Netherlands
In World War I both German and Allied soldiers and sailors that crossed into neutral Netherlands were interned. The camp for the British, mostly sailors, was in Groningen
After a revolt in 1926 in the Dutch East Indies, a concentration camp for political prisoners was set up in what then was called Netherlands New Guinea, in the very remote and unhealthy jungle at Boven-Digoel (Upper-Digul).
Just before World War II engulfed Holland, a camp was built in 1939 at Westerbork by the Dutch government for interning Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi Germany. During the German occupation this camp was used as a transit camp for Dutch Jews eventually deported to extermination camps in the East. Amersfoort (1941–1945) (in German: Polizeiliches Durchgangslager) was also a transit camp. The Herzogenbusch (1943–1944, known as Kamp Vught because of its location in that town) was a concentration camp, the only one in Western Europe outside Germany set up as well as run by the SS.
Other camps were camp Schoorl near Schoorl and camp Erika near Ommen. Before the Shoah began, some two dozen labor camps for Jewish men were operated fulfilling an order of the German occupiers. In the Netherlands East-Indies, after the occupation of Holland by the Germans in Europe started on 15 May 1940, Germans living in the Indies were rounded up and interned there. Almost all camps also had field offices for forces labor. In the case of Vught as well as Amersfoort work detail's for Philips existed, often under relatively favourable circustances. Also, the huge construction activities for the 30 German airfields in the Netherlands relied partly upon labour from camps.
After the war, the Dutch government launched the Operation Black Tulip and started to gather civil population of German background to concentration camps near the German border, especially Nijmegen, in order to deport them from the country. In total around 15% of the German population in the Netherlands was deported.
Numerous improvised and official camps were set up after the war, to keep Dutch who were suspected of collaboration with the Germans. Kamp Westerbork at one point housed some Jews as well as suspected collaborators and Germans. In these camps, a history of maltreatment by the guards has been collected, sometimes leading to death.
Read more about this topic: List Of Concentration And Internment Camps
Famous quotes containing the word netherlands:
“Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kow-tow before any United States pro-consul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.”
—Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (1909–1989)