Description:

FIRST GERMAN ROUND-UP OF DUTCH JEWS IN HOLLAND, 1941
Important and rare broadside, 1p. 4to., [Amsterdam, Feb. 1941] in Dutch issued by SS brigade leader, Hans Rauter, ordering the first round-up of Dutch Jews following the German invasion of The Netherlands. The round-up was called in response to what was known as the "Koco Affair". Ernst Cahn, a German-Jewish refugee living in Amsterdam, was a partner in an ice cream parlor named Koko. Following the invasion, some well-meaning friends of Cahn devised a mechanism to ward off unwanted visitors: a 20 inch ammonia flask that would spray an intruder. On the night of January 19, a German police patrol entered the store and were sprayed with the ammonia. In response, Rauter ordered the roundup of 400 Jewish men aged 20 to 35 years. The broadside, printed on red paper in Dutch, gives the SS version of events and roughly translates, in part: "While even the brutal murder of a Dutch national-socialist in the ghetto is all memory, a patrol of German security police was most criminally attacked. On the night of Wednesday the 19th of the February...in the Jewish emigrant quarter to Amsterdam of Woustraat, a patrol of German security police entered [a shop] where a secret meeting was taking place, and sprayed with ammonia when they entered. Simultaneously, the Jewish criminals shot at the German policemen. But the immediate intervention of the police officers succeeded, capturing some of the criminals, while the majority escaped in the dark...". In response, Rauter ordered that "Four hundred male Jews in the age of 20 to 35 years are captured and transferred to a German concentration camp". Furthermore, Rauter warned, "Any demonstration of any kind, any such phenomena against the German occupation authorities...[will be] immediately suppressed and beaten down". Most of these men were deported to Buchenwald and Matthausen. In retaliation, on February 25, 1941 the Dutch Communist Party organized a strike of municipal workers in Amsterdam which rapidly grew into a general strike across the country. The strike was crushed in days but it remains the only such anti-pogrom strike ever staged in Nazi-occupied Europe. True to Rauter's word, the strike was brutally suppressed. Ernst Cahn, the owner of the shop, was shot by a firing squad on March 3 after refusing to identify the individuals who had installed the ammonia canister in his shop. This is the first example of this broadside that we have ever seen. Very fine condition.

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July 21, 2011 11:30 AM EDT
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