Delft Blue  Icon Commemorating the Final Liberation of The Netherlands by Canadian Armed Forces - 5 May 1945

At the End of War

The entire Dutch nation celebrated the Liberation of The Netherlands on May 5, 1945.  Under the watchful eyes of HRH Prince Bernhard, Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes, Commander of the First Canadian Corps imposed terms of capitulation on General von Blaskowitz, Commander of the German Forces. The capitulation was signed in Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen. 

Suddenly after five years of bloody warfare and tyrannical occupation, the people of The Netherlands were liberated from the oppressive German occupation of their homeland.  They were finally free to determine their future without threat.

I was a 9-months-old at the time more concerned about getting mother’s milk than celebrating liberation.  But now eighty years later, I was moved to involuntary tears as I watched the grateful appreciation and adulation of crowds of Dutch citizens for the Canadian victory represented by the 22 Canadian veterans still able to testify to that blessed event.  The cost of this victory was very high as the rows of grave markers, many with pictures of the men and women interred there, silently attested. 7,600 Canadians died in this campaign to bring the good new of liberation to The Netherlands

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In the South

For me and other Zeelanders, the liberation had actually come six-months earlier.  On November 7^th, 1944, General Daser, the commandant of German troops was arrested and about 2000 German soldiers became POWs in Middelburg, my birthplace.  They were guarded by only a small contingent of British soldiers. 

It marked the end of the vicious struggle to open the Scheldt River for shipments of war material destined for Antwerp. There the allied forces were preparing for the campaign to free the provinces north of the great rivers (Rhine, Maas, Ijssel,  and Eems) where most Dutch people were still under brutal Nazi occupation overseen by Hitler’s commissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart (hanged for his war crimes in Nurnberg in 1946).

Occupation and subjugation is savage. For us in the south of The Netherlands it was oppressive and traumatic enough. The Nazis regarded Dutch people as virtual Aryans – i.e. of the superior race – their goal for our country was to command and control our lives. Any challenge to their iron-clad rule was regarded as a threat to German security and supremacy. It was brutally put down. Collective punishments became the normal response to acts of disobedience or sabotage by resistance forces. Shipping people off to Camp Westerbork for transfer to German factories or concentration/death camps was routine punishment.  Blowing up homes and institutions was deemed a useful means to suppress rebellion.

Keeping the locals uninformed about life beyond the borders was key.  Glowing press reports about German triumphs aimed to keep the Dutch subservient even as Allied forces were landing on Europe's western coasts. But propaganda was easily recognized for the lie it was.   Typical for oppressors generally, confiscating radios and other communications equipment and, especially,  blocking   journalists from reporting truth was a high priority.

My father, one of the local pastors in Middelburg, decided to risk getting real news from  BBC radio. He was, of course, not alone.  So in the rafters of the church next door, he hid a radio tuned to the BBC allowing him to hear both Radio Orange, the voice of Queen Wilhelmina and her government exiled in England, and the World Service of the BBC.  The radio was connected by secret means to the intercom in our manse home. It was a brazen act that could have cost him his life if discovered. The fact that two Nazi officers were actually quartered in our home made it doubly dangerous.  But the information about Allied actions and developments flowed usefully from Dad’s ear to key local resistance leaders. 

To immobilize the occupation armed forces, the Allies, at the suggestion of Lt.-General Guy Simonds commanding the 1^st Canadian Army, bombarded the western dikes protecting  the villages and farms of our island. This strategic destruction allowed salty North Sea waters to flood most of Walcheren.   Hundreds were drowned, but thousands of villagers were able to flee in boats to “high” ground – often around churches. A farm family of ten occupied a room in our church and their cows and chickens grazed on the manse lawn for a year. No schools were able to operate so my eldest brother learned how to milk cows and slaughter cattle, observe the birth of calves, and, later, heckled German POWs  (de Moffen) doing menial labour in the city.  At 11 years of age he grew up fast!

But in the North

In the big cities north of the great rivers, life was even more difficult and costly. The Allies’ failure to take Arnhem was demoralizing for the Dutch yearning for freedom and gave a boost to German morale. The occupiers  were becoming more vicious as it became clear that the Allied forces were gaining ground. The Commissar threatened to blow up the dikes that hold back the North Sea from drowning the big cities.

Dutch railway workers – 30,000 of them - went on strike, on request of the Dutch government in exile,  to sabotage German efforts to put down resistance. Trains stopped transporting machinery and material pillaged from Dutch work sites for German industry and military.  Food and fuel supplies were unable to reach the cities.    Gas to cook and light homes was cut off. Food became so scarce that  people ate tulip bulbs and other garden plants to survive. The obstinate resistance of the Dutch was not thwarted.  German punishments however were brutal.

