thinking thoughtful thoughts.

I just finished The Hidden Life of Otto Frank this morning.

The book has been haunting my mind since I started reading it. For one, I had always believed through popular history accounts that the Netherlands had been a place of refuge for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.

However, the Dutch government's post war repatriation policies concerning Jewish survivors of the camps was, in a word, horrid.

Otto Frank, himself a decorated German officer in the First World War--and survivor of Auschwitz--was considered by the Dutch government an "enemy of the state" due to his German descent. Upon liberation from Auschwitz and return to Amsterdam, he and many other German-born Jews were summarily stripped of their citizenship and considered "stateless" persons. An investigation was launched in 1946 as to Otto Frank's status as "enemy of the state" in which his pre-war business firms were scrutinized for any connection to the Wermacht, which indeed there was. (However, it must be noted that most of Holland's businesses--eighty percent by some estimates--were linked to the Wermacht during wartime. Many of these businesses, including Otto Frank's own Opetka pectin company, did so out of financial necessity as opposed to any political affiliations or sympathies with Nazi Germany.)

Surviving Jews in Holland were treated with anything from verbal contempt to downright abuse: the Dutch government claimed they could not afford to house or otherwise support the repatriating Jews (of which there remained 5,500 of the approximately 150,000 Dutch Jews), and many of the survivors were sent to subpar, often filthy holding camps. In some cases Jews were actually sent back to concentration camps and virtually imprisoned along side captured German and Dutch Nazis! The Dutch government refused to give the survivors any financial aid, telling these devastated people to appeal to Jewish organizations "abroad" for money or assistance isnte

German Jews such as Otto Frank, who had expatriated to Holland before the Occupation were treated the worst of all. Those German Jews who were "lucky" enough to stay in Holland were faced with having to produce an affidavit of "means and money" to stay, or risk arrest and imprisonment. For most Jews, this was virtually impossible. Lacking any form of income or money, Jews who had given Christian families certain possessions or even homes for "safe-keeping" during war time returned to find that their "friends" somehow "forgot" their Jewish friends and claimed to no longer recognize them, and outright refused to return their property and dwellings to their rightful owners.

The Dutch people, having been through their own privations such as the Hunger Winter, were often largely indifferent to the plight of the returning Jews. While some, such as Otto Frank's close friends and protectors-in-hiding, continued to support their friends and were sympathetic to repatriating Jews; many others regarded the Jewish survivors as sapping what scarce postwar goods and resources were left to be had.

I found all of this information to be in stark contrast to what I had alway believed was a very liberal, tolerant country and government, and a sad addendum to my--admittedly pithy--knowledge of the Holocaust.