IJE Advance Access originally published online on March 21, 2007
International Journal of Epidemiology 2007 36(2):330-335; doi:10.1093/ije/dym006
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Survival of Jews during the Holocaust: the importance of different types of social resources
Social and Cultural Planning Office of The Netherlands (SCP), Parnassusplein 5, P.O. Box 16164, 2500 BD The Hague, The Netherlands. E-mail: p.tammes{at}scp.nl; p.tammes{at}hetnet.nl
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Abstract |
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 Top Abstract Two ways of avoiding...Hypotheses: types of social...Data and methodResultsDiscussion and conclusionAcknowledgementReferences |
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Background Of the Jewish inhabitants of Amsterdam 25.9% survived the Holocaust. However, different cultural and socio-economic groups within the Jewish community may have had different social resources and different chances of survival.
Method To determine social resources by studying a random sample of 7665 Jews living in Amsterdam on the eve of the destruction of Dutch Jewry. Binary logistic regression models are used to test several hypotheses and express odds ratios. As some types of social resources may be interrelated, multivariable analyses are used.
Results There were basically two ways of avoiding deportation to the death camps: going into hiding or acquiring protected status. The latter option was open chiefly to Jews having German nationality. In the analyses a higher survival rate correlates with holding German nationality, however is not significant when job status is included. Survival correlates strongly with having relations with non-Jews. The results were controlled for marital status, number of children, age below 15 years and gender. Standard errors and P-values were adjusted for family relationship by using robust standard error analyses.
Conclusion Survival correlates most strongly with having close social ties with non-Jews. Although Jews could sometimes acquire protected status, this was no more than temporary. In order to survive, Jews needed someone who was a non-Jew to hide them and provide support.
Keywords Social resources, mortality, Holocaust, Jews, The Netherlands
Accepted 4 January 2007
Several studies have demonstrated that Holocaust survivors show a higher incidence of psychological disorders.1–3 The question of why they survived, however, has received little attention, as the focus has been chiefly on differences in the death rates of Jews living in different countries. Differences have mainly been ascribed to cultural and demographic variation, the degree of anti-semitism and the type of Nazi occupation regime.4,5 As Nielsen et al.6 concluded, socio-economic indicators are rarely taken into account when studying complex emergency situations (CES). During a CES, the risk of death may not affect all cultural and socio-economic groups equally.7
Although the Holocaust may be an incomparable tragedy on its own, Jews had to decide on their survival strategy to escape Nazi persecution.8 Jews in The Netherlands who faced Nazi persecution during 1940–45 themselves referred to what they called the essential ‘Vitamin R’, or having the right relationships.9,10 Varese and Yaish11 showed that Jews who asked for help directly had a better chance of receiving help. Moreover, they concluded that Jews were more likely to ask people whom they knew and trusted. Although their data are biased as they missed unsuccessful stories of rescue, their results do indicate the importance of specific types of social resources.
Social resources indicate that certain actors are connected to others in some way. Portes12 distinguished family support as well as extrafamilial support. These connections and social support constitute much of the actors’ social capital. As Szreter and Woolcock13 incorporated different perspectives of social capital into a more comprehensive theory of bonding, bridging and linking, Putnam posited the tautological connection in the predicted statement of what explains and what is supposed to be explained. Moreover, Putnam14 argued that it is more important to investigate how different forms of social capital differ from one another in ways that are relevant to their consequences. ‘Brittle’ hypotheses, as Putnam called them, or falsifying hypotheses to use Popper's term, are needed in order to test which social capital is important.15 Not all actors have access to the same social ties and resources, and not all types of social resources provide the same kinds of support. In this study the importance of different types of social resources possessed by Jews will be tested in terms of the chance of survival of Jews living in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation.
