German Passport 1941: SS-Issued in Occupied The Hague, WWII

The Occupation of the Netherlands

German forces crossed the eastern frontier of the Netherlands in several places early on May 10, 1940, while additional troops landed on the beaches north of The Hague and parachutists dropped near Rotterdam and The Hague seizing vital bridges and isolating the capital. The Dutch Army was relatively small and resistance was complicated by the fact that German points of attack were widely separated. The government immediately appealed to Great Britain for help and a force of 200 Marines and a composite Guards battalion (2^nd Battalion Irish Guards and 2^nd Battalion Welsh Guards) was dispatched. On May 12^th, the German columns from the east linked up with the parachutists. That same day, the British forces arrived and advanced towards The Hague but quickly realized that they would have to be withdrawn without strong reinforcements. On the 13^th, Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina embarked for England in a British destroyer. That night the Dutch government also left. The British troops returned to Dover at noon on May 14^th, the day Rotterdam was bombed by some fifty German aircraft resulting in the deaths of numerous civilians and the destruction of a large part of the city. Utrecht was threatened with a similar fate, but in the evening the Dutch forces surrendered.

During the Occupation

• 234,000 Dutch citizens lost their lives, they died:
  • in concentration camps
  • in captivity
  • by execution
  • by acts of war
  • from forced labor
  • as a consequence of the “Hunger Winter” of 1944-45 (by April 1945, the official daily ration per person in the Netherlands was only 320 calories)
  • from sickness, disease, and a general decline in national health as a result of war conditions (ie. lack of food and lack of fuel for heating, cooking, and transportation)
• In 1940 there were 86,000 Jews in Amsterdam
• By 1945 there were only 10,000 Jews in this city
• Anne Frank was one of those who died in the Holocaust
  • it was in a house on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family hid in an annex
  • today, the house is a museum visited by thousands annually

Now, if you are looking at the girl’s passport you could think of Anne Frank, one of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

I actually can’t figure out why URSULA JANKE, a hardly thirteen years old schoolgirl, got her own passport. At that time, the passport law defined that persons of the age of fourteen can apply for their own passport. Was little Ursula an orphan? Clear is she was going back home into the Reich, first to Düsseldorf, then Stuttgart, and finally to Berlin as the stamps of food ration cards show on pages six and thirty-two. Ursula was for in Amsterdam in 1928 and lived in The Hague ever since. In The Hague, her passport with number 3463/41 was issued by the infamous SS (Schutzstaffel) for the occupied Dutch territories on May 16th, 1941. A very interesting passport historical document of WWII and the occupation of the Netherlands.

Johann Baptist Albin Rauter

Johann Baptist Albin Rauter (4 February 1895 – 24 March 1949) was a high-ranking Austrian-born SS functionary and war criminal during the Nazi era. He was the highest SS and Police Leader in the occupied Netherlands and therefore the leading security and police officer there during the period 1940 to 1945.

Rauter reported directly to the Nazi SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, and in the second instance to the Nazi governor of the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart. After World War II, he was convicted in the Netherlands of crimes against humanity and executed by firing squad.

Related: Hitlers Intelligence Chief – Walter Schellenberg – US Passport

 

Tom Topol | Passport Historian & Author
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