THE FEBRUARY STRIKE
The fugitive government has, behind the backs of the people,
THE FEBRUARY STRIKE
There is not much left of the pre-war Jewish quarter in Amsterdam. In a neighbourhood where more than fifty thousand people lived, more than half of them Jews, a new Weesperstraat has been created that takes into account modern traffic and the need for modern office space. And the Jodenbreestraat, not far from there, has also changed beyond recognition. But these two streets still end at the old square with the Portuguese synagogue on one side and the High German complex on the other, which now houses the Jewish Historical Museum.
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And between these two testimonies of Jewish religiousness and Dutch tolerance stands the Dokwerker, the statue by Mari Andriessen. It is a reminder of the February strike and what happened in response to it throughout Amsterdam in 1941. How did this strike come about, how did it develop, what was its effect and what was its significance? If I ask these questions, I must start from the beginning of the persecution of the Jews that already took place in 1940. At that time, the persecution was aimed at isolating the Jews and making them an impoverished group. The occupier worked towards that goal with regulations and other measures that were implemented by our own government. At the same time, he mobilized the NSB members, that small minority that stood on his side, to act against the Jews.
These two policies were continued. At the end of October 1940 it was decided that all Jewish companies had to be registered separately with a German office. This was done. At the beginning of December, the twenty members of municipal councils and the eight members of the Provincial States who were of Jewish descent were removed from these boards. None of the other members resigned. At the beginning of January 1941, the news appeared in the press that the Cinema Association had decided that Jews would no longer be allowed to visit cinemas.
At the beginning of February, a decree was issued that meant that Jews would no longer be allowed to visit universities and colleges. The secretaries-general had accepted this because the occupier had promised that Jewish students who were already studying would be allowed to continue their studies. Four student magazines that protested were banned. Then, at the beginning of 1941, all doctors, pharmacists, midwives, lawyers and real estate agents were asked via the departments and their organisations to state whether they were of Jewish descent. These were therefore new Aryan declarations. And these were filled in.
Regulation 6 of 1941
of the Reich Commissioner for the occupied Dutch territory concerning the registration requirement of persons of wholly or partly Jewish blood.
Even more important (because more general) than all of this was regulation 6 of 1941. Everyone of Jewish descent (even those who have only one Jewish grandparent) must report to the regular population register, to fill out a special registration form there for a fee of one guilder. At the suggestion of a Dutch official, the head of the national inspection of population registers, the registration took place there and not at a German agency. There was only one person of Jewish descent for whom this registration requirement did not apply.
Arthur Seyss-Inquart war ein österreichischer Nazipolitiker, der 1938 vor dem Anschluss Österreichs zwei Tage lang als Bundeskanzler fungierte. Zu seinen Ämtern im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland gehörten die des stellvertretenden Gouverneurs von Hans Frank im Generalgouvernement des besetzten Polen und des Reichskommissars für die deutsch besetzten Niederlande.
Wikipedia (Not Working)
Seyss-Inquart had personally made an exception for the man he saw as the guarantor for the smooth integration of the Dutch economy into the German one: the Secretary-General for Economic Affairs, Dr. Hirschfeld, whose father was a Jew and who therefore had two Jewish grandparents.
'There has not been a single case in which the suspicion arose that any local office deliberately delayed the processing of the registrations or sabotaged the implementation of the regulation.'
On 6 February 1941 - I was then a civilian police officer - I was on my way home on the car balcony, the rear balcony, and when I arrived at the Munt, I saw a group of Dutch National Socialists standing there, who were also known to me as such. I paid no further attention to it and when the tram started moving again and was in the Vijzelstraat, I did notice that the mechanical whistle of the tram was regularly pulled. I first thought: well, maybe he doesn't have to wait at the stops, he didn't and he only stopped at the corner of the Weteringschans. And there I discovered for the first time the reason for the whistling. Because I saw that same group of national socialists storming out of the tram towards the car where I was standing, and they stormed that balcony and started shouting and screaming 'the Jews must get out of the tram' and a few apparently Jewish people, who were standing at the front, grabbed them and threw them out of the tram.
