As Struggle-La Lucha recently reported, the Western mainstream press has been flooded with alligator tears regarding alleged antisemitic attacks on “Israeli” soccer fans in Amsterdam. In fact, the recent events in Amsterdam constituted a racist Zionist-led pogrom against Amsterdam’s Arab community. The second that community fought back, the U.S. imperialist mouthpieces immediately cried antisemitism.
War criminal in chief Joe Biden referred to the Arab community and pro-Palestine movement’s self-defense against Zionist mobs as “antisemitic attacks” that “echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted.” Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halesma, went as far as to say that the pro-Palestine demonstrations that confronted the Zionist fascist mobs actually committed a pogrom against Jewish people. The King of the Netherlands echoed this sentiment, stating: “Jews must feel safe in the Netherlands, everywhere and at all times. We put our arms around them and will not let them go.”
The Dutch government’s newfound concern for the Jewish community clashes with their historical record of antisemitism.
There is a common national mythology in the Netherlands that all Dutch people were united in their resolve to combat Nazi occupation and the Holocaust. The Netherlands’ government and media often point to a general strike in February of 1941. The Communist Party of the Netherlands was the main force behind this strike and called the strike in response to the first round-up of Dutch Jews. In response to the strike, the Nazi occupation government and their Dutch counterparts apprehended and murdered over 2,000 communists.
The mythology is not that there was resistance. As just stated, there obviously was a communist-led resistance to Nazi occupation in the Netherlands.
The myth is that most Dutch people actively resisted the Nazis. However, the truth is that resistance came from the working class, with those in power collaborating instead.
After the initial Nazi occupation, the civilian government of the Netherlands actually ordered its bureaucrats and administrators to stay in place to assist Germany with its occupation. Unlike France or Belgium, the pre-war Dutch bureaucratic state mainly stayed in place during Nazi occupation. The Dutch police coordinated with Nazi authorities to round up the Jewish community, and the Dutch National Railway Company played an active role in deporting Jews to death camps.
The scope of Nazi collaboration in wartime Netherlands was expansive. The Dutch National Socialist Movement, about 100,000 members strong at the time, played an active role in enforcing Nazi social norms and crushing resistance. The “Germanic SS” units in the Netherlands found recruitment of agents seamless. At their height, the “Nederlandsche SS” had over 6,000 fanatical members.
As part of the Nazi’s final solution, the occupation government employed as many as 80 bounty hunters who roamed the Netherlands countryside searching for Jews. Those 80 “Jew hunters” arrested and delivered over 8,000 Jews to Nazi authorities, all of whom were delivered to death camps.
In 2025, the Dutch government will actually release a list of over 300,000 individuals who collaborated with the Nazi occupation government during World War II. Since the end of the war, a Dutch law has kept the public from accessing these records to protect the families of Nazi collaborators.
Beyond civilian government and military cooperation, the Dutch industrial sector welcomed Nazi occupation with open arms. Dutch textile magnate C&A stole Jewish property and used Jewish slave labor during the Holocaust. Oil magnate Royal Dutch Shell, or “Shell,” was run by Nazis as early as 1929, and was openly supportive of a Nazi client regime in the Netherlands. The German government trusted Shell so much that the Germans allowed Shell’s ownership to stay in Dutch hands, which was rare for Nazi-occupied countries.
The depth and strength of this collaboration led to the extermination of 75% of the Netherlands’ Jewish community. In a way, the Dutch government, corporations, and media mouthpieces have been consistent in their support for fascism. The same way those institutions came to the aid of Nazi occupiers in the 1940s, the current U.S.-backed fascist project of “Israel” has found a friend in the Netherlands’ ruling class and its state apparatus.
The Dutch response alleging antisemitism is not a genuine defense of Jewish people, just another chapter in the long history of Dutch collaboration with fascism.
Lev Koufax is an anti-Zionist Jewish activist.
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