Medical sabotage by Jewish doctors in Nazi-occupied Netherlands and Holocaust survival

摘要

Despite the erection of a Monument to Jewish Resistance in Amsterdam in 1988, Jewish resistance is rather a neglected subject in Dutch historiography on WWII. Some attention is given to Jewish participation in general resistance and to spiritual resistance, however historians and the general public have not paid much interest in this matter (Braber 2013). One of the reasons given is that as Jews were regarded mainly as passive victims after WWII, there was less interest in their resistance (De Haan 1997). Lately, there is some renewed interest in Jewish resistance. (Braber 2013; Moore 2011; Gompes 2013). An example is Van den Ende's study (Van den Ende 2015) on medical sabotage - as a form of resistance - by Jewish doctors in the Netherlands during the Nazi-occupation 1940-45, which might be placed in this context. However, she does not explicitly present her well-written book as such. Van den Ende, a doctor herself and a lecturer in public health, is interested in medical ethical norms under extreme circumstances. Her study focuses on shifting medical ethical norms and doctors' medical sabotage to avoid or delay patients being deported, while doctors themselves - because of their profession - were in a better position to survive the Holocaust. My commentary will describe and reflect on medical sabotage and its impact on medical ethical norms. Thereafter, I will reflect on the effect of medical sabotage on survival rates and discuss doctors' survival chances.