Focusing on a country often forgotten in Holocaust histories, this comprehensive account describes how 110,000 Jews were deported from the Netherlands to concentration camps in 1940 but less than 6,000 returned at the end of the war. Utilizing 15 years of research and documents from the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation, the incremental demands on Jewish citizens are analyzed - starting with forced registry and ending with death at concentration camps - while demonstrating how this slow progression led the Germans involved to accept these atrocities. Graphically recounting stories of persecution, going into hiding, and life in the transit camps, it conveys the despair experienced as families and lives were destroyed, while showing how these stories fit into a wider, global picture.
Chapter 1: Towards Isolation (May 1940 -- December 1941) -- The First Few Months -- The Aryan Attestation -- The Registration of Businesses and Individuals -- The Founding of the Jewish Council and the February Strike -- New Measures -- The Jewish Weekly -- Spring and Summer of 1941 -- Chapter 2: From Isolation to Deportation (September 1941 -- July 1942) -- Educational Segregation -- Raids in Eastern Holland -- The Attack on Jewish Culture -- The End of 1941 -- The Jewish Work-Camps -- The Beginning of the Evacuation to Amsterdam -- March and April 1942 -- The Yellow Star -- Towards the Deportation -- Chapter 3: The Deportations (July 1942 -- September 1943) -- The Beginning -- The Raids of July and August -- Further Raids -- The Hollandse Schouwburg -- The Stamps -- The End of the Work-Camps -- The Winter of 1942 -- the Evacuation of Apeldoorn -- January -- April 1943 -- Sterilization -- The Last Raids -- Chapter 4: The State Within a State -- Facts and Figures -- The Refugees from Germany and Austria -- Other Groups -- The Camps at Ellekom, Amersfoort, Schoorl, Ommen, and Doetinchem -- The Camp at Barneveld -- The Jewish Council -- Chapter 5: Aspects of Persecution -- Jewish Resistance -- Escape -- Calmeyer -- The Portuguese Jews -- The Blue Knights -- Baptized Jews -- Mixed Marriages -- Munition Jews -- Other Exemptions -- The Unprotected -- Jews and Gentiles -- London -- The Persecutors -- The Dutch Authorities at Home -- Robbery -- Jews in the Diamond Trade -- The Legal Remnant -- Mixed Marriages -- Chapter 6: Into Hiding -- Chapter 7: The Transit Camps -- Westerbork -- Organization -- Gemmeker -- The Camp Inmates -- Departure -- Vught -- Chapter 8: Murder -- The Journey -- Some Figures -- Auschwitz-Birkenau -- Other Camps -- Life on the Brink of Death -- Bergen-Belsen -- Evacuation -- Theresienstadt.