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suicides at the time of the Dutch capitulation -new book

Discussion in 'History of Holland and Belgium during World War I' started by MichaelBully, May 21, 2017.

  1. MichaelBully

    MichaelBully Active Member

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    Just heard of a new book out now titled 'Mij krijgen ze niet leven'-de zelfmoorden van mei 1940' by Lucas Lichtenberg .
    I am translating this as 'They will not take me alive- the suicides of May 1940'.
    From what I understand one or two historians have talked of an 'epidemic' or ' wave' of suicides. Official figures range from 371-388 , 50% of those concerned were Jewish. A high proportion of the suicides were in Amsterdam.
    I've only had a quick look at this page , so haven't worked out if anyone has attempted to establish the figures of those who attempted suicide but were unsuccessful. I know that a general principle is that most suicide attempts aren't successful, but we can't always make this assumption in every set of circumstances.

    The Dutch language publicity for the book is here

    Mij krijgen ze niet levend - Uitgeverij Balans
     
  2. belasar

    belasar Court Jester

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    The English translation was terrible, but I got the gist. The number seems high to me, but in the chaos of events no telling how rigorous the investigations may have been so the numbers may be lower or higher.
     
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  3. MichaelBully

    MichaelBully Active Member

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    Indeed. An element to the Occupation of The Netherlands that I hadn't thought of.......will be interesting to see if this book gets translated into English and German.
    What I found out most helpful from the webpage is the references to Dutch language source material about the Occupation in general, trying to see which books have now been digitalised to read on line and/or have a kindle version. Regards
     
  4. Skipper

    Skipper Kommodore

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    Glad I speak Dutch and thanks for focussing this particular point, I had never heard about this.
     

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