highlights
One of the typewriters, used by Amsterdam housewife Coba Veltman, to type the well-known call for the February strike
Coba was a member of the CPN. She had the typewriter before the war. In 1940, the party gave her a stencilling machine to produce pamphlets. On the second day of the strike, she was arrested while handing out pamphlets. Her son says: ‘Those policemen were okay. They took her bag away and when they gave it back there was only one pamphlet left in it, so she could say it had been pushed in her hands.’ But Coba was not released. She survived Camp Ravensbrück.
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Aggressive towards Jews
In early 1941, the members of the NSB in Amsterdam developed an aggressive attitude towards the Jews. Members of the WA, the NSB's uniformed commando group, marched through Amsterdam. Stopping at cafés, they put up signs saying 'No Jews Allowed' and they destroyed property in the old Jewish neighbourhood.
Fighting
Jewish and non-Jewish young men formed commando groups to protect themselves, which resulted in fighting. In these fights, WA member Hendrik Koot was so seriously wounded that he died a few days later.
In response, the Germans temporarily closed off the Jewish quarter. They set up a Jewish Council, which was supposed to help restore order. But a few days after Koot's funeral, the Jewish owner of an ice-cream parlour sprayed a German patrol with ammonia gas.
Roundups
The Germans used the incidents as an excuse for the first roundups on Jews: on February 22nd and 23rd 1941, 425 young Jewish men were rounded up, beaten and taken away. Many Amsterdam residents were shocked.
Strike
The illegal Dutch Communist Party [CPN] called for a protest strike. On Tuesday February 25th, the trams stopped running. Everyone in the city noticed that something was going on. The strike caught on. More and more businesses took part. The strikers marched through the streets.
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