After the Second World War: From ‘Jewish Church’ to Cultural Minority

WHEN THE SOUTH of the Netherlands was liberated in September 1944, the first Jews were able to come out of hiding. They set up small Jewish organizations in Maastricht, Heerlen, and Eindhoven, and started on the registration of Jews who had been in hiding and—after April 1945—of Jews returning from abroad. The liberated southern provinces were placed under a 'Netherlands Military Administration’ (NMA). The Dutch government remained in London until after the liberation of the entire Netherlands. When the north was liberated, in May 1945, the Jews in the south formed a community of a mere 2,500 souls. Following the liberation of the whole country in December 1945, that number increased to 21,674. Some of the Jews who had survived the war refused to register, but estimates in 1947 put the number of Jewish inhabitants of the Netherlands at approximately 28,000. Their history during the years of occupation, which had differed from that of other Netherlanders around them, had become part of the overall history of the Jewish people. The difference was to be of crucial importance in the post-war history of Dutch Jews and made itself felt immediately after the liberation: The first reaction was one of joy and excitement—the tension, the unbearable tension had gone. The Grunen [the German police] were still about but we were no longer afraid of them. Out into the streets—into freedom. And next… well, next we came upon our first Jewish acquaintances in that huge crowd. Excited talk for a while, reunion in a free country, and then … silence, a pair of searching eyes in which we see reflected the thoughts that for many months had been ours, and then, without any connection, you both say … ‘We'll just have to wait and see.’ That's what you said, setting yourself apart from that great mass of people celebrating all around you. For who could really be sure that the waiting would have any point and that the circle of family and friends would ever be the same again … what it had been?