“In the month of April 1945 there were in the western part of the country more than 4 million people living on the brink of starvation. … A rough estimate by one of the leaders of the American Food Transports reported 200,000 cases of famine oedema or dropsy.”*   By the time of capitulation, more than 20,000 Hollanders starved or froze to death. The food drops by Allied airplanes came too late to save them, but brought salvation for many  others.+ 

Now There Is Palestine

As I observed the CBC broadcast to remember and celebrate at the Groesbeek and Holten Canadian cemeteries and as I gathered with other Dutch-Canadians at Ottawa’s Beechwood Cemetery to pay tribute to the Canadian soldiers who liberated the Netherlands in 1945, my heart and mind were transported to Palestine.

I wondered why the same allies of the Western world were not equally as concerned about the slaughter, oppression, torture, starvation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid which Israel is imposing with hardly any restraints on the people of Palestine.  All the marks of settler colonial subjugation which the Germans had inflicted on The Netherlands and its people are now all too evident in Palestine.

 Thankfully the allies stopped the  death march for the Dutch.

In Palestine, the Haganah paramilitary forces were created on June 15, 1920 during the British Mandate for Palestine. Since then the Irgun Force was created and then the Israeli Defense (sic) Force has been the terrorizing military arm of the State of Israel.  Ethnically cleansing Palestine and its indigenous peoples (Christian and Muslim and Jewish Palestinians) who  lived in relative peace over two millennia and more was their goal.  The “cleansing” has been by forcible removal into refugee locations; by massacres; by harassing and traumatizing residents to make them give up their living and property; by imprisoning thousands; and now by simply devastating and blowing up any livable areas, all institutions, and depriving people of the necessities of life - food, water, medical help.  Humanitarian aid is weaponized.

Typical of all oppressors, Israel’s propaganda machine and its diaspora lobbyists has churned out falsehoods and misinformation to brainwash Israeli citizens into fearing and hating Palestinians, to poison Western minds, and to influence legislators - including Canadians. The death toll of more than 200 journalists killed by Israel in the current Gaza assault is a sign of the political Zionists fear of the TRUTH. 

And now, the indicted leader of this growing war crime and genocide, Netanyahu, has called up more of the military reserves in order to “intensify” the destruction, the clearing (of the rubble), the killing of children and their parents.  All this while basking in the impunity and abundance of armaments provided by the USA with the passive acceptance of Western nations. 

Where are the righteous and virtuous allies today?  Are they  blinded by the form of vile, racist antisemitism that diminishes the humanity of Palestinians and other Arabs and marks them as enemies?   Whatever its form, antisemitism is evil – whether it is anti-Jews or anti-Palestinians or generally anti-Arabs. It must end if the planet is to sustain the one human family.

Militarily, Zionist Israel will never achieve its goal. All the 100 years of war has done is create more resistance and resilience in Palestinians and more fear for Israelis wanting to live in Shalom.  The fear and hate will only end when Israelis and Palestinians are helped to meet with mutual respect and with a shared desire for justice and peace – for Palestinians and for Israelis.

 I believe that the USA, UK, and France have been compromised as colonial powers with conflicts of interest with Israel,  unable to appreciate how Israel’s colonialism has poisoned possibilities for equitable relations within Palestine.  I also believe that the Western Christian churches, with few exceptions, have succumbed to the heresy of Christian Zionism – either passive or super-active – and to the heresy of apartheid which degrades humanity and rejects the Divine commandment to love the neighbour wherever you may find them.  These are unworthy heresies that are holding the faithful back from prophetic witness and peace-making.

I believe that countries like Canada, Belgium, South Africa may be able to bring their post-colonial and confederal experiences of diversity in unity to negotiating tables to help Palestinians and Israelis find alternatives to the emptiness and the sin of war.  I hope our new Liberal Prime Minister, Mark Carney, and his government will cultivate a multi-lateral  force for international justice and peace.

As a Christian, I believe in Resurrection from the Dead – not that the 60,000+ dead Palestinians or the 2000 Israelis who have died in the current horror will rise to live again! But I believe that the costly and  deadly ways of Israeli political Zionism with today’s Palestinian people can end and rise to embrace new ways that pave the Way to Truth,  justice, peace, and hope. 

This is one key meaning of “Christ is Risen!” for me and other Christians. May the Spirit of the living Christ transform hearts and minds to make it happen.

Notes:

*Holland and the Canadians. Liberation of Holland 50^th Anniversary Commemorative Edition. 1995 edition. P. 19

+I’m grateful to Johanna M Selles, author of “The Hunger Winter” (Eugene, Oregon, Resource Publications, 2025. ISBN 979 8 3852 3979 5.) for her engaging novel describing something of the everyday experience of life during this time of occupation and subjugation in Leiden, The Netherlands.

[Post re-edited 7 May 2025]

An Easter greeting from Palestine Christians: