Holland, Michigan houses an expansive Dutch population since Rev. Albertus Van Raalte, a Dutch immigrant, settled in Holland and established Hope College in the 1840s. 100 years later in the 1940s this connection to the Netherlands persisted when German forces invaded the Netherlands. 

The Netherlands declared neutrality during World War II just as it had in World War I. However, the Germans aimed to invade France and the Netherlands provided a route to accomplish this and ensure England did not establish a base in the mainland of Europe. On May 10, 1940 the Germans invaded the Netherlands. The Netherlands anticipated the German attack and Dutch soldiers gained small victories, but ultimately the Germans continued to advance. Queen Wilhelmina fled to England and her family followed. This alerted Dutch citizens, who knew limited information, to the severity of the situation in the Netherlands and many residents of the Netherlands fled voluntarily or were forced to evacuate their towns as a result of the German invasion.

The German general Schmidt issued an ultimatum to the city of Rotterdam asserting that Dutch forces must surrender or be bombed. The mayor of Rotterdam and military general entered into negotiations with the German commanders, but this message was not properly relayed to German forces. Thus, German bombers attacked Rotterdam resulting in the decimation and deaths of many in the city. 

German forces threatened to bomb Utrecht next, thus the Netherlands surrendered on May 15, 1940. Germany occupied Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of France soon after the fall of the Netherlands [1]. 

Nella Kennedy, a senior research fellow at the Van Raalte Institute, was born in 1937 in Rotterdam and grew up in the area as World War II escalated in Europe. I met with Kennedy to learn more about the Netherlands during World War II and what it was like to grow up in a country under German occupation: 

“What I remember, my childhood memories, are that I was afraid of bombs. You could hear these sirens, which could mean an allied dog fight or whatever. There were also missiles, what I call missiles, that were sent up from England to go to Germany but they would be duds and fall in the Netherlands. I remember walking because for a while we lived in a smaller town, smaller than Rotterdam. I walked down the street and saw a house totally bombed because we lived near a railroad track at that point.”

The bombing in Rotterdam occurred in 1940 and the Board of Trustees contained recordings of a telegram sent by Hope College to Princess Juliana in 1941. 

The minutes state, “Telegrams of congratulations and greetings were read from Her Royal Highness Princess Juliana Bernhard, Dr. Alexander Loudon and Hon. Murray Van Wagoner, Governor of Michigan. Mr. Titus made a motion that we give Dr. Wichers a vote of thanks for bringing Princess Juliana to Hope College and conferring the degree of Doctor of Laws upon her. Motion supported and carried” [2]. The Board of Trustees also sent Princess Juliana Bernhard a telegram on her birthday in 1943 [3]. At the time of the telgram the Netherlands had been invaded and the United States entered the war. Therefore, this relationship, while ceremonial in nature, endured amidst World War II. In addition to these telegrams, Mary Beth Ferguson Kuras had a pen pal in the Netherlands and created a scrapbook with postcards and newspaper clippings from her correspondence. In the fall of 1944, Allied powers began bombing enemy lines in the Netherlands to cut off the Germans from western Europe. Kennedy recalled the crisis and food shortage in the Netherlands: 

"Germany toted all kinds of things out of the Netherlands- machinery, food supplies. There was an enormous food shortage that began in the fall of ‘44. Then there was some help in 1945 from Sweden. The problem was the Allied forces would fly over and bomb trains because they would be transporting ammunition for example. But they destroyed the means by which food would be transported. The waterways were frozen as well. There was no coal, either. If there was anything that the Germans would allow, it couldn’t make it because of the lack of locomotives."

During the war, several women contacted relatives in the Netherlands and offered assistance. In a letter, Mildred Schuppert acknowledged the difference between the experiences of those in the United States and the Netherlands. Schuppert writes, “Somehow we had never thought of trying to contact relatives in The Netherlands, but in these last months since mails have been coming through again, we felt we would like to know something about the relatives, especially since many of you have suffered the privations and hardships and anxieties of war.” In the letter, Schuppert states that she is willing to help out in any way she can. 