I had two doormen standing in front of the door, who quickly managed to slam the door shut, in the lock, in order to try to get as many people out through the back exit as possible. That worked, although both of those doormen were knocked down here, and I was standing at the back of the bar, crammed in between all those people, and I didn't know how to get to the door. I tried anyway and I succeeded and luckily I also had a small weapon in my pocket, which was not allowed, but which I used. When the gentlemen had gotten so far that they had forced the door out of the lock, then there was only one thing necessary for me: hitting and hitting again to prevent them from suddenly running all over these Jewish people.
Broken and boarded up windows in the Jodenhoek The crowd that had gathered (including German soldiers being removed). WA and German soldiers then entered the Jodenhoek. There, windows were broken and furniture was destroyed. There was shooting at windows, robbery and beatings. As a result, a few small Jewish gangs that had formed since the autumn decided to defend themselves. They were helped by non-Jewish neighbours, by workers from completely different neighbourhoods of Amsterdam. One afternoon, two men were 'beaten up' on the Waterlooplein, as a member of those gangs told me twenty years later.
J. GROENTE MAN
'A very large group of WA men arrived at about half past six in the evening. Well, we were a bit suspicious that they would come, to take revenge, and we had received the promise from a certain Mr Prenger, who had a large bicycle shed, that we could take whatever we needed. Well, we grabbed big pieces of iron and wood and then that definitely caused a big fight on the side of the playground at the Waterlooplein.
0DE JONG
It was dark, how did you know who you were hitting?
J. GROENTE MAN
Well, we hit everything that was in blue or black uniforms; everything that was in uniform, we just hit them. Well, and then at a certain point it was all over, then one man was left lying in uniform and the next morning we heard that it was WA man Koot.
This had never happened in the whole of Germany, nor in any of the occupied countries of Europe: that Jews, supported by non-Jewish workers, fought back. The occupier reacted immediately. The oldest part of the Jodenhoek was isolated from the rest of Amsterdam. Here and there, entrances were blocked and where one could still enter the Jodenhoek, such as at the Blauwbrug, where the Muziektheater is now located, the German police appeared, who together with the Dutch police stopped all passers-by, for example railwaymen who then had to show with their papers that they had to go straight through the Jodenhoek to their work. This blockade, which caused enormous inconvenience to the business community, was undone after a few days.
The second reaction of the occupier to this Jewish resistance was that he demanded the formation of a board that would give all its orders to the Jews and would be responsible for their obedient behavior: the Jewish Council. This Council (I will come back to it later) consisted almost entirely of Jewish notables. The first order he carried out was to convene a large meeting in the building of the Exchange for the Diamond Trade. There, one of the two chairmen of the Council, Abraham Asscher, urged the Jews to hand in all their weapons. This exhortation also appeared on the walls.
The second reaction of the occupier to this Jewish resistance was that he demanded the formation of a college that would be responsible for all his orders to the Jews and their obedient behavior: the Jewish Council. This Council (I will come back to it later) consisted almost entirely of Jewish dignitaries. The first order he carried out was to convene a large meeting in the building of the Exchange for the Diamond Trade. There, one of the two chairmen of the Council, Abraham Asscher, urged the Jews to hand in all their weapons. This exhortation also appeared on the walls.
This had never happened in the whole of Germany or in any of the occupied countries of Europe: that Jews, supported by non-Jewish workers, fought back. The occupier reacted immediately. The oldest part of the Jodenhoek was isolated from the rest of Amsterdam. Here and there, entrances were blocked and where people could still enter the Jodenhoek, such as at the Blauwbrug, where the Muziektheater is now located, the German police appeared, who together with the Dutch police stopped all passers-by, for example railwaymen who then had to show with their papers that they had to go straight through the Jodenhoek to their work. This closure, which caused a great deal of inconvenience to the business community working for the Germans, was undone after a few days.
