History of Sorts

First of all, let me tell you I am Dutch, and I am proud to be Dutch. I love the country where I was born and where I grew up.

But I am not proud of some of its black pages in history.

I can understand why some Dutch bureaucrats and civil servants colluded with the German occupiers—most did this for self-preservation. I can understand—but I will never condone it.

This may sound like a contradiction, but what happened after the war I can’t comprehend—yet, I can understand. I can’t comprehend it because of sheer ignorance and stupidity, but I can understand because of my own dealings I had in the past with the Dutch civil service.

After the war, some local authorities, and especially the authorities of the bigger cities like Amsterdam and the Hague, imposed fines on hundreds of Jewish Holocaust survivors.

The City of Amsterdam collected several million guilders (an equivalent of about $10 million)  from Holocaust survivors who were charged ground lease fees for periods they spent in hiding or at concentration camps. Many of the houses in question were used by Nazi occupation officers and local collaborators. The Amsterdam authorities pursued Holocaust survivors for missed payments as late as 1947 and imposed fines on them for missing payments.

This is typically something some Dutch civil servants or rather ignorant pencil pushers—would do. Not looking outside the box, just at the books or the accounts, and vigorously pursuing payments regardless of the history and circumstances behind it.

In 2014, the Mayor of Amsterdam, van der Laan, a son of resistance fighters, asked NIOD (the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies) to research the cases.

Some of the money has since been reimbursed.

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Sources

NIOD

The Times of Israel