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The Dutch Resistance Museum
Entry 4 of 13 | show all | print this entry |
What would you do if a foreign power invaded America? Now, don't answer so quickly.
Or without thinking of your situation before the invasion.
Your country has been ripped apart by large scale unemployment, inflation, religious intolerance that has lead to widespread violence and inconsolable hatred. There are food shortages even if you have a job to pay for what you wish to eat. Top it all off: you live in an out-dated, inefficient, elitist government system called a monarchy.
The most succesful countries in Europe have socialist governments, and they seem to be, presently, the most powerful: Italy, Germany, Russia...
In May, 1940, The Nazi war machine invaded their neighbors to the west: the Netherlands. The Dutch had been experiencing all those above-mentioned problems for quite some time. They, as a military and as common people, defended themselves the best they could.
First, the German airforce bombed Rotterdam, the Netherlands' main port and business center. After that, they gave the Dutch five days to surrender. You would say, "NO!" too, wouldn't you? That was your initial answer, right?
The Blitzkrieg was too much. German paratroopers, tanks, artillery, warplanes, and hundreds of thousands of stormtroopers poured into the Dutch countryside and cities. They cut off bridges, took over factories, and walked up to the buildings of Dutch government carrying the most lethal weapons known. The Dutch fought, saw the situation as hopeless for their children and loved ones, and surrendered.
At first, the Nazis played the benevolent conqueror. Through massive assaults of print, radio, and social propaganda, they toasted the benefits of National Socialism, played up the Germanic relationship between the Reichsland and the Netherlands (we have so much in common!), employed people and provided markets for Dutch goods.
But underneath that exterior, well, you know... ...they were Nazis! The Germans took Netherlands resources at will, outlawed opposition politically and socially. They began registering all individuals based on ethnic origins and religious beliefs...
The Dutch government was left in place to maintain order and they were given an order to follow: comply or leave office and maybe, face the consequences of arrest. The Dutch nationalist politicians felt that it was better that they were in charge rather than the NSB, the Dutch Nazi Party (the Germans had already promoted a whole Hitler-adoring Dutch structure with political activist organizations, youth clubs, you name it, and all in a few months). Each suceeding month seemed to bring a new law handed down from Berlin.
At first it was the registrations. Then there were the bans against the Communist party, then the Dutch nationalist political parties. A couple of months later, all trade unions had to belong the Nazi Party's single union. Then artists and actors had to swear allegience to the Fuhrer. Then certain laws about the Jews passed, growing more severe until, by 1943, the Jews could not go to the markets, could not ride public transportation, drive or ride in cars, could not ride bicycles. All Jewish property was inventoried, by law. Jews had their property confiscated and they were forcibly moved to one particular area. They were sold the gold stars of David they had to wear under penalty of arrest and, later, execution. They were rounded up and deported to concentration camps. Eighty percent of the Jews residing in the Netherlands were murdered by the Nazis; well over 100,000 people.
The Dutch Resistance Museum documents the efforts to throw off the Nazi yoke. The Dutch had an underground resistance that attempted to undermine the Nazi rule. The effects were brutal. Thousands of innocent Dutch people were hauled out of their houses and shot. Then, they were left to lay there as warnings against sabotage. Many government leaders were also murdered during the occupation, some by the Dutch Resistance when these politicians developed fascist habits.
The Resistance Museum packs a lot of punch into a small, single floor space. There are attention getters over what seems every square inch. Many of the photos and exhibits are seen through slits and half concealed openings in the kiosks. This presents a 3D, shadowbox effect throughout the museum and it also makes you feel like you're spying on something. Sort of a paranoid, looking-out-the-window-at-something-menacing-coming-to-get- you, feeling.
The Museum covers the resistance efforts and the Jewish experience during the occupation. It also covers daily life under the occupation with movies, radio broadcasts, a clandestine printing press, and sound effects of starving children and brutally beaten victims.
Today, I think many of the Dutch would agree that, if it hadn't been for the Allied armies defeating the Nazis in other parts of Europe, the Netherlands, by themselves, would not have been able to lift the occupation. The retaliations against the Resistance were insane. The male populations of entire towns were hauled out to fields, made to dig their own graves, then shot. People were arrested for no reason to fill a general pool of victims; then when sabotage against the Nazis occurred, these unlucky ones were also murdered.
The Dutch Resistance Museum was a lesson about how a population will often look after their own best interests, fall prey to an insidious political agenda that seems to promise attention to those interests, and then after thousands of friends and family have died or been sent to work as slaves in a foreign country, this population realizes it has made a big, big mistake.
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