The second reaction of the occupier to this Jewish resistance was that he demanded the formation of a board that would pass on all its orders to the Jews and would be responsible for their obedient behavior: the Jewish Council. This Council (I will come back to it later) consisted almost entirely of Jewish dignitaries. The first order he carried out was to convene a large meeting in the building of the Beurs voor de Diamanthandel. There, one of the two chairmen of the Council, Abraham Asscher, urged the Jews to hand in all their weapons; this exhortation also appeared on the walls.
WA man Koot died a few days later in a hospital. His funeral was turned into a demonstration. On the way, there were a few fights, including with a bread delivery man who had shouted: 'It is a pity that only one of you died'. Again a few days later, another Jewish gang was in a shop owned by two Jewish refugees, Cahn and Kohn. Only one of that gang survived.
E. RODRIGUES GARCIA
On the Wednesday evening in question, around ten o'clock, I was informed: NSB members arrived provocatively walked past, came back and banged on the now closed door. We fled through the garden to the house of that shoemaker behind it in the Pieter Aertszstraat. Cat, who was the last to go, had first opened the valve of the ammonia spray. Then he came too. We sat inside the shoemaker's shop for a short while, after which Kohn and Cahn left the shop: we waited a bit, we had been told: the streets were all closed off. After about twenty minutes I suddenly heard noise at the back of the garden and the SS men came in.
The entire group was arrested, not by SS men, by the way, but by men from the Ordnungspolizei, the 'green police', as they were called because of the colour of their uniforms. The actions of these two Jewish gangs led to Seyss-Inquart's Generalkommissar für das Sicherheitswesen, Rauter, a fierce SS man, sending a long letter to his highest boss, Himmler. In it he wrote, among other things, that it was time that 'an example was finally set here in the Amsterdam Jewish Quarter'. The decision was made - which was approved by Seyss-Inquart, who was in Austria - that four hundred and twenty-five Jewish men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five would be arrested in the Jewish Quarter and sent to a concentration camp.
So on Saturday afternoon, February 22, 1941, all bridges leading to the Waterlooplein and the Jonas Daniël Meyerplein and the surrounding area were occupied by German machine gun posts and six hundred men of the Ordnungspolizei went hunting. All those they caught within those age limits ended up on the Jonas Daniel Meyerplein.
INSPECTOR A. CAMMAERT
Yes, I saw here on the square that whole rows of Jewish men (who had been brought here at a walking pace from the side streets) were thrown here on their knees, beaten rather, they had to lie on their stomachs with their hands stretched out in front of them and the Grüne Polizei stood around them. They were beaten, there were also dogs there, they let those dogs bite and that was such a disgusting sight, you were there yourself as a policeman and you could not really do anything.
A few other policemen, I heard in 1960, were capable of that,
DE JONG
What were you at that time, Mr. Klaassens?
W. KLAASSENS
Police officer, sir, Jonas Daniël Meyerplein.
DE JONG
And were you able to save any people that afternoon?
W. KLAASSENS
Yes sir, we saw from the cinema the Tip-Top, that people were being taken from there by the Grüne Polizei. They then drove the people to the Lazarussteeg and there they let them go; the people went through the Lazarussteeg to the Waterlooplein and there they were picked up again by the Grüne Polizei who transported them to the Meyerplein. We saw that and then went to the office - Kees Roos, the boy who was later shot, and I - and we opened the back door in the Lazarussteeg. When another transport of Jews arrived, we let all those people into the office through the back door.
DE JONG
So those people could go into hiding, as it were, at the station?
W. KLAASSENS
Yes.
DE JONG
What did you feel that afternoon?
W. KLAASSENS
Well, something terrible. We saw the people being kicked and kicked across the street and then they were driven to the Meyerplein, where they had to crouch down with their hands around their heads. And when they collapsed, they got a blow with the butt of the gun, no, this was something terrible.
MAX NEBIG
I was arrested at the Tip-Top theatre. We went here, we were terribly abused - then those trucks came here, then we were put in them.
