A program Tuesday evening at the Dutch American Heritage Museum in Orange City will examine why hundreds of thousands of people left the Netherlands after World War II—and how memories of Nazi occupation followed those immigrants to new lives in North America.
Dr. Richard Reitsma will present “How Dark War Memories Influenced the Lives of the Post-WWII Dutch Immigrants” during the museum’s latest Another Night at the Museum event. The program begins at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, August 18.
Silence After the War
Reitsma was seven years old when he left the Netherlands in 1955 with his parents and six siblings. The family traveled by ship to Canada, where Reitsma remembers experiencing the journey as an adventure. For his parents, however, leaving their homeland and beginning again carried considerably more uncertainty.
Speaking on Sioux County Radio’s The Daily Grind, Reitsma said his parents rarely discussed what they had endured during the war.
“My parents didn’t talk about the war,” Reitsma said. “And so one of the things I have always been interested in is where my parents came from.”
Reitsma said the Netherlands had not been invaded for more than 130 years before German forces entered the country. Dutch residents then spent five years under a dictatorship in which punishment or death could come without warning.
“And that’s the hard part to imagine, is that they lived under the rule of a terrorist for five years,” Reitsma said.
His presentation will explore why many members of that generation remained reluctant to discuss those experiences and how the emotional effects of the occupation became part of immigrant family life in the United States and Canada.
Reitsma also examined those questions through his historical novel, Forgetfulness, which draws upon his family’s experiences and the Dutch community where he was born.
Why So Many Dutch Families Left
Reitsma said the war left the Netherlands impoverished, with damaged roads, flooded land and other deteriorated infrastructure. Population pressure also grew after Indonesia gained independence and people with Dutch connections returned to the Netherlands.
Reitsma said one of the central questions behind his presentation is why so many Dutch people were willing to leave their families and homeland.
“You have to remember, the Dutch people are very, very tied to their families,” Reitsma said. “Families are a big thing. And so why do they leave those families and go to places like Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand?”
Reitsma said the answer involved several postwar pressures. The German occupation had left the Netherlands impoverished, with damaged roads, flooded land and other deteriorated infrastructure. The country was also struggling with population pressure, which increased as people with Dutch connections returned from Indonesia following its independence.
With concerns that the small country could not support its growing population, the Dutch government began offering financial assistance to residents willing to emigrate.
Reitsma estimates that between 300,000 and 400,000 people—or roughly three percent of the country’s population—ultimately left for destinations including Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and parts of South America. That migration created a Dutch diaspora whose members continued maintaining close relationships with relatives in the Netherlands.
Tuesday’s program will be held at the Dutch American Heritage Museum, located at 120 Third Street Southwest in Orange City. Doors open at 6 p.m., and organizers encourage people to arrive early because previous programs this year have filled the available seating. Iowa State Bank will provide ice cream.
