Audrey Hepburn and Collective Dutch Myths

Audrey (Adriaantje) Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston, better known as (the actress) Audrey Hepburn, was 10-years-old in 1940 when the Germans occupied the Netherlands, where she lived with her mother.
The internet in English will tell you that she was some kind of teenage anti-Nazi heroine. American sites in particular love to gush about her bravery.

According to the Airborne Museum in the Netherlands there are actually some 20 stories about her heroism. They investigated all of them.

None of them are true. They are myths.

Both her parents were active Nazis, almost from the time Hitler came to power in 1933.
Her father was Joseph Ruston, a British subject.
The British security services watched him closely from 1933 onwards. He had strong links with National Socialists in Belgium and Germany, and the security services regarded him as a potential traitor and spy.

Ruston adopted the name Hepburn-Ruston in 1939.
During the Second World War he was detained in the UK under Regulation 18B, that allowed the government to detain people who they thought were a danger for security.

Audrey's mother was Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch citizen.
She was a committed Nazi as well.
In 1935 Ella van Heemstra wrote two articles for a British fascist newspaper called The Blackshirt.
In the first one she glorified "The Call of Fascism".
In the second she glorified Hitler and Germany under the Nazis: "the Germans, under Nazi rule, are a splendid example to the white races of the world."

During the Second World War, van Heemstra's lover was a Dutch Nazi.
Witnesses have claimed there were Nazi regalia on display in her apartment.
The Dutch Resistance newspaper 'Oranjekrant" listed “Ella van Heemstra, Arnhem” as being “Gestapo.”

Yet, the Canadian officer who interviewed Audrey's mother after the war during the denazification process was lenient.
He wrote that she was "silly" and only "politically unreliable". She claimed that she had disavowed Fascism and had helped the resistance.

After the war, collaborators were tried by the Dutch government and sent to prison.
However, there were so many of them that the prisons became overcrowded and the economy was suffering.
The government decided to stop prosecuting collaborators. The incriminating documents were not destroyed but filed, and up till now nobody has been given access to them.

The collective Dutch myths that started after the war were basically a denial of the collaboration with the occupier and a denial of any involvement with the Dutch Holocaust.

75% of Dutch Jewry were murdered. 

This was the highest percentage in West Europe. One of the reasons for the high percentage was the extensive collaboration in the isolation, rounding up and deportation of the Jews by Dutch individuals and authorities,
Yet, according to the stories I have heard from people since I have lived in the Netherlands, the Dutch were not involved.
This is the first myth.

Then there is the myth about the large size of the resistance helping the Jews.
As, according to the myth, so many people were helping Jews, it seems remarkable that any were killed at all.

The final myth is about the Dutch volunteers for the SS. 

The Netherlands had the highest number of non-German volunteers for the SS from the whole of occupied Europe.
According to the myth, they were only "adventurers". The Dutch authorities accepted this explanation. Those who wanted to, were integrated into the Dutch army.

Later some diaries were found that had belonged to the Dutch SS volunteers. They were full of proud stories about how they killed Jews.

An example: “I forgot to tell you how great it was to hang a chief rabbi from the tower of his synagogue and then torch the synagogue with the Jews inside.”

After the collective Dutch myths came the individual ones, like the myths about Audrey Hepburn. If the story of her Nazi parents had broken without any redeeming feature, it could have destroyed her career.

All that is known for sure is that she was 10-years-old when the war started and 15-years-old when it ended.

A nice Jewish boy

Nowadays, a large majority of Jews enthusiastically support Israel.

In the early 1960s in my London Jewish community there was support, but it was less enthusiastic.

I was a nice Jewish boy.

I am not sure what that means exactly, but it had something to do with the fact that I went to a grammar school and was destined to become a lawyer.

My parents were proud of me. During card games they could brag about my future prospects, just as much as the other card players could brag about the future prospects of their children.

Then I decided to emigrate (make Aliyah) to Israel.

Go there and work on a farm for a short time, OK. But actually live there? That was unusual.

And where did I go in Israel? I went to a kibbutz in the desert where I milked sheep.

Nobody cheered. The only support I received was from my 3 non-Jewish friends.

Not much to brag about either.

Definitely a disappointment.

What a difference a war can make.

After the Six Day War, I shot up the bragging tree. Having a son in the Israeli paratroopers trumped the doctors and the lawyers.

There was not much competition. In my time in the IDF I never met another soldier from Britain.

However, I was no longer that "nice". Neither was anybody else in my platoon.

The Will of the People

I am arrogant.
Tired of discussing with nitwits who have strongly held opinions about subjects they know little about. Tired of discussing with zealots without any critical doubt who worship a person, party or ideology.

Put another way: nitwits and zealots should not waste their time discussing with me. It is more rewarding for them to interact with members of their own herds.

The latest banality is Jews in and outside Israel proclaiming that western democracy is only about giving all power to 50% plus 1 of the population.

Jew-hatred in the past has often been supported by a majority. 

It was only with the embedding of majority-rule societies in the context of protection for minorities and individuals that persecution of Jews stopped. 

No, the pogroms were not "democratic", even if they were supported by a majority of the population, even if they were "the will of the people".

Goodbye sabra

When I lived in Israel in the 1960s there were deep political and social differences. I remember someone remarking that if it were not for the Arabs we might have a civil war.

At that time, the Arabs meant the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. These armies were an existential threat to Israel. 

Despite all the political and social disagreements there was no real danger of a civil war, because of the underlying feeling of solidarity and kinship in the country.

Israeli society was like the sabra, the fruit of the cactus: prickly on the outside, soft and sweet on the inside.