DE JONG
You didn't know where you were going?
MAX NEBIG
No, when we got into the car, we didn't know where we were going. They first went to the recently established German concentration camp in Schoorl and then (the four hundred and twenty-five were not yet full) after a second, equally gruesome raid on Sunday morning from Schoorl to Buchenwald. From Buchenwald, where about fifty died, they were transferred to the notorious Mauthausen. They ended up in a barrack under a barrack head, a Kapo, who, when he had an attack of madness, smashed five or six of them in the brains with an axe. They had to toil in the granite quarry, but on the way down they were not allowed to use the stairs. They had to try to clamber along the rocks. Many fell to their deaths, others let themselves fall. There were other groups of Jews from the Netherlands. The two hundred boys from the Jewish work village in Wieringermeer, which had been set up before the war (young people who wanted to emigrate to Palestine), had been transferred to Amsterdam at the end of March 1941 and were billeted with Jewish families there. Lages, head of the SD in Amsterdam, got hold of their list of names and addresses using a ruse. This
These two hundred were then sent to Mauthausen, together with a hundred Jewish youths who had been randomly arrested in Amsterdam, as a reprisal for an act of sabotage by non-Jewish illegal workers. According to statistics added to the weekly report of the SD (that weekly report went to all the high German authorities in our country), many of those deported to Mauthausen were still alive on 23 June.
Two groups followed in the autumn: a hundred from Enschede, seventy from Arnhem and the Achterhoek. They too had been arrested as a reprisal for acts of sabotage by non-Jewish illegal workers. Six hundred and thirty-nine plus one hundred and seventy is eight hundred and nine. The life of the only survivor of all these groups was not saved in Mauthausen but in Buchenwald, where German fellow prisoners had hidden him in a barrack for four years. That was witnessed by countless Amsterdammers, Jews and non-Jews, among the latter a municipal worker, Willem Kraan. PIET NAK
Willem Kraan, who was one of my great friends, who was also my comrade, came to me and his parents who lived on the Nieuwmarkt on Sunday morning and Willem came to me and Willem who was a very strong guy, with tears in his eyes, and he told me there how terrible or war was being held there, how people were being beaten like animals there. And Willem came to me and he said: 'We cannot tolerate that, and something has to be done about it, the whole thing has to be brought down.
Willem Kraan and Piet Nak both belonged to the cells of the illegal Communist Party. That illegal party had been built up since the summer of 1940 under the leadership of a Triumvirate: Paul de Groot, the all-powerful party secretary, Lou Jansen and Jan Dieters. Jansen and Dieters were both shot later during the occupation. This illegal organization had about two thousand members, twelve hundred in Amsterdam. Well-known officials had been excluded, which was a good thing, because the SD had been able to confiscate the name and address list of all CPN cadres from the Dutch secret service, which they had neglected to destroy. The CPN had isolated itself in our country at that time because they ..
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.. because they attacked not only Germany, but also England. This was in accordance with Stalin's policy, who had allied himself with Nazi Germany in August 1939. Even before the CPN switched to illegality, in June 1940, Paul de Groot had written an article in the monthly magazine of the CPN (only one issue was allowed to be published) which included the following: 'The fugitive government has brought our country to war on the side of the Allies behind the backs of the people.' De Groot's advice was: 'that the Dutch working people should adopt a correct attitude towards the German occupation of our country.' The article had appeared despite some protests within their own circle and especially despite the protest of Daan Goulooze, liaison between the CPN and the Communist International, the Comintern, in Moscow.
After the switch to illegality, the illegal newspaper De Waarheid appeared, with attacks on the occupier, but in issue 5, which appeared in mid-February 1941, one still found de Groot's statement that England was just as bad as Germany. He wrote this while almost the entire population was eagerly awaiting liberation by the English! The isolation in which they manoeuvred themselves meant that if the CPN called for a strike and deployed its entire illegal cadre, they should not say that the call came from them.
