Dutch Resistance and Jewish Child Rescue, 1940–1945

Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940 and imposed a civilian occupation administration that registered, isolated and deported the country’s Jewish population. Identity documents, population records and routine police checks made remaining in public extraordinarily dangerous, and the majority of Dutch Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.

Resistance activity included finding clandestine accommodation, moving children between households, serving as couriers and producing forged or fraudulently acquired identity papers. Children frequently received new names and family histories and were moved repeatedly when a hiding place became unsafe. The work exposed forgers, couriers and foster families to imprisonment or execution.

The Librarian of Amsterdam fictionalises this world through Sophie Weinstein, whose ability to reproduce documents becomes part of a network protecting Jewish children. The novel uses the intimate problem of one child’s false identity to show how rescue depended on many coordinated acts of concealment.