Almost eighty years ago, on February 24th 1941 a little known but profound event occurred in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of World War II. The workers and citizens of Amsterdam staged a general strike to oppose the deportation of Jews by the Nazis and their Dutch collaborators.
The Netherlands had been overrun by the Nazis in 1940. The government in exile of Queen Wilhelmina was established in London thus forcing the Nazis to rule the country directly without resort to puppet regimes like Vichy France. The population lived directly under the guns of the occupiers.
The Nazis hoped to absorb the Dutch into their National Socialist Greater German Reich. Consequently they initially tried a soft approach towards their ostensible Aryan kin. They pinned a great deal of hope on the pre-existing National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands, despite its small numbers and lack of popularity.
Nevertheless, despite such consideration, when Nazis and Dutch collaborators began to stage attacks on the Jewish community in Amsterdam, culminating in the round up of 425 Jewish men ages 25-35 for deportation to Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps on the weekend of Feb. 22-23, the reaction was explosive.
On Feb. 24th a mass meeting was held on the Noordermarkt to call for a strike to protest the pogrom as well as the policy of conscripting Dutch civilians for forced labor in Germany.
The Communist Party of the Netherlands, made illegal by the Germans, printed and spread a call to strike throughout the city the next morning. The first to strike were the city's tram drivers, followed by other city services as well as companies like De Bijenkorf and schools. Eventually 300,000 people joined in the strike, bringing much of the city to a halt and catching the Germans by surprise.[4] Though the Germans immediately took measures to suppress the strike, which had grown spontaneously as other workers followed the example of the tram drivers, it still spread to other areas, including Zaanstad, Kennemerland in the west, Bussum, Hilversum and Utrecht in the east and the south.[5] The strike did not last long. By 27 February, much of it had been suppressed by the German police. Although ultimately unsuccessful, it was significant in that it was the first and only direct action against the Nazis' treatment of Jews in Europe.
The February strike also marked the birth of large scale resistance to the Nazis in the Netherlands. Although far left parties had begun to organize prior to this, the February strike demonstrated the reality of mass opposition to the Nazis.
On 25 February 1941, the Communist Party of the Netherlands called for a general strike, the 'February strike', in response to the first Nazi raid on Amsterdam's Jewish population.[23] The old Jewish quarter in Amsterdam had been cordoned off into a ghetto and as retaliation for a number of violent incidents that followed, 425 Jewish men were taken hostage by the Germans and eventually deported to extermination camps, just two surviving. Many citizens of Amsterdam, regardless of their political affiliation, joined in a mass protest against the deportation of Jewish Dutch citizens. The next day, factories in Zaandam, Haarlem, IJmuiden, Weesp, Bussum, Hilversum and Utrecht joined in. The strike was largely put down within a day with German troops firing on unarmed crowds, killing nine people and wounding 24, as well as taking many prisoners. Opposition to the German occupation intensified as a result of the violence against non-combative Dutch people (albeit in support of the Jews).The only other general strike in Nazi-occupied Europe was the general strike in occupied Luxembourg in 1942. The Dutch struck four more times against the Germans: the students' strike in November 1940, the doctors' strike in 1942, the April–May strike in 1943 and the railway strike in 1944.
The Dutch Resistance became so pervasive that it accomplished prodigies that seem incredible for a people under the boot of Hitler’s SS.
One of the most widespread activities was hiding and sheltering refugees and enemies of the Nazi regime, which included concealing Jewish families like that of Anne Frank, underground operatives, draft-age Dutchmen and, later in the war, Allied aircrew. Collectively these people were known as onderduikers ('people in hiding' or literally: 'under-divers'). Corrie ten Boom and her family were among those who successfully hid several Jews and resistance workers from the Nazis.[24] The first people who went into hiding were German Jews who had arrived in the Netherlands before 1940. They were not duped by the German attitude just after the Dutch capitulation. In the first weeks after the surrender, some British soldiers who could not get to Dunkirk (Duinkerken) in French Flanders hid with farmers in Dutch Flanders. In the winter of 1940–1941 many French escaped prisoners of war passed through the Netherlands. One single-family in Oldenzaal helped 200 men. In total, about 4,000 mainly French, some Belgian, Polish, Russian and Czech ex-POWs were aided on their way south in the province of Limburg.[25] The number of people cared for by the LO in July 1944 is estimated to be between 200,000 and 350,000.[26] That is one out of 40 inhabitants of the Netherlands. 1,671 members of the LO-LKP organizations lost their lives.
This is a neglected page in the history of the long struggle against tyranny, brutality, oppression and racism. Each year the strike is commemorated with a wreath laying ceremony at a monument raised to the memory of the strikers. Theirs is an example to inspire and instruct us in our present struggles.