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Two ways of avoiding deportation to death camps |
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TopAbstractTwo ways of avoiding...Hypotheses: types of social...Data and methodResultsDiscussion and conclusionAcknowledgementReferences |
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Historical descriptions suggest that in The Netherlands there were two main ways of avoiding deportation to concentration and death camps, when regular deportations started in July 1942: one way was to go into hiding and the other was to exploit the Nazi bureaucratic system by acquiring protected status.16 Jews had to rely above all on non-Jews to find refuge as well as food and falsified documents. Empirical evidence suggests that around one in five Jews in The Netherlands attempted to go into hiding, and that more than half of these survived.17 The majority, however, did not attempt to go into hiding. There were some important constraints that could have prevented Jews from going into hiding.16 First, some Jews failed to find anyone willing to take them in. Second, going into hiding could break up families, and the strength of family ties prevented some Jews, especially those with children, from doing so. Last but not least, money was often needed in order to acquire and retain a hiding place. Despite these constraints, however, ‘going underground’ offered an important opportunity to escape Nazi persecution.
The second possibility for avoiding deportation was to exploit the Nazi bureaucratic system by claiming or acquiring a status which provided protection in the short or long term. Before the Nazis occupied The Netherlands, many Jews having German nationality worked at the Dutch Committee for Jewish refugees in the 1930s. During the occupation, this Committee became part of the Jewish Council. This Council had the power, acting on behalf of the Nazi occupier, to exempt Jews temporally from deportation. Jews having German nationality and their relatives received more of these exemptions, possibly allowing them more time to find a place to hide.
In Westerbork—a transit camp which was the departure point for deportation trains leaving for the death and concentration camps—weekly deportation list were drawn up. Jews holding administrative positions in this camp had some influence over the names placed on these lists. They included a relatively high proportion of Jews having German nationality;16 so the relatives of these Jews were more likely to be (temporarily) exempted from deportation. Moreover, deportation at a later time increased the likelihood of being deported to more ‘favourable’ camps than Auschwitz or Sobibor, and therefore increased the chance of survival.
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Hypotheses: types of social resources and survival of the Holocaust |
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TopAbstractTwo ways of avoiding...Hypotheses: types of social...Data and methodResultsDiscussion and conclusionAcknowledgementReferences |
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Jews wishing to go into hiding generally needed the help of non-Jews. Jews who were married to gentiles naturally had non-Jewish relatives, who could provide the support needed to help Jewish family members. The first hypothesis is that Jews who had non-Jewish family members had a higher chance of survival. Secular Jews were probably less focused on the Jewish community and were more likely to have non-Jewish acquaintances than Jews who were members of the Portuguese and Dutch Israelite Congregation (‘Israelites’). The second hypothesis is that secular Jews had a better chance of survival than Jews belonging to the Israelite Congregation. Converts from Judaism were especially well placed to meet non-Jews, if they visited religious services. A third hypothesis is that converts from Judaism had a higher chance of survival than Jews belonging to the Israelite Congregation. Jews who were in employment were more likely to meet non-Jews among colleagues or customers. The fourth hypothesis is that Jews who had a job had a higher chance of survival than jobless Jews. Children and the elderly did not have employment. However, the job held by the head of the family could be a form of social resource for them as well. The fifth hypothesis is that Jews living in a household where the head of the family had a job had a higher chance of survival. A relatively high proportion of Jews holding German nationality sat on the Jewish Council and held administrative positions at the Westerbork transit camp. They were accordingly in a position to acquire exemption themselves and to grant exemption to their relatives. The sixth hypothesis is that Jews having German nationality had special opportunities that protected them from deportation, and had a higher chance of survival than other Jews.
