Westerweel Group: Non-Conformist Resistance Against Nazi Germany

A Joint Rescue Effort of Dutch Idealists and Dutch-German Zionists

Hans Schippers

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9783110580143
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

The book about the Westerweel Group tells the fascinating story about the cooperation of some ten non-conformist Dutch socialists and a group of Palestine Pioneers who mostly had arrived in the Netherlands from Germany and Austria the late thirties. With the help of Joop Westerweel, the headmaster of a Rotterdam Montessori School, they found hiding places in the Netherlands. Later on, an escape route to France via Belgium was worked out. Posing as Atlantic Wall workers, the pioneers found their way to the south of France. With the help of the Armée Juive, a French Jewish resistance organization, some 70 pioneers reached Spain at the beginning of 1944. From here they went to Palestine. Finding and maintaining the escape route cost the members of the Westerweel Group dear. With some exceptions, all members of the group were arrested by the Germans. Joop Westerweel was executed in August 1944. Other members, both in the Netherlands and France, were send to German concentration camps, where some perished.

1Palestine pioneers, an International Movement

At the end of October 1944, the Portuguese ship Guine left the harbor of Cadiz in Spain, setting its course for Haifa in Palestine (which was under British mandate) with more than 430 Jewish refugees, including 55 so-called Palestine pioneers (in Ivrit, chalutzim). One of these pioneers was Paul Siegel. Helped by members of the Westerweel group, he had reached Spain after fleeing from Westerbork internment camp and enduring a grueling journey over the Pyrenees. Ten days later, he heard the lookout calling: ‘Palestine ahead! Palestine ahead! We all rushed to the deck to miss nothing of this historic moment and to gaze upon the coast of Palestine, the country that had been so difficult to reach since the time of Moses. And, indeed, we saw the Carmel mountain range on the horizon’.

The arrival of a ship with refugees from occupied Europe in wartime was exceptional. There were therefore many people present to welcome the Guine and her passengers. Jewish Agency representatives asked Siegel and other pioneers to join in singing the Hatikva, the national anthem, there on the quay.

‘There I stood on the deck with my throat choked with emotion and completely unable to sing. At last, we were in the country that, a year ago, I had not dared to believe I would ever reach. At the same time, I thought of all my comrades who would never reach Palestine. I thought of my loved ones, my parents and sisters, of whom I did not know if they were still alive.’ Siegel’s fellow passengers had similar thoughts: ‘the Hatikva could hardly be heard on the deck’.2

The Hechalutz, the umbrella organization of Palestine pioneers, was a vital but in Western Europe lesser-known part of the Zionist movement, which was founded in 1897 by the Austrian-Jewish publicist Theodor Herzl (1860 –1904). Because of increasing anti-Semitism, which destroyed all hopes of Jewish emancipation in Europe, Zionism set its sights on realizing a Jewish national home in the Turkish province of Palestine.

Zionism must be seen in the light of the overstrained nationalism that existed around 1900 in Europe. Herzl’s organization can be seen not only as a reaction to this nationalism, but also as a part of it. Especially in Eastern and Central Europe, there were conflicts between all sorts of population groups that sought independence or the greatest possible autonomy. These nationalistic tensions contributed significantly to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

Some of these tensions were exacerbated at the end of the nineteenth century by the emergence of pseudo-scientific theories about the racial superiority or inferiority of population groups. Here, Jews were considered inferior, together with Slavic and colored peoples. In Germany, a ‘nationalistic’ variant—the German population as a racially homogeneous Germanic community—found quite some support. According to these views, Jews were not part of this nationalistic community.

At the end of nineteenth century, the large majority of European Jews lived in the multi-ethnic state of Russia, which also included part of Poland until 1919. In this authoritarian-governed country, there were large social and political tensions. The policy of Tsars Alexander III and Nicolas II was aimed at making Russia a Slavic unitary state, in which there was no place for minority groups such as Swedes, Germans and Jews.

With regard to the Jews (who, apart from a limited number of wealthy individuals, were allowed to live only in the so-called Pale of Settlement at the western part of the Russian empire), this led to a policy of forced assimilation, emigration and impoverishment through economic marginalization. The secret police supported this policy by organizing pogroms. These anti-Jewish riots made thousands of victims, mainly in the period of 1903–1906—after the Russian defeat in the war against Japan and the failure of the 1905 revolution.

The general anti-Semitic climate in Eastern and Central Europe led to the emigration of many Jews. The large majority of emigrants went to the United States; the rest went to countries such as Argentina and South Africa. Between 1899 and 1914, 1.3 million Jews emigrated from Russia. Most of them left between 1903 and 1906, when 400,000 Russian Jews settled in America. Under the influence of Zionism, the Jewish population in the Turkish province of Palestine also increased. From a first more or less reliable census in 1844, it appeared that about 17,000 Jews lived in Palestine. This number was 24,000 in 1882 and grew to approximately 85,000 in 1914.3

Socialist Zionism and the Inverted Pyramid

The new Jewish inhabitants often used Arab workers for their agricultural projects. This practice was rejected by the socialist Zionists, who thought that this work also had to be done by Jews. Zionism began as a liberal movement. There were no socialists at the first congress in Basel, but socialist Zionists played an important part in subsequent meetings.

Leaders of the movement, such as Nahman Syrkin and Ber Borochov, were significantly influenced by the Marxist views of the left-wing Russian organizations. They doubted however, whether this ideology could offer a solution for the predicament in which the Jewish proletariat in Eastern Europe lived. Prominent Marxists recognized the problem, but they insisted that the coming revolution was the answer. The anti-Semitism of the mobs manipulated by the reactionary forces would then disappear.