When Willem Kraan came to Piet Nak on Sunday morning, Lou Jansen, one of the members of the leading Triumvirate, who had gone into hiding in Apeldoorn, arrived in Amsterdam. He went to the illegal district leader of Amsterdam, Jaap Brandenburg. That afternoon he wrote a manifesto with him, with the clear call on page 2 'Stop| Staakt! Staakt. It was not mentioned who made the call. In the evening Piet Nak and Willem Kraan visited Frits Reuter, one of the higher officials of their Amsterdam party organisation.
PIET NAK
Because I had a stencil machine but I didn't have a typewriter. And we gave Frits Reuter the order that a stencil had to be made as soon as possible with the call to strike.
At that time Reuter did not yet have the piece that Jansen had written and it was that Nak and Kraan went out on Monday without a call to see if they could persuade the workers of the municipal services where they worked to strike.
PIET NAK
Then the two of us got on our bikes again, Willem went down the Bestrating and I went down the Reiniging. We visited the boys as much as possible, including Fokke John and Karel Dirkzwager, by the way quite a few people who we thought: they are people we trust. Dirkzwager and Fokke John of course, they were friends of ours. We invited them to come to the Noordermarkt on Monday evening, so that was only for the Cleaning and for the Paving.
Nak and Kraan got two hundred and fifty men together on the Noordermarkt late in the afternoon. Piet Nak said how important a strike would be, and before him another CPN member, Dirk van Nimwegen, did the same.
PIET NAK
We explained to the people there what it meant, we told them how the people there had been beaten (they knew that too), but we briefly mentioned it again, and then we told them that what they did in Germany, that it might have been possible there, and that it was their business, but that we as the people of Amsterdam - with our Kattenburgers, our Jordaners, the working class, that we played together in one street, and on one staircase, with our Jewish friends and our Jewish girlfriends when we were little. And we couldn't tolerate that, we had to do everything we could to bring everything to a standstill in Amsterdam the next day.
That afternoon and evening until midnight (from twelve to no one was allowed on the streets, that was the so-called curfew), CPN members who had contact with large groups of workers were mobilized. At the Railways they had success early in the morning, but at the municipal tram. But at one of the depots the director of the company tried to persuade the car drivers and conductors to leave anyway.
A.C. F. VAN 'T SCHIP
Then we all went outside and there were a few tram cars and then I got on the car there, on top of the car, and then I spoke to the people to go on strike and not to leave. There were a few colleagues then, who went to drive anyway, who wanted to drive and then a few of us sat in front of the cars so that they could not leave.
Other CPN members went to the companies in Amsterdam-Noord. Work was stopped everywhere, the strikers streamed to the n ferries over the IJ.
J. DE BOOD
Huddled on the deck, in the corridors, the stairs, yes even in the wheelhouse, people loaded everywhere. Can you imagine? We workers from the North, we felt like a united force. At this moment it was directed against the German atrocities against our Jewish friends and business partners and neighbours. We felt this barbarity as if against ourselves and it affected our own lives. When we got off the ferry, we spread out in small groups.
Those groups moved into the city centre. There and elsewhere people already knew: something is going on, because the tram was not running. You saw tram personnel talking to other Amsterdammers at a tram depot somewhere. Everywhere it was now said: 'We are striking against the persecution of the Jews. Students from a HBS went on strike and cycled to a second school.'
R. H. SCHOONMAN
But we arrived there a little too late: the school had already started and the students had gone inside. Then we went to the opponents, we thought of Die Deutsche Schule in the Ruysdaelstraat. One of us raised the battle cry: 'A, B, C, D, E, F, G-away with the nMoffen and the NSB! Yes, how dare you, in the middle of the war!
One company after another went on strike, but in the middle of the morning the director of the Tram Company managed to get a number of trams running again. They didn't get far. Striking conductors simply sat down on the tram track again.
