Review of “Hiding in Holland” by Shulamit Reinharz (PhD), Max Michael Rothschild

Score: 95/100 (9.5 out of 10)

Hiding in Holland is a profoundly moving and intricately layered memoir that intertwines personal survival with historical reflection, offering a vivid portrayal of life during the Holocaust.

In this book, Shulamit Reinharz masterfully balances her father Max Rothschild’s firsthand accounts of hiding in the Netherlands with her own sociological insights, creating a narrative that is both intimate and expansive. Through Max’s courageous acts of resistance, the book sheds light on the moral complexities of survival and the broader societal dynamics of Dutch collaboration and resistance. Rich in historical detail and emotional depth, Hiding in Holland challenges conventional narratives about the Holocaust, emphasizing the resilience of the human spirit while confronting the enduring scars of trauma. This work is a testament to the importance of preserving memory and understanding history through the lens of personal experience.

Hiding in Holland was compiled through a meticulous process by Shulamit Reinharz, blending personal archival discoveries with professional research. And it shows! This book is dense with historical and contextual information, helping readers to better understand the time, place, and circumstances that Rothschild and his contemporaries were living in.

We learn early on that the inciting incident that sparked the formation of this memoir was fateful and fortuitous.

To be more specific, the creation of Hiding in Holland was sparked by an incident in 1974 when Shulamit Reinharz and her husband, Jehuda, were visiting her parents' home in New Jersey. While attempting to fix the heating system in the basement (after investigating an odd noise it was making), they stumbled upon a collection of disintegrating boxes containing notebooks and documents written by Shulamit's father, Max Rothschild, in German. Curious about the contents, they brought the materials upstairs and asked Max about them. He dismissed them as unimportant, but Shulamit, with his permission, took the boxes home to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she preserved and organized the items into binders.

Though initially too busy to delve deeply into the materials, decades later, Shulamit had the documents professionally translated and combined them with her father’s handwritten memoirs and her own sociological insights to create a comprehensive account of his experiences during the Holocaust. This chance discovery and subsequent preservation effort became the foundation for the memoir, illustrating the importance of uncovering and documenting family history.

This actually reminded us a lot of how Roni Rosenthal's Holocaust-era books--The Lilacs I Once Knew and Where the Lilacs Bloom Again--came to be, with Rosenthal coming upon old documents belonging to her grand-aunt (Friddie Stoleru), a Romanian Jew who lived through World War II, the Holocaust, and the antisemitic aftermath of communist rule in the country.

It's actually rather chilling and powerful how both Rosenthal's and Shulamit's ancestors lived through very similar, perilous situations in different parts of Europe, antagonized and persecuted by essentially the same antisemitic forces: Nazism and Communism.

It's also sobering to think about how Kalman Hartig from Near the Danube Bridge (by Catherine Allen-Walters & Elisabeth Hartig Lentulo) was experiencing many of these same things as a Seventh-Day Adventist persecuted in Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, Hank Brodt from Holocaust Memoirs by Deborah Donnelly & Zaidy from Zaidy's War by Martin Bodek were experiencing persecution as Polish Jews.

What's especially powerful about all of that is how the descendants of these Holocaust survivors kept the struggles, triumphs, histories, and stories of the Jewish people alive via word of mouth and the written word.

And that's pretty much what Hiding in Holland is: it's a history.

Specifically, it's the history of Max Michael Rothschild's turbulent times hiding and surviving in the German-occupied/Nazi-collaborating Netherlands.

And there are so many layers to peel back and unwrap in all that. Perhaps the passage that best emphasizes that is:

“My disillusionment was directed against nearly everyone, starting with the Zionist personnel who
delayed rescuing members of the youth groups. It applied to the Allied governments’ gentle treatment of the Nazis after the war; to the scholars (or “so-called” scholars) who thought they understood the Holocaust better than those who endured it; to Russia, of course, which was transforming idealistic socialism into totalitarian communism; to the United States, which claimed it could not afford to bomb the death camps or bring Jewish refugees to its shores. And more.”

In other words, this book does a phenomenal job at exhibiting the frustrations of Holocaust victims and pinpointing the many failures by different individuals and groups who failed to stop or mitigate the atrocities of the Holocaust. The blame is not squarely on the Nazis, Hitler, or the Germans themselves, but on those who knew what was happening and 1. Didn't adequately warn anyone, 2. Didn't resist it, 3. Didn't Stop it, or—worst of all—4. Actively collaborated, helped, and assisted in the genocide.

In the fourth category, there were the Green Police (Ordnungspolizei), the NSB (National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands)/Dutch Nazi Party, Landwachters (community spies who would identify Jews), traitors, collaborators, and local officials who did the bidding and enforced the edicts of the Nazis.

Even more sickening about all this is how the Dutch often celebrate being Nazi-resisting and supporters of the Jews, though actual history tells a different story.

