The Battle for Jewish Sympathy: The House of Orange, the Dutch Jews, and Postwar Morality

In 1965, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands announced the engagement of Princess Beatrix to the German Claus von Amsberg. In the context of a rearticulation of Dutch public morality in terms of the Second World War, and especially the Holocaust, this engagement provoked intense public debate. Each of the groups involved—the Royal House, the government, and the opponents—connected the topic of the engagement to the Shoah and tried to get Dutch Jewry on their side. Internally, this caused fierce debate and even fear of a split in the community. Although the “Jew as legitimation” was an effective argument in public and political debate, Dutch Jews themselves generally objected to such an exploitation of their history, traditions, and existence.