Abstract
This chapter examines the evolving social distance between “Jews” and “non-Jews” in the Netherlands in the pre-war years, during the Holocaust, and in the aftermath of the genocide. In Dutch historiography the level of Jewish assimilation and integration has often been overestimated, just like antisemitism has been under estimated. We will first consider the concept of the bystander and subsequently try to shed more light on what we see as a continuum in the alienation between Jews and Gentiles – and specifically between Jews and the so-called bystanders – since the thirties of the last century until after the liberation. In our approach of the bystander as a non-Jew their position appears in an embryonic form at the start of the antisemitic policies and persecutions in the Third Reich, and unfolds more distinctly after May 1940. This could take on all kinds of different positions, varying from perpetrator to rescuer, accomplice or inactive bystander and onlooker. Finally, after the liberation, this position could manifest itself in an extended distance or even aversion towards Jewish survivors.
