‘The Jewish Council had no influence on the German plans’, says NIOD researcher

Since historian Laurien Vastenhout has returned to work in the Netherlands, she has noticed how emotionally charged the subject of her research is: the Jewish councils. For years she worked in relative peace on her research at a university in the United Kingdom. Now that she is also publicizing it outside academic circles, the one question is always asked: ‘Didn’t they cooperate in the persecution of the Jews?’

“That question can be asked, but you also have to ask yourself what it implies. We must continue to distinguish between victims and perpetrators. With such a question, you put the blame on the victims”, says Vastenhout in an interview at the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD) in Amsterdam, where she works.

Vastenhout was the first to conduct in-depth comparative research into the Jewish councils in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Her book on this Between Community and Collaboration, will be presented on Thursday. A Dutch version will be published in the spring.

During the occupation, councils, which had a different shape in each country, were established as a liaison between the occupying forces and the Jewish community. They provided help to the Jews in many ways, because they were excluded from regular government services, such as education and care. And the occupier tried to use those organizations to facilitate the persecution of Jews. This worked out better in the Netherlands than in other countries.

How do you explain that the Jewish Council continues to occupy people like this?

“That’s because of the idea that it contributed to the deportation of the Jews. There are very clear opinions about this, especially in the Netherlands, where by far the largest share of Jews have been deported in Western Europe. This quickly creates a moral judgment. I also think that disproportionate attention has been paid to the actions of the Jewish leaders. You have to look much more at the context in which they operated.”

You were one of the historians who spoke out against the book ‘The betrayal of Anne Frank’, that claimed that a prominent member of the Jewish Council had betrayed her hiding place. How is the Jewish Council described in that book?

“That paints a completely wrong picture. In addition to the unsubstantiated claim that the Jewish Council had lists of hiding addresses, it states that that council was responsible for drawing up deportation lists. That’s a big misconception that persists. Already in the sixties said [de Duits-Amerikaanse filosoof] Hannah Arendt that if Jewish leaders had not cooperated with the Germans, there would have been far fewer casualties. This recent book has contributed to the old image that Jews are (jointly) responsible for their own persecution. That is a dangerous trend, especially given the increasing anti-Semitism.”

Also read: Historians: cold case investigation into Anne Frank’s betrayal is no good at all

In the Netherlands, things seemed to be orderly at the Jewish Council. The two chairmen, Abraham Asscher and David Cohen, considered themselves the right person in the right place. In a short time a device was established that performed all kinds of services. This in contrast to the developments in Belgium and France, where everything went much more difficult, to the frustration of the occupiers.

Vastenhout: “It is often thought that the councils functioned the same everywhere. It wasn’t. The organizations operated in completely different contexts that influenced their actions. In the Netherlands, for example, there was a civil administration, in which the SS soon played an important role. Belgium and occupied France had a military administration, which initially wanted to keep the peace. The government in the Netherlands consisted of strongly ideologically driven Nazis who strove to remove the Dutch Jews as quickly as possible. The pressure was greater here.”

A few more important differences: the Dutch presidents had previously held important positions in the Jewish community. Leading Jewish figures had fled in Belgium, creating a vacuum. In Belgium and France the Jewish community was much more fragmented than in the Netherlands, with large numbers of migrants, often maintaining their own organizations even after the establishment of the Jewish councils.

Also read this review of a book about the Jewish Council: Why did the Jewish Council cooperate with the Nazis? Everything seemed better than Mauthausen

‘Asscher and Cohen could also have gone into hiding. They didn’t do that because they thought there was an assignment for them.”

You write that Asscher and Cohen were convinced of themselves and in a sense blind to the intentions of the Germans.

“Remarkably, it always comes down to this. Asscher and Cohen could also have gone into hiding. They didn’t, because they felt there was an assignment for them. They were convinced they were doing the right thing. Jewish councils in Western Europe had numerous branches that tried to support the Jews. The presidents were more concerned with what they could achieve themselves than with what the Germans might have planned. They had no influence on that.”

You make it clear that the image of the Jewish councils as a collaborative institution is wrong. What image do you have against that?

“This is the crux of the problem. It is a complex image that does not just land in the collective memory. You have to want to understand how it worked without immediately stating: they cooperated in the prosecution.”

An important note may have been what you just mentioned, the intent to help and protect. Can that shift the image?

“I often discuss with students: do we assess the intentions of choices or their consequences? That makes quite a difference.

„I am going to tread on thin ice, but what I find a meaningful way of looking is how [de Joods-Italiaanse schrijver] Primo Levi has written about the Jewish Sonderkommandoswho took the murdered Jews out of the gas chambers. Many moral judgments have been made about this. Primo Levi says: the reality of those camps is so extreme, so different, that we cannot judge it.

“I think you can say the same with regard to the Jewish councils. Here too, people have had to make choices that we cannot imagine. We must exercise restraint in such judgments. For the constant judging has hindered an understanding of the Jewish councils. Look beyond that.”