Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Why Jews are more guilty than others?: An introductory essay, 1945-2016
- Part I Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- 2 ‘The Jew’ as Dubious Victim
- 3 The Meek Jew – and Beyond
- 4 Alte Kameraden: Right-wing Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
- 5 Jewish Responses to Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- Part II Israel and ‘the Jew’
- 6 Philosemitism?: Ambivalences regarding Israel
- 7 Transnational Left-wing Protest and the ‘Powerful Zionist’
- 8 Israel: Source of Divergence
- 9 ‘The Activist Jew’ Responds to Changing Dutch Perceptions of Israel
- 10 Turkish Anti-Zionism in the Netherlands: From Leftist to Islamist Activism
- Part III The Holocaust-ed Jew in Native Dutch Domains since the 1980s
- 11 ‘The Jew’ in Football: To Kick Around or to Embrace
- 12 Pornographic Antisemitism, Shoah Fatigue and Freedom of Speech
- 13 Historikerstreit: The Stereotypical Jew in Recent Dutch Holocaust Studies
- Part IV Generations. Migrant Identities and Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
- 14 ‘The Jew’ vs. ‘the Young Male Moroccan’: Stereotypical Confrontations in the City
- 15 Conspiracism: Islamic Redemptive Antisemitism and the Murder of Theo van Gogh
- 16 Reading Anne Frank: Confronting Antisemitism in Turkish Communities
- 17 Holocaust Commemorations in Postcolonial Dutch Society
- 18 Epilogue: Instrumentalising and Blaming ‘the Jew’, 2011-2016
- References
- Index
2 - ‘The Jew’ as Dubious Victim
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Why Jews are more guilty than others?: An introductory essay, 1945-2016
- Part I Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- 2 ‘The Jew’ as Dubious Victim
- 3 The Meek Jew – and Beyond
- 4 Alte Kameraden: Right-wing Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
- 5 Jewish Responses to Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- Part II Israel and ‘the Jew’
- 6 Philosemitism?: Ambivalences regarding Israel
- 7 Transnational Left-wing Protest and the ‘Powerful Zionist’
- 8 Israel: Source of Divergence
- 9 ‘The Activist Jew’ Responds to Changing Dutch Perceptions of Israel
- 10 Turkish Anti-Zionism in the Netherlands: From Leftist to Islamist Activism
- Part III The Holocaust-ed Jew in Native Dutch Domains since the 1980s
- 11 ‘The Jew’ in Football: To Kick Around or to Embrace
- 12 Pornographic Antisemitism, Shoah Fatigue and Freedom of Speech
- 13 Historikerstreit: The Stereotypical Jew in Recent Dutch Holocaust Studies
- Part IV Generations. Migrant Identities and Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
- 14 ‘The Jew’ vs. ‘the Young Male Moroccan’: Stereotypical Confrontations in the City
- 15 Conspiracism: Islamic Redemptive Antisemitism and the Murder of Theo van Gogh
- 16 Reading Anne Frank: Confronting Antisemitism in Turkish Communities
- 17 Holocaust Commemorations in Postcolonial Dutch Society
- 18 Epilogue: Instrumentalising and Blaming ‘the Jew’, 2011-2016
- References
- Index
Summary
In October 1948, the Amsterdam City Council discussed inappropriate police behaviour, including an incident involving an officer who had received disciplinary punishment for making ‘harmful antisemitic remarks to two Jewish girls’. These incidents were not isolated, the spokesman of the Communist Party said. During the German occupation, the police force had been eager to act against Jews, and it had not been able to rid itself of this tendency since. The incident had been raised by the former resistance newspaper Het Parool. The officer concerned had stopped the two cycling Jewish girls, and the following dialogue ensued:
Does your father make so much money that you can afford to get yourself fined?
My father is dead, officer.
Did you bring a towel and a bar of soap?
No, officer.
More's the pity. Otherwise, I could have sent you to the gas chamber.
Het Parool asked the police about the matter. Initially, the commissioner spoke of an ‘inappropriate joke’, but eventually, he promised disciplinary punishment. The two Jewish girls did not file a complaint. The remark was clearly antisemitic: the Jews were verbally sent to the gas chamber in retroaction. This was a new, post-Holocaust stereotype. The identification of Jews with gas and the gas chamber – ‘the Jew’ is there to be gassed – would remain an important item in the antisemitic repertoire. This chapter describes how the Shoah or Holocaust became something that could be held against the Jews in the postwar Netherlands.
Antisemitism had not disappeared from the Netherlands; it acquired a number of new dimensions. We will here elucidate the genesis and development of the curse ‘They have forgotten to gas you’. The next chapter will show how the historically developed stereotype of the ‘cowardly Jew’ acquired a new content and function. Important here are the concepts, developed in Germany, of secondary antisemitism and Schuld- und Erinnerungsabwehrantisemitismus [antisemitism as defence against guilt and unwanted memory]. By demonstrating that these concepts are also relevant for the Netherlands, psychology is granted its rightful place in the analysis of Dutch postwar antisemitism and the changing or unchanging image of ‘the Jew’. The victimhood of the Jews not only gave rise to astonishment and empathy, but also to aversion, aggression and competitive victimhood.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Holocaust, Israel and 'the Jew'Histories of Antisemitism in Postwar Dutch Society, pp. 61 - 82Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2016