Louis de Jong: Writing the History of Occupied Europe

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-417
Author(s):  
BOB MOORE

Louis de Jong, who died on 15 March 2005, held a unique position as the official historian for the Netherlands during the Second World War. As head of the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (RIOD), de Jong effectively came to dictate the research agenda on his country’s recent history for more than forty years after the conflict was over. For the Dutch, his name was synonymous not only with RIOD but also with the history of the German occupation from May 1940 to the final liberation in May 1945.

2013 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 470-479
Author(s):  
Pieter Emmer

The Netherlands is not known for its opposing regimes of memory. There are two exceptions to this rule: the history of the German Occupation during the Second World War and the Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade and slavery. The relatively low numbers of survivors of the Holocaust in the Netherlands, as well as the volume and the profitability of the Dutch slave trade and slavery, and the importance of slave resistance in abolishing slavery in the Dutch Caribbean have produced conflicting views, especially between professional historians and the descendants of slaves living in the Netherlands.


2004 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giel J M Hutschemaekers ◽  
Harry Oosterhuis

The early history of psychotherapy in the Netherlands hardly differs from that of the surrounding countries. Somewhat later than in France and Germany, psychotherapy appeared during the last decades of the nineteenth century, with general practitioners who started to treat their patients (mainly for all kinds of somatic complaints) by psychological means. In the early decades of the twentieth century, psychotherapy was narrowed down to mainly psychoanalytic treatment. The patient population consisted of a small élite group of people who belonged to the upper social classes. The practice of psychotherapy was restricted to some “enlightened” psychoanalysts.


Costume ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-96
Author(s):  
Marta Kargól

In 1932, Nellie van Rijsoort (1910–1996), the Dutch embroidery maker and designer, opened her atelier in Rotterdam. Among her clients were prestigious fashion stores in the Netherlands as well as wealthy middle-class customers. After the Second World War, van Rijsoort left Rotterdam and continued her career in Melbourne in the rapidly developing fashion network of Australia. Today, samples of embroidered fabrics and fashion drawings by Nellie van Rijsoort are part of the collections of the Museum Rotterdam and the National Trust of Australia in Melbourne. These collections provide insight into half a century of history of embroidered fabrics. This article illustrates the largely forgotten career of the embroidery designer. The first part of the article outlines the position and meaning of van Rijsoort's atelier in the fashion networks of the Netherlands and Australia, while the second part provides an analysis of embroidery samples and drawings, which reveal the place and function of embroideries as dress decorations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elke Weesjes

Informed by oral history and memory studies, this chapter draws on a series of interviews with 38 British and Dutch cradle communists and is dedicated to the impact of the Second World War and its aftermath, and the events of 1956 – the year of Khrushchev’s secret speech and the Soviet invasion of Hungary – on the Dutch and British communist movements. This chapter particularly examines how cradle communists in the Netherlands and Britain experienced the contrast between the communist movement’s zenith during the Second World War and its nadir in 1956. Within this context, it discusses the Dutch communist resistance during the German occupation, parental war trauma and transgenerational communication, and the impact of anti-communist measures in Britain and the Netherlands on participants’ lives.


2020 ◽  
pp. 372-388
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Czyżak

The article contains considerations regarding memory of the Holocaust in Polish contemporary prose and analyses the arguments for and against fictitious representations of theShoah. The author discusses the changes in treating fiction which narrates the history of Jewish people during the Second World War – from works of fiction published after the war (e.g. Wielki Tydzień by Jerzy Andrzejewski) to popular thrillers written in the 21st century. The main part of this article is devoted to a novel Tworki written by Marek Bieńczyk in 1999, telling a story of young people – Poles and Jews – employed in a mental hospital during German occupation. The novel was at the centre stage of discussion about relationship between fiction and the Shoah theme, yet the author of the article argues that it may serve as an important stepping stone in exemplifying history. This literary vision of the Holocaust (defined as “pastoral thriller”) shows educational possibilities of fiction.


2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Absillis

Subjugated to the linguistic and literary norms of the Netherlands and, at the same time, confined to the borders of the multilingual state of Belgium, Flemish authors have always had to struggle hard to legitimize their cultural identity. After the Second World War, however, Flemish literature suffered from an existential crisis due to the fact that a small but prominent part of the Flemish Movement had collaborated with the German occupiers. Publishers therefore had to explore new ways in which to turn Flemish literature into a commercially and artistically successful commodity in Flanders and the Netherlands. Introducing a theoretical framework that was conceived of by Pierre Bourdieu and further elaborated on by Pascale Casanova in The World Republic of Letters, this article will discuss and interpret the ways in which Flemish publishers have edited, designed, and marketed literary texts, and explore the positive and negative effects which strategies of assimilation and differentiation have had on the reception of those texts. The reading practices engaged in by literary gatekeepers, both in Belgium and in the Netherlands, are shown to have been a profoundly influential force in the history of Flemish literature.


Quaerendo ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 241-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Renders

AbstractDuring the occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War, the country’s book industry was subjected to control by a number of official bodies, both German and Dutch, in addition to which the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD) was also prone to interfering with the production and distribution of printed matter. In contrast to the sanctions imposed on the journalistic press, book production was censored preventively by a specially established reading panel called the Lectoraat. In reality, however, at least as effective an instrument of censorship was the government department responsible for allocating paper supplies. The article presents an overview of the legislation and regulations to which booksellers, writers and publishers had to adhere in the successive phases of the occupation.


Itinerario ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madelon de Keizer

As a native of the Netherlands, I have been imbued with an awareness of the history of the Second World War in both Europe and the Pacific ever since I was a child, though I must admit that the Japanese occupation of the Dutch colony in the Dutch East Indies from 1942 to 1945 plays a less important part in my imagination than thefiveyears of German occupation of the Netherlands. My parents and brothers can directly recollect the latter dark period, and I see it vividly in my mind's eye, born (in 1948) and bred as I was in Rotterdam, the city whose centre was razed to the ground by the German air raid in May 1940. The effects of the bombs were still clearly visible during the years in which I was growing up there. Given this double Dutch memory – memory of the hostilities in Europe, and memory of South-East Asia – it hardly seems fortuitous that the Dutch scholar Ian Buruma chose the German and Japanese memory of the Second World War and of the War in the Pacific as the theme for his 1994 publication The Wages of Guilt.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
MAREN RÖGER

AbstractSexual policies were a core component of the National Socialist racial policies, both in the Altreich (territories considered part of Nazi Germany before 1938), as well as in the occupied territories. In occupied Poland the Germans imposed a ‘prohibition of contact’ (Umgangsverbot) with the local Polish population, a restriction that covered both social as well as sexual encounters. But this model of absolute racial segregation was never truly implemented. This paper attempts to show that there existed a wide range of sexual contacts between the occupiers and the local inhabitants, with the focus here being on consensual and forced contacts (sexual violence) as seen against the backdrop of National Socialist policies. This article positions itself at the intersection of the history of everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte), the history of sexuality and the gender history of the German occupation of Poland – perspectives that have rarely been used with regard to this region.


Author(s):  
Jacques Semelin

Between the French defeat in 1940 and liberation in 1944, the Nazis killed almost 80,000 of France's Jews, both French and foreign. Since that time, this tragedy has been well-documented. But there are other stories hidden within it--ones neglected by historians. In fact, 75% of France’s Jews escaped the extermination, while 45% of the Jews of Belgium perished, and in the Netherlands only 20% survived. The Nazis were determined to destroy the Jews across Europe, and the Vichy regime collaborated in their deportation from France. So what is the meaning of this French exception? Jacques Semelin sheds light on this 'French enigma', painting a radically unfamiliar view of occupied France. His is a rich, even-handed portrait of a complex and changing society, one where helping and informing on one's neighbors went hand in hand; and where small gestures of solidarity sat comfortably with anti-Semitism. Without shying away from the horror of the Holocaust's crimes, this seminal work adds a fresh perspective to our history of the Second World War


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