Tweede Wereldoorlog

But on 10 May 1940, German troops invaded the country and bombed Rotterdam to force a quick capitulation. There followed a period of five years of occupation and oppression by Nazi Germany. Any opposition was brutally crushed. Some in the country actively collaborated with the occupying forces. They included the NSB, the Dutch Nazi party. During the occupation, Jewish, Roma and Sinti people were deported en masse from the Netherlands to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. In 1944 the southern part of the Netherlands was liberated. The rest of the country then endured a harsh winter during which tens of thousands of people died. The devastating truth emerged after the Germans surrendered in May 1945: some 104,000 Jews and hundreds of Sinti and Roma people had been deported from the Netherlands and murdered.