In the early 1960s, the Netherlands was confronted with the so-called Schmierwelle. This Swastika Epidemic which had started in Germany in December 1959, when neo-Nazis painted swastikas on a newly opened synagogue in Cologne, swept like a tidal wave across Germany and many other countries in Europe, even reaching South Africa, Australia and the United States. In the Netherlands, a Jewish cemetery had been vandalised, on several locations swastikas had been painted and various prominent Jews in Amsterdam had received anonymous threatening letters: ‘Jews not welcome’. There weren't that many incidents during the Dutch ‘hakenkruisrage’ [swastika craze] , but there was a lot of consternation, particularly due to the huge scale of this antisemitic wave in the country of the former occupier.

In 1962, the tombstones of the Jewish cemetery in Enschede were damaged and the windows of the shul in Amersfoort were smashed. Most of all, an incident at the elitist student association Amsterdamsch Studenten Corps (asc) raised a public outcry. Despite (or because of?) the extensive coverage of the Eichmann trial, during asc's initiation ceremonies, its feuten (freshmen who join the ceremonies as aspiring members), with their heads shaved and nude torsos, were put together in a narrow space, were yelled at: ‘We gaan Dachautje spelen’ [We’re going to play the Dachau game]. A Jewish freshman who complained because he had lost relatives in Dachau was called a ‘vuile rotjood’ [filthy Jew]. The incident turned into a national scandal. Because of the agitation among Dutch Jews caused by this and other recent antisemitic incidents, the Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad (niw) decided to organise a debate in October 1962 with Abel Herzberg and four other prominent Jews, in order to address issues such as how seriously Jews were to take these antisemitic incidents. In September 1961, with the Eichmann trial still in full swing, Herzberg had already lectured the Dutch Jews and their mouthpiece, the niw, because of their defensive attitude. He accused them of ignoring the trial's historical significance and worse, of hardly writing anything about this event of world proportions. If at least, Herzberg said, they had sided with opponents of the trial, but no, they chose not to take sides at all.