TOURING EXHIBIT

Eighty to ninety percent of Holland's Jews, over 100,000 were killed. How can it be that a country with so many rescuers lost so much of its population?

First, Holland was a geographically difficult place to save Jews. It is flat and without forests, a land with few hiding places. Its borders are Germany, Belgium (which was occupied), and the North Sea: there were no easy escape routes. Yet landscape was not the major obstacle to protecting the Jews of Holland. Despite Holland's relative lack of anti-Semitism and its tradition of tolerance, the country's leadership allowed Dutch Jews to be deported. Queen Wilhelmina and her government fled to England soon after the Nazi invasion, and the secretaries-general were left to follow Nazi orders.