S. DE VRIES JR
At that moment two German soldiers arrived; they looked around, they saw something, they felt something, but still didn't know what was going on. They were standing right next to me, so I had the honor. That German said to me, one of those Germans that is: 'Was ist denn hier los?' I said: 'Staking', but he didn't understand and then I said: 'Strike, Generalstreik! Then he says: 'Was? Streik? Gibt's nicht im Dritten Reich!'
The police did not intervene anywhere, but there was a battalion of the Ordnungspolizei in Amsterdam. The writer Maurits Dekker had to deal with that on the Frederiksplein where the Galerij was then (now there is the Dutch Bank).
MAURITS DEKKER
Here at the corner of the Galerij we saw on the other side, where you can perhaps see a piece of that tree, there used to be a tram house there, which bordered the vegetation, and in front of that tram house there was a crowd, there were a number of women, I don't remember how many, who stopped a milkman, who was passing by with his cart. And they shouted: 'Yes, you with that cart, you work and our men are on strike, that's not going to work, get rid of that thing, you idiot!' Anyway, that turned into a bit of a fight, a bit of a commotion, and the man gave in - one of the ladies even suggested that he pull a hairpin over his face - the milkman gave in and abandoned his cart and at that moment we saw the crowd scatter and at the same moment a sidecar approached from the Weteringschans, or two sidecars with Germans in them, so-called Krad, one on the motorbike and one in the sidecar, and they started to clear the Frederiksplein here. We noticed it a bit late, we saw the crowd scatter, and were caught between others who came from the Westeinde and then those Grünen herded us into a pile at the Galerij and there we stood with about thirty men. One of those Grünen came up to us and just asked each of us: 'Jude?', and whoever said no, he could leave - 'Get away!' - and then he walked away. Then it was my turn and I didn't say yes, and I didn't say no, I just answered: 'Oh man!' And then I was allowed to leave.
Most shops closed. The city centre became crowded. On the Rokin, the military police tried to disperse the people. There was a large demonstration on the Noordermarkt. Amsterdam felt liberated that day. It was an immense, blazing joy where wild rumours circulated: the strike had already spread to Rotterdam, even to Antwerp.
But the occupier, completely surprised, reacted quickly. Rauter sent two Waffen-SS battalions to Amsterdam, one from Zandvoort, one from Amersfoort. He demanded drastic intervention from the police. The curfew started at half past seven in the evening instead of twelve o'clock. The newspaper editors received clear instructions from the ANP that nothing about the newspaper editors' events in Amsterdam was to be published. But the news that Amsterdam was on strike had already reached outside Amsterdam. Travellers had brought it.
This led to company strikes in a number of places on that Tuesday, and a few more places were added on Wednesday. Moreover, in the entire Zaanstreek, Haarlem, Weesp and Hilversum, it could be said that there was a general strike. In Amsterdam, where the companies were on strike, it became grim that Wednesday. The trams started running again, police officers rode along on the front balconies. Here and there the strikers intervened. They could not tip over a motor car somewhere in the East.
C. DE VRIES
'Then they all flew to that trailer and there they all grabbed the car from underneath and whoosh, listen, there went that car and there it stood neatly upright, I mean, neatly up high, you know! And then the Krauts came straight away, and they shot, they shot left and right, you know. But yes, in a time of a yes and a no, the people were, whoosh, all gone and whether those doors were open, I don't know, but in a time of a yes and a no, they were gone.
Rauter sent his third and last Waffen-SS battalion to Amsterdam, all the way from Assen. These Waffen-SS men and men from the Ordnungspolizei went on intensive patrols and shooting, without warning. Nine people were fatally wounded, more than twenty seriously injured. At the same time, the first of more than two hundred Jewish and non-Jewish detainees, among the latter municipal officials from, for example, Social Affairs and workers who had gone on strike, were locked up in an improvised prison, the Lloyd Hotel on the Handelskade.
PIET NAK
'Suddenly I was told that I had stabbed a sailor to death. Mind you, I had not even seen a German sailor, let alone that I had stabbed this man to death! I was suddenly pulled out and then I was told: 'You stabbed a sailor to death.
