In early 1941, the Netherlands had been under Nazi occupation for nearly a year. While many Dutch citizens tried to survive, some chose to resist, and others chose to collaborate. By February, Amsterdam’s streets were controlled through force and intimidation, with anti-Jewish measures enforced with escalating brutality.
Uniformed collaborators were encouraged to enter areas they had been ordered to avoid. Their purpose was not to maintain order, but to provoke clashes that could be exploited by the occupation authorities. One of these collaborators carried a crude weapon: a rubber garden hose weighted with iron and attached to his wrist by a cord.
His name was Hendrik Coen.
Coen was born in Amsterdam on April 5, 1898. In 1935, he and his wife, Elizabeth van Groningen, joined the National Socialist Movement, a Dutch fascist organization modeled closely on Hitler’s Nazi Party. The decision placed the family firmly within an extremist political subculture that rejected democracy and embraced authoritarian rule.
The couple had eight children. The two eldest left home early and went to sea in the merchant navy. One later fought on the side of the Allies, while the other did not return until after the war. The remaining children followed a very different path. All became members of fascist or national socialist organizations.
Two sons joined the SS. One entered the Dutch Landstorm, a Nazi-aligned paramilitary home defense force. Another became a member of the Nationale Jeugdstorm, the Dutch youth organization modeled on the Hitler Youth.
For a time, Coen worked for the firm of Abraham Asscher, a Jewish diamond dealer in Amsterdam. That fact stood in stark contrast to his later actions and affiliations. Within the National Socialist Movement and its paramilitary wing, the WA, Coen advanced steadily, eventually reaching the highest non-commissioned officer rank.
The war began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. On May 10, 1940, Hitler invaded the Netherlands. Soon after, a civil administration was installed under SS auspices, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart was appointed Reichskommissar.
Among his first steps were laws imposing economic discrimination against Jews. During 1940, the occupation authorities banned Jews from the civil service and required them to register their assets and businesses. In January 1941, all Jews were required to register themselves as Jews.
The Germans claimed this registration was for the safety of the Jewish population. In truth, it enabled future deportations by allowing the Nazis to track people easily. A total of 159,806 persons were registered, including 19,561 born of mixed marriages and some 25,000 Jewish refugees from the German Reich.
By early February 1941, street violence in Amsterdam had become deliberate and organized. Members of the WA moved through the city with growing confidence, targeting Jewish neighborhoods and businesses. Cafe owners were pressured to display signs declaring Jews forbidden. Those who refused were intimidated, harassed, or assaulted.
On the afternoon of February 11, 1941, Coen took part in a provocative action as approximately 45 WA men marched through Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter. Moving in formation, singing and chanting, the group openly sought confrontation. Their march led them toward Waterlooplein, a central square in the heart of the Jewish district.
Word of the action spread quickly. A communist fighting group was warned and moved in to defend the area. In the early evening, as the WA entered the square, a violent clash broke out.
The communist fighters broke open nearby storage facilities and armed themselves with iron objects that could be used as clubs. People struck each other at close range with batons, blackjacks, and iron bars. Bottles of bleach were thrown, and some witnesses later reported that shots were fired.
The confrontation lasted only a few minutes, but it was intense and chaotic. When the fighting ended, Coen was left lying unconscious in the street. Police later found him still holding his homemade blackjack, the rubber hose weighted with iron and strapped to his wrist.
He was taken to hospital with severe head injuries, most likely caused by a heavy object such as an iron bar or club. Hendrik Coen never regained consciousness. He died three days later, on February 14, 1941. He was 42 years old.
In the days that followed, Hanns Albin Rauter, the SS and police leader in the Netherlands, transformed the incident into a propaganda instrument. Writing in the National Socialist Movement newspaper Volk en Vaderland, Rauter presented Coen’s death as an act of alleged Jewish savagery.
He claimed that a Jew had torn open the victim’s artery with his teeth and sucked out his blood. The language deliberately invoked medieval ritual murder legends. It was graphic and inflammatory, designed to incite hatred and portray Jews as a violent, subversive threat.
These claims stood in direct contradiction to official findings. According to a police report dated February 18, 1941, Coen had suffered a single severe head injury, most likely caused by a blow from a heavy object such as a club, iron bar, or axe. No evidence supported the lurid accusations circulated in Nazi publications.
The resistance newspaper Het Parool reported these findings on February 25, 1941, directly contradicting the version promoted by the National Socialist Movement. Despite this, Nazi authorities and their Dutch collaborators continued to disseminate the false narrative.
Coen’s funeral, held on February 17, 1941, was deliberately staged as a political demonstration. Around 2,000 National Socialists marched through Amsterdam behind a horse-drawn carriage, accompanied by a marching band. Nazi symbols were prominently displayed, and the ceremony was heavily publicized as an act of martyrdom.
The event was intended to mobilize supporters, intimidate the wider population, and reinforce the propaganda image of Coen as a victim of alleged Jewish violence.
In the days that followed, Nazi authorities moved quickly from propaganda to direct repression. On the orders of Hans Böhmcker, deputy to Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart, the Amsterdam Jewish Council was imposed. This placed the burden of enforcing German regulations onto the Jewish community itself.
The Council was made responsible for maintaining order under constant threat of house searches and collective punishment if it failed to comply. Soon afterward, the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam was sealed off. Streets were blocked, movement was restricted, and the area was placed under intensified police control.
This action effectively marked the beginning of the Amsterdam Ghetto. The measures were publicly justified by invoking the violence surrounding Coen’s death, which Nazi propaganda presented as proof that the Jewish population posed a threat to public order.
Tensions escalated further when a patrol of the German Order Police was wounded during an attack on an ice cream parlor in the Jewish quarter, a location known as a gathering place for Jewish resistance fighters. The incident provided the Nazis with a pretext they had been seeking.
On February 22 and 23, 1941, the first large-scale raids against the Jewish population were carried out. Homes were stormed, and men were dragged into the streets at gunpoint. In total, 425 Jewish men between the ages of 20 and 35 were arrested.
They were deported to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps, where many were murdered or died under the conditions. The arrests sent shock waves through Amsterdam and exposed the lethal consequences of the policies that had been unfolding since the occupation began.
Public anger spread rapidly. With the support of the underground Dutch Communist Party, calls for resistance gained momentum. On February 24, 1941, strikes broke out across Amsterdam and nearby towns.
Trams stopped running. Factories shut down. Workers walked out in protest against the deportations and the persecution of the Jewish population.
The strike continued until February 27. It became the first and only mass protest in German-occupied Europe organized specifically against the deportation of Jews. Nazi authorities responded with force. Troops were deployed to crush the strike, and posters were plastered across the city invoking Coen’s death as justification for military intervention.
What had begun as a street clash was transformed into a turning point. It accelerated repression, deportation, and one of the most extraordinary acts of civilian resistance during the occupation of the Netherlands.
The Second World War in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. During five years of Nazi occupation, the Germans and their Dutch collaborators deported around 107,000 Jews from the Netherlands, most to Auschwitz and Sobibor in German-occupied Poland, where the overwhelming majority were murdered.
The consequences of collaboration extended beyond Coen’s death. His widow, Elizabeth Coen van Groningen, benefited directly from the system he had served. She was allocated three Jewish textile shops confiscated by the occupiers for the maintenance of her family.
After the war, she was brought before a Dutch court. On January 23, 1947, she was tried for exploiting confiscated Jewish property. Two weeks later, she was sentenced to two years imprisonment.