Dutch Resistance - Definition

Definition

The Dutch themselves, especially their official war historian Dr Loe de Jong, director of the official State Institute for War Documentation (Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, RIOD, now NIOD, (Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, Dutch Institute for War Documentation) distinguished between several types of resistance. Going into hiding, at which the Dutch appeared to excel, was generally not categorised by the Dutch as resistance because of the passive nature of such an act; helping these so-called 'onderduikers' ('under divers') was, but more or less reluctantly so. Non-compliance with German rules, wishes or commands or German condoned Dutch rule, was also not considered resistance. According to official publications, sabotage on an extensive scale must have appeared at those companies in the Netherlands that kept on working during the war (collaboration was rife in the country), but until lately this was not seen as resistance.

Public protests of individuals, political parties, newspapers or the churches were also not considered to be resistance. Publishing illegal papers – at which the Dutch excelled, with some 1,100 separate titles appearing, some reaching circulations of more than 100,000 on a population of 8.5 million – was not considered resistance per se. Only active resistance in the form of spying, sabotage or with arms was what the Dutch considered resistance.

Nevertheless, thousands of members of all the 'non-resisting' categories were arrested by the Germans and often subsequently jailed for months, tortured, sent to concentration camps or killed.

Up till the 21st century, the tendency existed in Dutch historical research and publications, not to regard passive resistance as 'real' resistance. Slowly, this has started to change, also because of the emphasis the RIOD/NIOD has been putting on individual heroism since 2005. The unique Dutch February strike of 1941, protesting deportation of Jews from the Netherlands, the only such strike ever occurring in nazi-occupied Europe, is usually not defined as resistance by the Dutch. The strikers, who numbered in their ten thousands, are not named resistance paticipants. The Dutch generally prefer to use the term 'illegality'('illegaliteit') for all those activities that were illegal, contrary, underground and unarmed.

After the war, the Dutch created and awarded a Resistance Cross ('Verzetkruis', not to be confused with the much lower ranking Verzetsherdenkingskruis) to only 95 people, of whom only one was alive when receiving the decoration, a number in stark contrast to the hundreds of thousands of Dutch men and women that performed illegal tasks at any moment during the war. That the Dutch also obtained records in the field of collaboration, is a reality they are slowly coming to terms with in the new century.