ABSTRACT
Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10th May 1940. The queen and the government ministers escaped to Great Britain. Hitler appointed a civil (rather than a military) occupation government dominated by Austrian Nazis. They exerted direct control over the Dutch civil service. The anti-Jewish campaign started early, and was executed with exceptional sense of purpose, vigour, and tenacity. Terror increased and mass deportations of Jews to Buchenwald and Mauthausen took place in early 1941, before the plans to deport all Jews from Western Europe to death camps had taken shape. Jews were systematically identified, registered, separated from the other Dutch, marked by wearing a star, sequestered in their homes, robbed of their possessions, and brought to Camp Westerbork, from where deportations to Auschwitz started on 14th July 1942. By end December 1942 some 38,000 Dutch Jews had been deported and murdered.