For example, the book rightfully slams a myth about Queen Wilhelmina (the Dutch queen) which wrongfully credits her for being a symbol of resistance against the Nazis. In fact, she fled the country and pretty much surrendered it into Germany's hands in only a few days after the Germans began dropping bombs. Yes, she visited other countries and claimed to speak for her people, but she also sugarcoated her role in the resistance and what was actually being done in her country.

In general, many in the Netherlands were complicit in collaborating with the Germans in the persecution of Jews.

In all fairness, the book does provide credit where credit is due such as highlighting the strike of 300,000 non-Jewish workers against Nazi persecution of the Jews, leading to 400 of them being arrested. This event is commemorated annually in the Netherlands, known as the “February Strike” or the “Dokwerker's Strike.”

So, it's not all bleak.

In fact, one of the primary aims of this book is to highlight the many brave individuals and groups who stood up for Jews and did what they could to try to help them—forming a kind of underground railroad which allowed for Max and others like him to escape and survive.

There were several hidden hosts, Dutch farm families, and anonymous supporters who helped.

A footnote explains that “the Westerweel group was unusual in being comprised of German Jewish Zionists and Dutch non-Jews. Shushu, Kurt Reilinger (nicknamed Nano, a friend of Dad’s), Ernst “Willy” Hirsch, and “Cor” Windmuller (a non-Jew who later would play a major role in Dad’s life) also tried to help the pioneers escape from Holland to a destination abroad, including Palestine. Joop’s wife, Willie, was arrested on one such mission. Another team member, Franz Gerritsen, falsified identity documents.”

So, these individuals risked it all because saving lives and protecting people from wrongful persecution was the right thing to do.

Shushu is a figure who stood out in this regard, serving as one of Max's best allies through much of the book. Other important supporters include the Schoutens. The Schoutens, Niek and Aag, were a Dutch couple who played a heroic role in helping Max, they sheltered Max for six months in their small apartment and later agreed to hide his fiancée, Ilse, reuniting the couple during the war.

Ultimately, it seems that of the people who helped Max, Shushu and the Schoutens had a especially strong connection to Max, becoming akin to family.

There were some ebbs and flows—ups and downs—in this support system, however. For example, the farming family (the te Riets), allowed him to stay for just under a year before asking him to leave because he looked too much like a Jew to farming neighbors, putting them at risk of being turned in.

There's also a somewhat funny story about Max hiding in a cramped space with another male individual named “G.S.” with whom Max was forced to share a bed (because the space only fit one bed). When G.S. would have romantic dreams, he would try to embrace Max while sleeping, leading to him comically being rebuffed. Max doesn't seem to have thought highly of G.S. They played the same boring card game together and basically stuck together because it was the only way they could survive.

Could you imagine being trapped under the floorboards or in a cramped attic with someone you don't like? Yikes!

One thing we really got from this memoir is the feeling of anxiety that Max and other Jews felt just from not knowing. There was little warning and little free, trustworthy information available. In fact, for much of them, BBC radio was the only somewhat-trustworthy source of information they had, and it was Anglo-centric (of course). Also, listening to foreign radio was apparently punishable by death. If the Nazis or their collaborators caught you listening to it, they could shoot you.

We're told that Max and others “lived on rumors” and that it was “fuel” for their souls in the absence of knowing anything for certain.

Speaking of information, that leads onto another key point: education. Max and Reinharz both constantly ponder the role of education in allowing terrible ideas like Nazism and antisemitism to spread and propagate.

After all, German society didn't become pro-Nazi and antisemitic overnight. It was a process that many teachers, professors, and institutions took part in. These ideologies were nurtured over time.

This really got us thinking about one of the book's key messages: What is taught in school or what is written in law isn't necessarily moral, ethical, or right.

One last aspect of this book that's intriguing is Max's relationship with his girlfriend, Illse, who is German. We're reminded how, despite their separation and Illse's absence for much of this book, just having a loved one to live for makes all of the difference. We may not be reading this book or writing this review if Illse didn't exist to give Max hope.

This is a solid Holocaust memoir. There are times when it seems rather dense, which impacts the pacing. It often seems like the author felt the need to stop and provide exposition and to explain a lot, particularly at the very beginning and the very end of the book. For example, the author talks about the Kindertransport program, which we learned about in Until the Stars Align by Carolyn Summer Quinn, and other such programs. We learn about the difficulties of immigrating and escaping Nazi-controlled territories and how countries like Ecuador were only open to farm workers. It's great for context, but it also becomes a bit much. You can really tell that the author did a lot of additional research to flesh out what happened to Max. It does seem like a huge info-dump and bog the book down at times, but it's not that big of a deal. And it has the positive effect of making this both engaging and educational.

The middle portion of the book—which mostly consists of Max's experiences hiding in Holland—is genuinely tense and captivating.

Check it out on Amazon!