To better understand the storyline of Escape from Amsterdam, the author shares a very brief history of the German invasion of the Netherlands and its aftermath.
The Netherlands managed to stay out of World War I by claiming neutrality. At the outbreak of World War II when Germany began invading other countries, the Dutch believed the same principle would apply. Before that time German Jews and others persecuted in their homeland were welcomed by the Netherlands. The Dutch never dreamt that Nazi Germany would invade and seek to annex their country as part of a new society they wished to form. The Germans saw the Dutch as their brethren and were determined to make the country a part of them.
When the Germans invaded, they did so with swift brutality, bombing Rotterdam to dust and sending troops to occupy the streets.
Amsterdam was not bombed but suffered the invasion tactics with the arrival of the Green Police. In the months that followed, the occupying German forces would conduct secret raids and gather and send off young men to work in the German factories. More edicts followed as well as rationing of goods. A wall was built along the North Sea. The country was changing day by day.
People tried to fight back by forming resistance groups and instituting a strike where they closed many businesses to protest the German occupation and its ruthless practices. It did little.
The German stranglehold continued by removing those they deemed weak from the society in the Netherlands—including the physically challenged, the mentally challenged, and the Jewish people. It began very subtly with small ordinances and mandates that came down. Public officials let go. New IDS ordered. But the grip tightened and Jewish people were quartered into a Jewish district, forbidden to be out on the streets or even to ride public transportation. They were not allowed in public schools, most grocery stores, and cafes, or to hold any jobs of significance within the Dutch government. Later came the yellow stars and finally, deportation.
What made it more difficult is that many Dutch government officials and localities enforced the new rules of their occupiers. The Germans offered bounties for betraying Jewish people and others. It made it difficult for the Netherlands to fight the tactics. That and their continued belief that they would be all right if they did what the occupiers said. These beliefs led to the highest concentration of Jewish deaths in any nation. It was difficult for the author to watch black and white videos with Jewish families boarding trucks and trains without resistance. Like lambs led to slaughter. ☹
Escape from Amsterdam celebrates those few in the Netherlands who gave their lives to safeguard Jewish children and others, but it also shows the progression of the German invasion and occupation of the nation through the eyes of two commoners. While a focal point of the book is the saving of the children, the author believed it necessary to show the German stronghold within the nation and how it progressed to the point that even children and their parents were taken from their homeland. The author endeavored to share this history in the pages of the book in the hopes that it may never be repeated.