After the raid on the Secret Annex on 4 August 1944 the eight Jews who were in hiding there were transferred to the transit camp in Westerbork. From there the Frank family took the last train from the Netherlands to Auschwitz on 3 September 1944.
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At that time more than 100,000 Jews had already been transported from the Netherlands, the large majority to the concentration and extermination camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor. Of the countries in Western Europe occupied by the Nazis, the Netherlands suffered the largest number as a result of the persecution of the Jews, both in terms of percentages and in absolute numbers. How can this be explained?
Jewish population before the war Before 1940, the Netherlands, Belgium and France had been characterized by a parliamentary democracy and a liberal tradition for decades. Admittedly there was some antisemitism, often not openly expressed, but in these countries there had been no legal difference between Jews and non-Jewish citizens for almost 150 years.
The percentage of Jews of the total population did not differ very much and was low in all three countries: 0.75% of the French and Belgian population, and 1.5% of the Dutch population. The great majority of the Jewish population in the Netherlands, approximately 85%, had lived in the country for centuries, and before 1940 it was largely integrated. In Belgium and France, a large percentage of the Jews were immigrants from Eastern Europe and refugees who had come from Germany in the 1930s.
In Belgium this was even accounted for more than 90% of the Jewish population, while in France this was about 50%.
German occupation of the Netherlands, Belgium, and France The German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium and France started on 10 May 1940.
Following the defeat and the start of the occupation, the policy of the Germans was similar in these three countries in many respects: their aim was to cooperate with the national governments, maintain law and order, gradually achieve an adaptation to Nazi policies and to integrate the economies for the benefit of Germany in the most flexible possible way.
This was in contrast with the policy adopted by the Nazis in the occupied part of Poland: from the beginning the Polish authorities there were roughly pushed aside and the Germans acted violently towards the population and stripped the country economically.