ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses how the image of the German maid in the Netherlands changed from a very positive to an extremely negative one, and how far this affects the collective memory of those who lived through the war. She uses the documents from the period and interviews with two different groups of women: women who came from Germany to work in the Netherlands as domestic servants and stayed; and Dutch women who worked alongside them as maids. In 1930 the Dutch government itself responded by setting up a special women’s section in the Dutch labour exchange in Oberhausen, in order to arrange for an appropriate supply of German maids to enter the Netherlands’. The Dutch servants displayed less enthusiasm at the arrival of their German colleagues, who were often prepared to do more work for less money.