Metta Ross, a professor at Hope College, also corresponded and sent aid to those in the Netherlands. The Queen of the Netherlands awarded Metta Ross a medal for her service to the country during the war. In an oral interview, Ross remembered this award for her work with those in the Netherlands: 

“One woman had had her glasses completely crushed and they could get none ground in Italy, but she did have her prescription. So Beth sent me the prescription and I had my eye man make it up and I sent her glasses back. We did things like that: clothing that they needed and things like that. One woman said, ‘Do you have a handbag that will still hold money? Could you send it to me? Mine is completely gone.’ It was really for doing those little things, which took time, but nothing else much, that I was given that bronze medal” [5].   

The Canadians joined the Allies and became the driving force behind the liberation of the Netherlands when Germany officially surrendered on May 5, 1945 [6]. On May 13, 1945, there was a chapel service commemorating the liberation of the Netherlands.

Willard Wichers received a letter from Leo Crowley, an administrator for President Rooselvelt during his presidency thanking Holland for their connection to the Netherlands: 

“That you have shared in the success of this country is, of course, satisfying to you, especially because the ideas of freedom and independence are so proudly continuing in Dutch heritage...While we won the war we have not won the peace as yet, because ideologies similar to and as dangerous threaten our economic and political principles. I know hopefully that the Netherlands people can be depended upon to do their part in our mutual efforts for a just and lasting peace” [7]. 

This letter was written in August of 1947, in the midst of the Dutch-Indonesian conflict. After World War II, Indonesia declared their independence from the Netherlands. The Dutch and British forces attempted to resume control of the colony in 1945, but the Indonesian forces combated these advances. In July of 1947, the United States began to get more involved in this conflict and ordered a ceasefire in August 1947. The Dutch and Indonesian governments signed an agreement in October of 1947 ending the conflict and granting Indonesia their independence [8].

This telegram from Crowley indicates the United States government was aware of the connection between Holland, Michigan. By writing this letter, Crowley illustrates this link between the Netherlands and Holland, Michigan may have served as a means of influence as the world began to recover from World War II. 

The relationship with the Netherlands persisted after correspondence and work with the Netherlands during World War II. Several students at Hope College grew up in the Netherlands, such as Margaret Wolffensperger Kleis, who was from Zwolle, Netherlands and attended Hope College in 1950. Kleis experienced trouble with her student visa and was held by the immigration office for several days, while processing her legal alien card. This inspired Kleis to work as an office manager for a local congressman, where she made immigration her main focus [9].

Even with the connection to those in the Netherlands, there was still limited publications about the Holocaust in the campus primary sources. Kennedy explained many citizens were unaware of what was happening to the Jews. Oftentimes Jews were commanded to assemble together, but there was limited outrage and fear because they did not know what would happen to them. Similarly, there are only a few mentions of the Holocaust in the Anchor from the 1940s. One article from 1945 by Elaine Bielefeld entitled “In...Digestion” mentions the Holocaust stating, “the struggle was more than a mere holocaust; it was strife between right and wrong, love and hate. Fighting has ceased but victory is not ours until we can prove our ability to practice good will in every phase of our lives” [10]. This article appears dismissive of the horrors that the Jewish people in Europe experienced, but in this quote the term Holocaust may refer to the Biblical term for destroying in a fire. The term Holocaust did not become the prevalant way to refer to the Jewish genocide under Nazi Germany until the 1950s, which may account for the lack of publications on this topic. The Holocaust reappears in a 1948 article appealing for peace and not war in the article “Civilization or War” [11]. 

More references to the Holocaust may appear in the Anchor, especially under a different name, but it does not seem that the Holocaust made the headlines. According to “The American Press and the Holocaust” the information about the Holocaust was known in 1942 and all of the information was gathered by 1945. However, several publications, especially in America, downplayed the information or buried the information inside pages [12]. This may have caused skepticism about the events of the Holocaust and a college newspaper, such as the Anchor, likely followed current events in other newspapers before relaying news to the college population.