In 1905, the socialist Zionists united in the Poale Zion organization. A core part of their ideology was to realize a change in the professional structure of the Jews from Eastern Europe who settled in Palestine. These Zionists compared this structure with an inverted pyramid featuring a broad layer of (small) independent entrepreneurs at the top and a limited group of farmers and industrial workers at the bottom. This undesirable situation had arisen because European Jews had, for centuries, been forbidden to own land, to become member of a guild or to exercise certain professions. Poale Zion maintained that this had to change in Palestine. Here, Jewish immigrants would ‘have to conquer work’. This meant that they had to form the collectively organized farming population and the industrial proletariat.4

To prepare themselves for these tasks, various Jewish organizations—both socialists and others—proposed a training program prior to emigration to Palestine. This preparation period was called hachshara, in which the youth movement would have to play an important part.

The Jewish Youth Movement and the ‘New Style’

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the youth movement in Europe had fallen under the influence of a renewal that originated in Germany, at the initiative of the young people themselves. Led by peers instead of older people, the Wandervogel (Wanderers), as they called themselves, made journeys in the countryside on weekends and on holidays. This new youth movement developed its own culture, with meals around the campfire, folk dancing and abstinence from alcohol and tobacco as its characteristics.

More important than these material matters was the creation of a ‘new style’, as the American-German historian Walter Laqueur called it. Activities such as striving for independence from bourgeois society, self-government and tackling challenges were prominent objectives. A more equal place for women and open discussions about sexuality were also new aspects.5

The example of the Wandervogel was also adopted by the Jewish youth movement in Germany, and later elsewhere. Moreover, the creation of separate Jewish organizations was stimulated by the fact that Jews were often not welcome in the Wandervogel, just as in other associations and clubs. This selectivity in admission gave an impulse to Zionism, which found its strength in forming its own organizations. In 1913, a first Jewish youth association arose, called Blau-Weiss (Blue-White), the colors of the Zionist flag.6 Other Jewish organizations followed later, with a wide range of liberal, socialist, Zionist, non-Zionist and religious ideologies, just as in the general German youth movement. In this respect, the socialist Zionist Habonim movement, which arose from a merger in 1933, is especially important.

After losing the First World War, Germany experienced strong growth of right-wing and extreme right-wing organizations, often featuring a clearly anti-Semitic agenda. This gave the Jewish movements more the character of a home and a safe harbor for their members. When the situation for Jews in Germany worsened in the 1930s, the organizations concentrated more on the Hechalutz, the training of pioneers for Palestine, and the associated hachshara, the preparation for work in agriculture and industry in that country. For example, Habonim set up camps offering training not only in agriculture, but also in the use of Ivrit (modern Hebrew) and knowledge of Palestine.7

The ‘new style’ of the modern youth movement did not remain limited to Germany. The strongest influence in Jewish circles was probably seen in Hashomer Hatzair (Young guards). This movement was founded in Galicia, a region spreading over parts of Ukraine, Poland and Czechoslovakia, shortly before the beginning of the First World War. Several members who had fled to Vienna during this war became acquainted with the ideas of the Wandervogel, which they then introduced into their own circles.

Hashomer Hatzair distanced itself clearly from the Jewish establishment and did not tie itself to any one political party or organization, but operated autonomously, driven by its own framework. Ideologically, elitist romantic Nietzschean views dominated at the beginning. Around 1920, the movement accepted Borochov’s socialist Zionist model as its guiding principle. However, the elite character remained intact. Hashomer Hatzair saw itself as the vanguard of the Jewish proletariat that had the double task of realizing a changed social structure of the Jewish community in Palestine and of contributing to the class struggle. At the beginning of the 1920s, the first members of the movement settled in Palestine to organize collective farms: kibbutzim.

At the end of the First World War, other youth movements arose in Eastern Europe. They differed in philosophy of life, and also according to the region where they were active. The main movements were the following:

Dror (Freedom), which arose in the Ukraine, had Kiev as its most important center. When Zionist activities were forbidden by the government several years after the Russian Revolution, the members moved to Galicia in Poland. From here, Dror developed into the largest Zionist socialist youth movement in Poland, with a membership that clearly remained behind that of the non-Zionist youth chapter of the Bund (Jewish workers), which tried to achieve the greatest possible autonomy of the Jews in Poland.

Gordonia, which was founded in 1923 and was also active in Romania, had a comparable political direction as Dror. The movement was named after A.D. Gordon, a pioneer of the ‘conquering work’ ideology. The more populist Gordonia movement rejected the class struggle and emphasized the ‘idealism of the productive people’.

Betar, an acronym of Brit Josef Trumpeldor, was founded in Riga in 1923.8 The organization, which represented the other end of the political spectrum, developed during the course of the 1920s into the youth movement of Vladimir Jabotinsky’s right-wing Union of Revisionist Zionists. Betar had many members in the Baltic States and Eastern Poland. During the 1920s, umbrella religious youth organizations were also founded in Poland. The main organizations were Mizrachi and the strictly orthodox Agudah.9

Because many Jews left Poland to go to Western Europe during the 1920s and 1930s, all of the above-mentioned organizations had chapters in these countries as well.

These youth movements were all influenced in some degree by the ‘new style’ of the German youth movement. They organized their activities themselves, for example, and maintained an autonomous position with regard to the political organizations to which they were linked. This also applied to Betar, which kept its distance from the Revisionist Party. Although it can be said tha...