Abstract
A higher percentage of Dutch Jews were exterminated in death camps during World War II than from any Western European country except Germany. Although scholars address myriad aspects of this vexing history, silences remain regarding how certain Dutch groups managed to survive. For example, Dutch historiographies devote fewer than a dozen pages to the 100 surviving members of Amsterdam’s Diamond Group, which included over 1000 individuals in 1940. This study of 19 testimonies recorded by the VHA in the 1990s reveals a deeply textured narrative of their wartime experiences and considers how the idea of choice figures as memorial and survival strategy.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 62-84 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Holocaust Studies |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 6 Sept 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2 Jan 2020 |
Funding
This work was supported by CLUE+ Fellowship, VU Amsterdam. The authors would like to thank Lewis Kirshner, Clayre Benzadon, Edo Groot, Dienke Hondius, Lawrence Langer, Laura Levitt, Murray Schwartz, Dylan Stevens, Dan Stone, Wendy Walters, and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful contributions to this article.
Keywords
- Bergen-Belsen
- choiceless choices
- Dutch Diamond Jews
- microhistory collective memory