Cardinal De Jong tackled every error, including National Socialism

Portrait of Dutch Archbishop and Cardinal Johannes (Jan) de Jong (1885-1955), date unknown.Image ANP / Spaarnestad Photo

‘It is impossible to talk to this man’, said a high-ranking German official during the war years about the Utrecht Archbishop Johannes (Jan) de Jong (1885-1955). The latter could not have wished for a more beautiful recommendation – though he desired no heroism or honors. De Jong, born among ‘thin grass on the poor soil of Ameland’, only wanted to serve his mother church. And this “obviously” brought him into conflict with the Nazis – adherents of a “devilish doctrine.” De Jong did not even have to express this conviction by raising his voice: sometimes a silent refusal to carry out an order from the German authorities was enough.

Such as on the early morning of Sunday, August 3, 1941, when two Gestapo men joined the archbishop’s palace on Maliebaan in Utrecht to persuade De Jong to withdraw a ‘pastoral letter’ in which he urged his co-religionists to passively resist the Nazification of Dutch society. According to his biographer Henk van Osch, the archbishop had ‘the broad, purple state sash taken out of the closet, and together with the golden pectoral cross and purple skullcap, his large figure became an impressive sight’. To impress the Germans – sensitive to decorum – even more, he received them in the most magnificent room of his official residence. There, ‘after an uneasy silence’, he received the order of the Reichskommissar. He informed his guests “with a single word” that he had understood them, but then instructed all bishops to read the pastoral letter as scheduled this Sunday. In response to this offense, several priests and Roman Catholic trade unionists were arrested. De Jong himself was fined 500 guilders. Believers raised money to enable their guide to carry this heavy burden.

Tribute

De Jong has now been awarded the Yad Vashem award for his resistance against the Nazis and – more in particular – for his ban on Roman Catholics from participating in the deportation of Jews. World War II assisted Jews, thereby running great personal risks). The current Archbishop, Wim Eijk, had already nominated his distant predecessor for this tribute in 2017, but returned to this after suspicions arose that De Jong had intervened after the war for a war criminal who had been sentenced to death – a relative of his judicial officer. On further investigation, however, it has been established that De Jong did not interfere in the course of justice – in fact, he considered the actions of the convicted ‘too bad’ to support a request for clemency. As a result, the possible objections to a Yad Vashem award no longer apply, and Eijk resuscitated the nomination.

In the angularity of his religious conviction and the way in which it was propagated, De Jong was mentally closer to the steep Calvinist than to the agile Catholic. Throughout his working life he has objected to almost all products of the Enlightenment. As a student of theology and philosophy in Rome, he exposed himself to the anti-modern spirit of Pope Pius X. He took offense at the celebrations at which Italy celebrated its 50th anniversary as a sovereign state in 1911, because they had an anti-papal slant to his taste. He later associated the ills of the 20th century with the French Revolution and the democratic system. He expressed understanding for Balthasar Gerards, the (Catholic) murderer of William of Orange.

‘purge disease’

After the war, he modestly fulminated – according to Van Osch De Jong was ‘a polemicist without passion’ – against the ‘purification’ with which the Netherlands got rid of Nazi taints. “Our people have been afflicted with a horrible disease, which we shall call the purging disease. One half of the people “purifies” the other half. (…) Purification will and must be done!’ Another phenomenon of the time – the social legislation of Willem Drees – could not meet with his approval either. ‘The State seeks ever greater power and influence and is stifling the living Christian forces; even in the field of charity, the oldest and so truly Christian virtue, the State tries to take everything into its own hands.’ He feared a future without a church, in which the Netherlands would be ‘missioned by Africa’.

But of all the errors he defied, National Socialism was the most threatening. ‘Not in the least combative in itself, it was the circumstances of the time that demanded the courage and bravery that gave him the halo of a hero’, wrote Van Osch. De Jong has by no means aspired to heroism. “Instead of having to play on stage, I would have preferred to have remained a spectator,” he said. That lament also arose from the fact that the occupying authorities retaliated in the lower echelons of the church hierarchy in response to his calls for ‘spiritual resistance’. They did not dare to tackle De Jong themselves for fear of unleashing a Catholic popular uprising. He would have spent the rest of his life in trouble of conscience about this – although he rarely expressed it as a true northerner.

3x Jan de Jong

5,500 Dutch people

The organization Yad Vashem awards the honorary title ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ to non-Jews who, at the risk of their own lives, have committed themselves to persecuted Jews during the Second World War. The award was awarded to more than 5,500 Dutch people, including Corrie ten Boom (who housed several Jewish people in hiding), Miep Gies (one of the helpers of the residents of the Secret Annex) and Frits Philips (who protected his Jewish employees to the best of his ability).

Edith Stein

In July 1942, 245 Catholic Jews were arrested after the Dutch denominations protested by telegram to Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart against the first deportations of Jews. One of the victims was Edith Stein, a monk in Echt at the time. She was murdered in Auschwitz. She was canonized in 1998.

Pius XII

‘War Pope’ Pius XII would have appreciated the attitude of Archbishop De Jong – who was appointed cardinal after the war. Historians are not yet in agreement about the role of the Pope himself. On the one hand, he gave shelter to Jews (and helped in other ways), on the other, he never wanted to publicly condemn the Nazi regime.

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