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Data and method |
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TopAbstractTwo ways of avoiding...Hypotheses: types of social...Data and methodResultsDiscussion and conclusionAcknowledgementReferences |
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The Nazi occupier published an administrative decree in January 1941 ordering Jews living in The Netherlands to register with the authorities. Supplementary legislation to the Nuremberg Laws defined Jews as persons having three or four Jewish grandparents, or persons having two Jewish grandparents who were themselves members of the Israelite Congregation or who were married to a Jew. Grandparents were Jewish if they belonged to the Israelite Congregation. The original register of Jewish residents of Amsterdam in 1941 has been recovered.18 More than half of all the Jews in The Netherlands lived in the capital. The Amsterdam list contains 77 252 Jews and provides information on first, family and maiden name, date and place of birth, marital status, address, number of Jewish family members (including children), religion, nationality and occupation. Including all the registered Jews, a random computer sample counted 7665 Jews. The characteristics of these Jews are given in Table 1.
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To determine who fell victim to the Holocaust, these Jews were compared with Jews in In memoriam-Lezecher,19 which mentions all Jews who lived in The Netherlands and died in Nazi camps. Of the Jews living in Amsterdam, 25.9% survived the Holocaust. Jews who died during the Nazi occupation were coded as ‘0’ and those who survived as ‘1’. A logistic regression model will be used to measure the strength of the effect of different types of social resources on the chance of survival, expressed in odds ratios (ORs) with a 95% confidence interval (95% CI). Standard errors and P-values were adjusted for family relationships by using robust standard errors, taking into account the covariance between family members. Robust standard error analyses were performed using Stata SE8 software.20
As non-Jews were not mentioned on the register, Jews living at an address where there was just one Jewish married person listed are coded as having non-Jewish family. This information is used to test the first hypothesis. Religion tells us whether Jews were member of the Israelite Congregation, converted from Judaism, or did not belong to any religious congregation. This information is then used to test the second and third hypotheses. Occupation and nationality are used to test hypotheses four to six, respectively. The variables used to test hypotheses one to five are indicators for being related to non-Jews. The variable used to test hypothesis six is an indicator for acquiring protected status. All these variables are considered to be intermediaries, as is shown in Figure 1.
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In the analysis of the strength of the effects of different types of social resources, an adjustment is made for characteristics which might influence the correlation between social resources and survival. Lack of money and the strength of family ties could prevent someone from ‘going underground’. Being married and the number of children in the family are used as an indicator for the strength of family ties. Occupations are coded in accordance with the Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations (HISCO) scores and then classified into social classes, with the assumption that higher social classes have a higher income.21 As it was mainly men who had a job, and as during raids in Amsterdam in February and June 1941 several hundred Jewish men were caught and subsequently killed in a ‘labour camp’, gender could influence the results. A person's first or maiden name is used as an indication of their gender. Children younger than 15 did not require an identity card bearing a ‘J’ inscription after June 1941, and Jewish children younger than six did not have to wear a yellow star after May 1942. The absence of these ‘Jewish marks’ might have made it easier to go into hiding. Using date of birth information could indicate who was younger than 15 years.
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Results |
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TopAbstractTwo ways of avoiding...Hypotheses: types of social...Data and methodResultsDiscussion and conclusionAcknowledgementReferences |
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As some types of social resources may be interrelated, all the indicators were combined in a multiple logistic regression in order to investigate their joint effect. The first multivariable model in Table 2 shows that all the indicators for different types of social resources, except for having a job, increased the chances of survival.
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In the second multivariable model, the job of the head of the family was categorized by social class. Heads of families who had no job are taken as a reference category. Jews who lived in a family whose head had a job in one of the five highest classes had a higher chance of survival; Jews living in a family where the family head had a job in the lowest class had a lower chance of survival.
As all variables are dichotomized into values of 0 and 1, the size of the OR in the last model indicates which type of social resource is most important. Having non-Jewish family members shows the highest OR for survival, at 4.26. Converts from Judaism also had close contacts with non-Jews; and this is reflected in an OR of 3.43 in favour of survival. Members of the Portuguese and Dutch Israelite Congregation were less closely connected to non-Jews than secular Jews. Secular Jews had an OR of 2.87.
