“Poor devils” of the camps : Dutch Jews in Theresienstadt, 1943-1945

This article takes the 5,000 Jews from the Netherlands whom the Nazis deported to Theresienstadt as a point of departure to examine larger issues of citizenship, ethnicity, and habitus in the camp society. About two thirds of this group were German and Austrian emigrants, the other third people born in the Netherlands: While the former accustomed to the rules of the inmates community, the latter, native Dutch lived at distance and often isolated from the prisoner society. This passive behavior of the Dutch Jews took place also in other camps and was shared by Gentile Dutch prisoners in concentration camps. The specific Dutch-Jewish reaction was connected to the Dutch, and Dutch-Jewish history, in particular their group habitus