Dutch World War II Controversy: How to Tell the Story of Nazi Occupation in Holland

 

The Bieganski Brute Polak stereotype depends for its power on an insistence that Poles are unique, more or less freaks, not normal. 

In fact, Poles are human beings like other human beings. 

Most aspects of Poland's coming to terms with WW II, that purveyors of the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype insist are unique to Poland, have played out in other countries, to a greater or lesser extent. 

A Dutch museum has a new exhibit that depicts Dutch heroes and also Dutch Nazis. This depiction has raised hackles in the Netherlands. 

As reported in the New York Times

In recent weeks, though, the museum has unveiled a new display designed to be more inclusive and to illustrate the nuance and complexity of history.

The exhibit portrays the lives of victims and perpetrators, bystanders and resisters, “and everything in between,” said Liesbeth van der Horst, the museum’s director, in an interview. “We wanted to tell the story of all the Dutch people.”

So in addition to describing the life of Janny Brilleslijper, a Jewish woman who refused the Nazi command to register her “race,” the displays also focus attention on Gerard Mooyman, a Dutch teenager “so impressed” by German military propaganda that he signed up to serve with its army at the front. They are two of roughly 100 new, short vignettes at the museum, including one that focuses on Wim Henneicke, who led a “Jew hunting” brigade of citizens who were paid for each person they delivered to the Nazis...