So no one had betrayed that Piet Nak had spoken on the Noordermarkt.
PIET NAK
'I say: no, I didn't do that. Then I was really badly abused, that I had to lie about it; if I was an honest boy, they wouldn't have beaten me like that. Then I had to stand on top of a table - of course I was first introduced to about five or six men, that I had stabbed a sailor to death - and they took me into a little room. Well, to tell the whole story, that was terrible, I was only allowed to keep my trousers on and the rest was naked, and they beat me there with blackjacks, with belts, that the blood really came out of my nose, my ears and everywhere, I was beaten black and blue at the end. And then I had to stand on top of a table and then I had to turn around and then I had to shout: 'I am a Mörder, I am a Mörder.' Those people who were arrested by Social Affairs had to walk around it, they had to shout loudly, they walked in one direction, they had to shout: 'We dare not reach any further, we dare not reach any further!' The Jewish people, there was Dr. De Miranda and Mr. Cardozo, a diamond dealer, and many other people, people who walked with oranges and with bananas and others, doctors, everything was there. They had to walk in the other direction and they had to shout again: 'Wir Juden ared die grössten Volksverräter!' Around them again walked people in the other direction and they had to shout: 'Wir dürfen geen Flugschriften meer verbreiten! Around them again walked people who were communists and they had to shout: 'Wir sind Kommunist! We are communist!' It was terrible. I saw the people there, they had to lie on their hands, they got a kick on the back of their head, they had to bend their noses to the ground, the blood was running from those people's noses, there was a pool of blood in front of them, six of them. All six of them had to lick that pool of blood with their tongues.
In early March, one of the two owners of the ice cream parlour in Amsterdam, the man who had opened the valve of the ammonia sprayer, was shot dead on the Waalsdorpervlakte near The Hague. The first person to stand before a firing squad in our country was Ernst Cahn, a Jewish refugee from Germany. Three days later, a communist from Amsterdam who had called for a strike.
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Eighteen (the eighteen dead of Jan Campert's poem): three communists, also from Amsterdam, IJzerdraat, the founder of the Geuzen group, and fourteen members of that group, who had been arrested after an investigation that had not been started by the SD but by the Dutch police.
The cities that had dared to strike were punished with pro-German mayors and a total fine of eighteen million guilders (current value: one hundred and eighty million). And Seyss-Inquart, who wanted to manipulate the Netherlands in the direction of National Socialism, and who had to see that, in addition to other cities (which we must not forget), the inhabitants of the capital Amsterdam had declared their solidarity with their Jewish fellow citizens, began to prepare a tougher policy.
He had lists of names and addresses drawn up of twenty-five hundred prominent Dutch people who could be arrested as hostages. During a large meeting in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw he alluded to this, after he had said that only a group of screamers had been in action and might come again.
ARTHUR SEYSS INQUART
'If the Dutch were to admit that this had happened, they would suddenly, in their entirety, have to slow down the following of such a story.
About the Jews he said that Hitler had said that their role in Europe was over. Hitler had said something completely different: they would be destroyed. He, the Reichskommissar, only wanted to talk about 'a bearable transitional state', as he said, because:
ARTHUR SEYSS-INQUART
'The Jews were not regarded by us as an integral part of the Dutch people.
Amsterdam had thought differently about this. What was the effect of this mass strike? In his study, based on thorough research, historian B.A. Sijes pointed out that the contrast between anti- and pro-Nazis had been emphasised more clearly than ever.
The contrast between all those who openly wanted to demonstrate against what the occupier was doing, and those who, however reluctantly, did what he wanted, had also become sharper. So the strike gave rise to a general impulse of resistance on those who were inclined to do so.
I believe that it had no other clear effect during the occupation. But in the persecution of Jews in Europe that stretched over centuries, it happened only once that non-Jews, standing up for a minority, declared their solidarity with their Jewish fellow citizens en masse. In all times, there has only been one anti-pogrom strike: the February strike. That, and that alone, is its historical significance.
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