Denkend aan Holland Thinking of Holland

zie ik breede rivieren I picture wide rivers

traag door oneindig slowly meandering through

laagland gaan … unending lowland …

The famous poet Hendrik Marsman (1899-1940) wrote these words in 1936, in a poem entitled ‘Memory of Holland’, later proclaimed Dutch poem of the century. In that same year he published an article about the so-called ‘Jewish Question’, in which he postulated that Jews could not assimilate into Western society. The differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’ in terms of race, blood and origin, he wrote, were so unbridgeable that co-existence should ‘if at all possible, be terminated and avoided’. In Marsman's view, the only solution was Zionism. He did see Jews as possessing various positive qualities, including ‘a distinctive kind of acuteness’. But he couldn't imagine them ever taking root in Holland.

Until fairly recently the Netherlands was internationally known as a tolerant country. Events such as the murders of the politician Pim Fortuyn (1948-2002) and the filmmaker and columnist Theo van Gogh (1957-2004), as well as the anti-Islam politics of both Fortuyn and Geert Wilders have upset this image. This book focuses on the continuum of antisemitism, in various forms and gradations, before, during and particularly after 1945. The proverbial tolerance of the Dutch and their supposed tradition of non-violence have always been disputed, certainly in academic circles. Both tolerance and non-violence have had their limits. It is not as if there was never any hostility or violence towards, say, Catholics or, conversely, Protestants, political adversaries or outsiders. The same applies to the Jews. In the fourteenth century, especially in the east of the country, entire Jewish communities were burnt at the stake. Just as elsewhere in Europe, they were held responsible for bringing the plague and other calamities. But as of the sixteenth century, fleeing from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, and the pogroms in Eastern Europe, Jews found a relatively safe haven in the Dutch Republic – along with a great many religious, social and economic constraints. Here, too, certain cities and professions were out of bounds to Jews, and there were a great deal many more prohibitions, along with a host of anti-Jewish prejudices.