At its peak, an estimated 300,000 people took part. Offices, shops, and restaurants stood empty.
GENERAL STRIKE DAY DRIVERS
Workers on bicycles rang the doorbells at homes and halted traffic in the streets, imploring drivers to join them. On Tuesday, February 25, tram drivers and sanitation crews started it. Strike of February 1941 in the Netherlands leaflet, 25 February 1941 Leaflets were distributed, emblazoned with the words: “Strike! Strike! Strike! Shut down all of Amsterdam for a day!” The Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg Front, founded by Henk Sneevliet, a former ally of Leon Trotsky, also pledged support. Two CPN militants, Piet Nak and Willem Kraan, called for a general strike. A meeting organized by the Communists and attended by trade-union representatives happened on the 24th. The Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN), banned by the German authorities, gave voice and organization to these stirrings. Opposition took shape around the radical Left. The brutality displayed in these roundups not only shocked people but stirred them to act. Of them, 389 were sent from there to Mauthausen. In retaliation, the Germans arrested, tortured, and sentenced Cahn to death by firing squad.Įver mindful to send a message, Seyss-Inquart’s government additionally seized 425 Jews, literally grabbing them from Amsterdam’s streets, and deported them to Buchenwald. Mistaken for Dutch Nazis, this patrol was sprayed by ammonium gas from an improvised device in the parlor.
Then, on February 19, German police entered a popular ice cream parlor in South Amsterdam owned by Erich Cahn, a German Jew and refugee. Enraged, German administrators ordered the formation of a Jewish Council, led by Abraham Asscher and David Cohen, to enforce compliance with occupation policy. Young Jewish men fought back fiercely and, in one confrontation, killed a Dutch National Socialist. Feeling emboldened, the Defense Division, the paramilitary arm of Mussert’s organization, openly attacked Jews in Amsterdam. This insidious process, gradually and methodically implemented, of identifying and separating Jews from everyone else, relegated them to pariah status in their own country.įollowing this wave of reactionary legislation, two incidents in February 1941 demonstrated that the Jewish population in Amsterdam would not hesitate to protect themselves.
GENERAL STRIKE DAY REGISTRATION
In January 1941, the Nazis demanded registration of all Jews, as well as people of mixed ancestry. The process of removing Jews from the civil service then ensued in early November. At the same time, Jewish businesses were also forced to register with the government. In October, all Dutch civil servants had to complete forms-one specifically designed for Jews, the other for Aryans. Seyss-Inquart and Rauter passed legislation barring Jews from holding public office. Over the next several months, the expected anti-Semitic measures came. Among them were 25,000 foreign, mostly German Jews, who had sought refuge there, including Anne Frank and her family. The 140,000 Jews residing in the Netherlands thus had good reason to be afraid. These two Austrians, both executed as war criminals after the Third Reich’s defeat, could rely on the National Socialist Movement, an indigenous fascist party led by Anton Mussert, for enthusiastic support. His most important subordinate and rival was Hanns Albin Rauter, the General Commissar for Security, a Higher SS and Police Leader dispatched by Heinrich Himmler.
With the Netherlands securely in the hands of the German army, the Nazi regime appointed Arthur Seyss-Inquart as Reich Commissar for the country. The Dutch armed forces surrendered on May 14, 1940, the fifth day of the German invasion and the day after Queen Wilhemina and the government fled The Hague to London. The Amsterdam General Strike of February 1941, what the Dutch termed the Februaristaking, deserves to be known, understood, and remembered. In the case of Amsterdam’s working class, resistance entailed organizing a general strike. In retrospect, resistance involved everything from printing and distributing anti-Nazi leaflets to hiding Jews from the clutches of the SS, to sabotaging the lines of communication or railways the Wehrmacht needed, to taking up arms, individually or with a group, against the Germans or pro-Nazi collaborators. Some deeds were far more perilous than others. What resisting meant differed radically depending on time, place, and immediate circumstances. Even if many of their stories have been exaggerated and distorted, women, men, and children across Europe did fight back against the Nazis’ so-called New Order.
The cases of France and Italy, where national myths were created around resistance groups, are well known. Resistance to German occupation has been celebrated-and mythologized-since the end of World War II.
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