Meer dan 20 jaar geleden las ik het 22e deel van Hard Gras. Volledig volgeschreven door Simon Kuper, ik was erg onder de indruk. Maar meteen ook de reden dat dit boek dat kort daarna uitkwam niet bij mij in de kast belandde. Jaren later in de opruimingsbak ging ik toch overstag. De overlap nam ik voor lief. Maar zelfs daarna stond het boek jaren ongelezen op de plank.

Tot vorig jaar op twitter (toen nog) een aankondiging stond dat er een online openbare boekenavond was over dit boek, met de schrijver. Meteen haalde ik het boek uit de kast. Uiteindelijk kon ik de bewuste avond niet, dus heb ik die sessie gemist, maar het boek las ik toch wel graag.

Voordeel van twee decennia tussen de Nederlandse versie en de uitgebreidere Engelse versie is dat ik van het origineel veel niet heb onthouden. De grote lijnen wel, de details niet. Die komen op deze manier weer terug. Mooi is de werkwijze van Kuper, veel ooggetuigen aan het woord laten. Het wordt eigenlijk gewoon een geschiedenisboek over de Tweede Wereldoorlog, waarbij voetbal de kapstok is, de aanleiding om juist deze mensen aan het woord te laten en niet de tig andere ooggetuigen. Een manier van beperken en daardoor interessanter te maken.

De titel is een beetje misleidend, het gaat zeker niet alleen over Ajax, al kan ik me voorstellen dat die naam buiten Nederland zo groot is, dat je die naam wil gebruiken op de voorkant, in je marketing. Het boek is veel beter dan de beperkte titel. Heel Europa ligt onder de loep, vergelijkingen kunnen worden gemaakt. De mythe dat heel Nederland in het verzet zat wordt netjes doorgeprikt, voor zelfreflectie hebben we in dit land blijkbaar een buitenstaander nodig die ons wijst op onze eigen valse geschiedschrijving.

Veel research (vijf bladzijden met titels achterin), grondig onderzoek, dit boek zou voor vele hedendaagse zogenaamde researchers een goed voorbeeld kunnen zijn. Compliment voor Kuper, die mij onlangs nog hielp met mijn eigen boek.

Citaat: “The Holocaust in the Netherlands, wrote Arendt, was a catastrophe unparalleled in any Western country; it can be compared only with the extinction, under vastly different and, from the beginning, completely desperate conditions, of Polish Jewry’. She blamed, in large part, the strong Dutch Nazi movement, second in Europe only to Germany’s. It was true that a relatively large number of Dutch Jews had found hiding places, but it was also true that a relatively large number of them were betrayed.” (p.137) ( )

A non-fiction book looking at the Amsterdam football club, Ajax, and how it and the people around the club were affected by the second World War. In fact that's a very reductive description - many other European football clubs and cultures are touched on, and the Kuper also ranges over decades around the war. But at its heart the book is focussed on Ajax, and through that it examines the Dutch - their character, politics and history.

The book is packed with detail and is excoriating in an understated way. It effectively manages to tell of the horrors of World War II in Europe, and warns of the tenacious attitudes that formented it still being with us today. Some of the detail can be overwhelming - the statistics are horrifying, but can be slippery to recall. I'm not sure if that's due to the slightly scattershot structure of the book, or just that many of the events are so unimagineable.

Certainly some of the sense of being overwhelmed comes from trying to wrap your head around the slightly contradictory ideas that are at the heart of the book. Kuper contends that Holland, and particularly Ajax Football Club was both better and worse during the war than pop culture history would have them. Holland gave up its Jews much more easily than most other European countries, though not, it is asserted, because Holland had a large Nazi Party (they did) but because the Dutch just wanted a peaceful, orderly life. And the continuance of sport, and football in particular, were part of that (as it was in many other countries). That said, many Jews associated with Ajax actually were protected and survived through their association with the club, and were later instrumental in the club's success. But peculiarly that's not celebrated by the club, or even really acknowledged, and that despite Ajax being perceived as a Jewish club. The Dutch as a whole, it asserts, understand that they were not particularly virtuous in WWII, but - or perhaps because of that - would also like to avoid any serious engagement with the casual anti-semitism that the author identifies in Holland since the war years.

There is lots of other interesting stuff, about English football, and football under the Nazis, and perhaps the book's greatest value is in correcting the accepted version of history (the England team's Nazi salute, for example). While occasionally a touch ranty, it is unflinching and keen.

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Interesting, but can't get into enough depth about the Holocaust or soccer during the war. ( )

In this “sort of alternative history of WWII” Simon Kuper tells how the Dutch, despite having “welcomed Jews across the centuries, never showing the slightest impulse to kill them,” didn’t stand up to the Nazis with the gusto that has been widely believed.

Nazi Germany used sports, soccer in particular, to gain acceptance with other European nations in the years before WWII. When the war and occupation came, the “honest, competent, and law-abiding” Dutch were exploited by the Nazis and tricked into “deporting the Jews.”

Ajax in particular is considered by many in the Netherlands, and outside, to be a Jewish team. Despite evidence to the contrary, most Israelis love Holland and still believe the Dutch were “goed” in the war and did all they could to resist the Nazis and help Jews. Johan Cruijff is regarded as an “honorary Israeli.”

Kuper provides a rare and detailed look into football and WWII history in Ajax, The Dutch, The War. ( )

Briljant boek over -de titel zegt het al ( )