Committee for Jewish Refugees (Netherlands)

The Committee for Jewish Refugees (Dutch: Comité voor Joodsche Vluchtelingen) was a Dutch charitable organization that operated from 1933 to 1941. At first, it managed the thousands of Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Nazi regime in Germany. These refugees were crossing the border from Germany into the Netherlands. The committee largely decided which of the refugees could remain in the Netherlands. The others generally returned to Germany. For the refugees permitted to stay, it provided support in several ways. These included direct financial aid and assistance with employment and with further emigration.

Then, in 1938 Germany annexed Austria and the Sudetenland regions of Czechoslovakia. Many refugees then came from those regions as well. On the night of 9 November 1938, there were violent pogroms against Jews across the German Reich, and the imprisonment of thousands of Jews without charges. This led to a further increase in the number of Jews streaming across the border seeking refuge and further emigration. Ultimately, the committee had become "one of the most powerful organizations in Dutch Jewry in the 1930s."

World War II started in September 1939. The Netherlands were invaded and occupied by Germany in May 1940. The committee continued its work until Germany closed it in March 1941. One of the committee's main goals had been to help Jewish refugees emigrate. About 22,000 refugees had left the continent of Europe with the committee's help. These refugees thus escaped murder in The Holocaust. Germany occupied the Netherlands until 1945. About 100,000 Jews from the Netherlands were deported and killed during the German occupation.