Then, the very idea that someone would assassinate a prime minister and others would rejoice, was beyond the realms of my vivid imagination.
Yet it did happen later and the people who supported that are poised to become part of the government.

Now there are comparable deep political and social differences in the country. However, without the underlying feeling of solidarity and kinship.
Say goodbye to the sabra, only the cactus is left.

The sect of revolutionary climate zealots

The strategist behind Just Stop Oil is Roger Hallam. He is a co-founder of Extinction Rebellion.
Just Stop Oil is meant to be a youth-lead campaign that is more aggressive than earlier campaigns.

Before the new campaign started, Hallam and other supporters toured universities calling on students to sign up.
In January, Hallam told students at Glasgow University they “had to become revolutionaries” to avert climate disaster. (The Guardian)

In November 2019, Hallam was interviewed by the German newspaper Die Zeit. During the interview he said the Holocaust was "just another fuckery in human history".
Actually not that big a deal, according to Hallam, because the "fact of the matter is, millions of people have been killed in vicious circumstances on a regular basis throughout history", and genocides are "like a regular event" in history.
He added that the Germans' attitude towards the Holocaust is holding them back.

In the fallout from his remarks, Extinction Rebellion UK stated that he “no longer has any formal role” with their organisation.

Why did Hallam minimalize the Holocaust?
In recent years there has been a growth of groups who declare that the evil they are fighting is comparable to the Holocaust. They often also compare themselves to the Jews who were slaughtered.
They do this because the Holocaust is still considered to be the benchmark of the worst evil.
Therefore, they are comparing the evil they are fighting to the worst crime in history.

Hallam is a strategist and goes a step further. He minimalizes the Holocaust because his disciples have to believe the evil they are fighting is the worst possible crime, the "ultimate" crime, in history.

Two young supporters of Just Stop Oil went to Downing Street in February, where they delivered an ultimatum to ministers calling for an immediate end to new fossil fuel investments.
“If you do not provide such assurance by 14 March 2022 it will be our duty to intervene – to prevent the ultimate crime against our country, humanity and life on earth,” said the letter, read out at the gates and delivered by hand. (The Guardian)

Just Stop Oil is a sect of revolutionary climate zealots. All zealots are similar, they just have different causes and different enemies.
Hallam's young zealots are fighting the "ultimate crime against our country, humanity and life on earth".
How far are they willing to go?

Dogs

Facebook keeps on showing me clips with dogs. I do not mind, as I have nothing against dogs.

According to all the clips, everybody loves dogs. That was not always the case in my past. Certainly not in the period 1964 to 1969 when I lived on a kibbutz.

There were few laws on a kibbutz, instead there were unwritten rules and social control through group pressure on the individual.

In my case the pressure was only in the beginning and it was "friendly".

People thought my hair was too long. The men made jokes about shearing. I was a shepherd.

The women acted as if they were surrogate mothers for me. They told me in earnest and friendly voices that I would be even more handsome with less locks of hair.

It was no big deal for me, so when the barber came around I let him give me a kibbutz hair cut.

When there was a festival all the men wore white shirts. It was like a uniform. However, white is not my colour.

I wore a coloured shirt to a festival in the communal dining room.

People presumed I did not have a white shirt and thought it a disgrace I had not already been given one. I was quite new on the kibbutz.

They complained to the woman who ran the kibbutz shop. She came over to me and said, "come around tomorrow and pick a white shirt".

I did, it was no big deal for me.

Not all the unwritten rules and social pressure were so benign.

I lived and worked with Holocaust survivors from Romania. Many had traumatic memories of dogs used by the Nazis.

There were no dogs on the kibbutz.

That is until Roni and Michaela arrived with a small dog.

They were Belgian and part of my West European group. They had no children and loved their small dog a lot.

For many members, no dogs was an unwritten rule. There were arguments galore, but Roni and Michaela would not budge: they kept their dog.

Then the dog was poisoned.

Roni and Michaela were distraught. They accused certain members of the kibbutz of the poisoning. Nobody owned up to the act.

Soon afterwards they left the kibbutz and returned to Belgium.

Haredim and (Zionist) Women

Jerusalem.
"I took a seat at the front of the bus because I suffer from car sickness and sitting in the back makes me nausea," she said.
"At one point, a group of 20 men who belong to an extremist Haredi branch, bordered the bus and ordered me to move to the back.
When I refused, they began yelling at me, pulling my hair and finally one man took off his shoe and shoved his dirty sock in my face," she said.
(Ynet, 1 August 2022)

The role and position of women in society have always been a problem for religious zealots. In Muslim societies, the dress and behaviour of women are governed by law.
On the one hand, women are hussies. They have to dress "modestly", to protect men from them.
On the other hand, they are seen as children who have to be "protected" by a male family member. They have to obey the rules of the men who protect them.
Many ultra-orthodox (Haredi) Jewish religious authorities have a perception of the role and position of women in society that is similar to the Muslim perception.

"A History of Zionism" by Walter Lacqueur is an admired general history of the Zionist movement before the establishment of the state of Israel.
I used to write papers on Zionism for my university study group on Arab Nationalism. 

I found Laqueur to be an excellent frame of reference.

Most religious authorities in the shtetls of Eastern Europe hated political
Zionism.
According to Laqueur, one of the reasons for this and the hatred of the larger socialist Bund movement, was the equality of women in both movements. He also writes that the animosity towards political Zionists was more intense than the animosity towards the Bundists.

Why?
The "immodest" clothing of Zionist women when working in the fields.
At least the Bund women knew how to dress modestly.