‘A sacred duty'. The Holocaust in Dutch Historiography

The ‘Final Solution' hit Jews in the Netherlands particularly hard: 100,000 of the 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands were murdered. Expressed as a percentage, over 70% became victims of the German extermination machine. The percentage was markedly lower in other Western European countries — in Norway and Belgium about 40%, in France 25%, while in Denmark nearly all the 8,000 Jews managed to escape deportation. In the light of the markedly high Dutch percentage it is interesting to consider how historiography has reacted to the murder of the Jews. This article is confined to the work of three historians, Abel Herzberg, Loe de Jong and Jacques Presser, all of them Dutch Jews who survived the Holocaust.