Legal Evasion of the Deportations from the Netherlands

One of the first steps in the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands was the introduction of regulation VO 6/1941. All persons with one or more Jewish grandparents were ordered to register. This German rule was conveyed into Dutch legislation. My research shows not only the willingness -or lack of resistance- of the Dutch administration to collaborate, but also the extent of this cooperation. The detailed instructions for the local registries from the central administration made it almost impossible to deviate.

Was it, in this reality, feasible to evade the deportations ‘legally’? Research of all the applications in the ‘Calmeyer-archive‘ in The Hague shows that there were indeed people who were able to successfully question their Jewish descent from the beginning onwards (almost 700 persons). Even more people (3,000) were able to survive the Shoah by questioning their descent after having registered as Jewish in 1941. More than 70% of this last group received a ‘positive’ decision from the so-called Entscheidungsstelle fur VO 6/41, the German department assigned to deal with the ‘doubtful’ cases. The almost remaining 30% was able to survive despite a negative decision. The Entscheidungsstelle continued its work until August 1944.

My research of thousands of applications in the archive shows patterns of the decision-framework of the Entscheidungsstelle and the positive involvement of legal professionals, anthropologists, doctors and genealogists. Moreover, the research shows to what extent ordinary people went to save their lives and that of their relatives.