique in Nazi occupied Europe, but accomplished little, and all its leaders were summarily executed. The Germans and their Dutch collaborators gradually intensified anti-Semitic activity. For a price, members of the "Henneicke Column" identified as "Joden Jagers" (Jew huners) captured around 8,000 to 9,000 of the Jews that were in hiding, and delivered them to the German occupiers for deportation to the camps.

Atrocities applied to the civilian population were too numerous to detail. One significant illustration of the monstrous Nazi mindset was a series of events identified as the "Putten raid." Putten, at the time, was a small village in the center of the country. Following a resistance attack on a Wehrmacht vehicle, the Nazis, on October 1, 1944, burned 100 houses and removed 601 men, almost the entire male population of the village, and deported them to various concentration camps. Only 48 of these returned at the end of the war.

I was born four months before the end of the war, entirely unaware of what was going on around me. Before I could read, my mother was my main source of information about the horrors Dutch civilians endured during these fateful five years. My dad remained stoic, and remained less interested in discussing all that had happened, perhaps still shell shocked, or feeling guilty that he had not prevented all his family had experienced.

On one afternoon in 1942 he returned from a bad day at work to find out that his father, a butcher, had been arrested for hiding resistance fighters and feeding Jews. The Nazis picked him up without notice, sentenced him to 2.5 years of slave labor, sent him to the Gestapo prison "Ahlem" in Hannover, and subsequently imprisoned him in the re-education camp "Lahde." My family never saw him again. Upon being led away, my grandfather told his wife that he would write with ink if everything was O.K., and in pencil if it was not. All correspondence reaching Holland was in pencil. Although he completed his sentence in late 1944, and even though my family submitted a sizable ransom, the Nazis refused to release him. Every day during the last few months of the war, camp Lahde executed 10 or more prisoners on a scaffold erected for that purpose. My grandfather was killed March 11, 1945.

With exception of collaborators, nobody was ever safe. Periodically the Nazis would hold razias designed to arrest young men for work programs in Germany. On those occasions my dad would hide in between a double wall to avert detection. The Germans, to ensure they were not missing anyone, would use bayonets to puncture those walls, fortunately always missing their mark.

When in September of 1944 the allied advance was halted near Arnhem, the provinces located north of the Rhine were forced to endure continued Nazi domination and a severe winter with little or no food. Famine became especially intense in areas and cities outside of agricultural areas. People were forced to scrounge for food, which included rodents, flower bulbs, and anything ingestible found on garbage dumps. More than 20,000 people died of hunger and deprivation that winter.

So, May 5 is still commemorated with a sense of relief, but hardly celebrated. Memories are too painful. However, these anniversaries remain important, especially for generations with no direct connection, to show what can happen when fascism is allowed to proliferate, especially now that its ugly head is again rearing up all over the globe.