Beginning of the Dutch Resistance
the february strike 1941
The February Strike was the first act of the resistance against the Nazis . The city tram drivers were the first to strike, followed by other workers in the city. Everybody stopped going to work in the city because of how the Germans treated the Jews.
llegal pamphlet calling for the February strike (1941), a resistance action in Amsterdam against the German occupation, after a razzia in which more than 400 Jewish men were rounded up. NIOD Collection, Amsterdam. Source: Dutch Auschwitz Comittee.
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Amsterdam, 1941, street scene during the February Strike. Image bank WW2- NIOD
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"The news ran round through the city. 'The Amsterdam Dry-dock Company, the shipbuilding industry, De Vries Lenz, Fokker - they're on strike everywhere! The ferryboats aren't running! The trams aren't running!' Empty streets. No trams, almost no cars. The workers and drivers of a very large number of shipping agents, large and small, had also laid down their work. Almost everywhere the shops were closed. Strike — a general strike! Against the persecution of the Jews, against inhumane treatment, against the "we're running the show" attitude of the WA and other Mussert gangsters."
-Salomon de Vries
"There came a day when my Jewish friend Herman , who worked with me in the bank in The Hague, began to understand that for him, as a Jew, life could not go on the same way anymore. He thus became the first Jewish person that we helped during the Occupation."-Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say)
Source: One Family's Experience
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"You see so many things happening...you just had to do something about it." |
"The Germans explained to us that the Jews were to be transported to East Germany from all the other European countries. There they would live only with each other , and that way they could harm only each other. When it started to go into effect, we knew we could simply not tolerate this horrible plan. We knew we had to do something."-Diet Eman (Things We Couldn't Say) |
Diet Eman. Source: Things We Couldn't Say
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All students who wish either to get their degrees this year, or continue their studies, are compelled to sign that they are in sympathy with the Germans and approve of the New Order. Eighty per cent have refused to go against their consciences. Naturally, they had to bear the consequences. All the students who do not sign have to go to a labor camp in Germany. What will be left of the youth of the country if they all got to do hard labor in Germany?"
-Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank)