 | This article has multiple issues. Please helpimprove it or discuss these issues on thetalk page.(Learn how and when to remove these messages) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
|
Operation Black Tulip was a plan proposed in 1945, just after the end ofWorld War II, by the Dutch minister of JusticeHans Kolfschoten to forciblydeport allGermans from theNetherlands. The operation lasted from 1946 to 1948 and in total 3,691 Germans (15% of the German residents in the Netherlands) were deported.
AfterWorld War II, the Netherlands was a country in ruins and the major pre-war trade links with Germany and Indonesia were severed. Because of the importance of trade with Germany, the proposed demand for compensation (25 billionguilders — ten times the actual damage) was dropped. But there was still significant resentment. Many people were arrested, most notablycollaborators (NSB). The 25,000 Germans living in the Netherlands were branded as "hostile subjects" (vijandelijke onderdanen). They were slated to be evicted in three groups in reverse order of entry. The first who had to leave were those who came after the start of the first world war (mostly factory workers), then those who came after 1932 (including political refugees, some of them Jews), and then the rest, many of whom were economic refugees from the 1920s.[citation needed]
The operation started on 11 September 1946 in Amsterdam, where Germans and their families were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and given one hour to collect fifty kilograms of luggage. They were allowed to take one hundred guilders. The rest of their possessions went to the state. They were taken tointernment camps near the German border, the biggest of which wasMariënbosch concentration camp nearNijmegen.[1]
The operation ended in 1948, and when the state of war with Germany officially ended on 26 July 1951 the Germans were no longer regarded as state enemies.
After the plan was ended, little attention was devoted to it by historians and the media. A 2005 episode of the Dutch TV showAndere Tijden focused on the events, and in 2013 journalist Ad van Liempt, who had worked on theAndere Tijden documentary, published on it in his study of the postwar yearsNa de bevrijding: de loodzware jaren 1945-1950.[2]
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link).