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Discussion and conclusion |
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TopAbstractTwo ways of avoiding...Hypotheses: types of social...Data and methodResultsDiscussion and conclusionAcknowledgementReferences |
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Virtually no attention has been devoted to which Jews survived and how they managed to do so. Yet knowing who survived and how might be important in dealing with traumatic Holocaust experiences, following the reasoning of Davidson3 who hinted at the mitigating influence of social supportive bonds during times of severe stress. Cultural and socio-economic groups may not run the same risk of dying during a CES. Though the Holocaust may be an incomparable tragedy on its own, this study formulated testable predictions of the effect of different types of social resources on the survival of the Holocaust on the eve of the destruction of the Dutch Jewry.
Hilberg22 divided the process of the destruction of the Jews into several stages. The information presented related to the first phase, the registration of Jews, and the final phase, deportation and killing in concentration death camps. Between these events, Jews were economically stripped and socially isolated. Of the various routes to escaping persecution, the two main survival strategies were being given protection status and going into hiding.
Jews holding German nationality were in a position to obtain protected status. In the multiple regression analysis, Jews having German nationality have a survival OR of 1.30 (CI 1.07–1.58; P = 0.007). This OR reduces to 1.18 (CI 0.97–1.51; P = 0.096) when job status is included. The heads of Jewish families with German nationality had a different job status (Pearson Chi-square 222.904; DF = 9; P = 0.000). A relatively higher proportion of heads of Jewish families having German nationality had a higher job status, whilst at the same time relatively more of this group had no job.
Comparing OR of different types of social resources, survival shows the strongest association with having close relationships with non-Jews. Family relationships, which are of course very intimate and confidential, were the most important. During the occupation the Nazis changed their policy with respect to intermarried Jews living in The Netherlands several times, thus giving these Jews more time to ‘go underground’. Another group of Jews who were not the first to be deported were those who had converted from Judaism. They also had more time to find hiding places, and moreover they had close contacts with members of their congregation during religious meetings. Converts from Judaism were in fact a small group, however (Table 1); and care is therefore needed when interpreting their high OR. There was no distinction in the timing of deportation between secular and religious Jews; but secular Jews still had a better chance of survival. Secular Jews were less focused on the Jewish community and were more likely to have non-Jewish acquaintances.
Naimark23 concluded that forced deportation and intentional killing remained a remarkably constant phenomenon in the 20th century, giving us no reason to hope that it will not occur again in the 21st century. Ethnic cleansing, genocide and the Holocaust must not be trivialized as a CES. However, the empirical analysis of the Holocaust in this article might shed some light on the conditions surrounding today's complex emergency situations or future CES; especially those which tend towards ethnic cleansing or genocide.24,25 In peacetime, members of ethnic or religious groups may have different kinds of social resources. During a CES, civilians whose pre-CES social resources are concentrated within their own ethnic or religious group are more vulnerable. A higher death rate may be expected as societies become more socially divided along ethnic or religious lines. In this light, the safety of the Sunnis in the newly sectarian Iraq after America withdraws its troops is a point worthy of consideration.26
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Acknowledgement |
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TopAbstractTwo ways of avoiding...Hypotheses: types of social...Data and methodResultsDiscussion and conclusionAcknowledgementReferences |
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The recovered register of Jews living in Amsterdam in 1941 was first used in the thesis by M. Croes and P. Tammes ‘Gif laten wij niet voortbestaan’. Een onderzoek naar de overlevingskansen van joden in de Nederlandse gemeenten, 1940–1945. [‘The poison will be eradicated’. A study of the survival chances of Jews living in Dutch municipalities, 1940–1945]. For a secondary analysis, the author upgraded the data set by filling in place of birth and other blanks in the database and by coding social resources, occupation and adjusted variables including family relationships. The author is today a scientific researcher in the Participation and Government department of the Social and Cultural Planning Office of The Netherlands (SCP).
Conflict of interest: None declared
KEY MESSAGES
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