History of Sorts

In any war or crisis, there are companies that make a profit. To some people, this may sound disgusting—but unfortunately, it is a fact.

Abraham Puls owned a removal company in Amsterdam. He had been a member of the NSB, the Dutch Nazis, since 1934. His company was responsible for the ransacking of the homes of Jewish families in Amsterdam. In fact, it is estimated that 29,000 homes of Jewish citizens were cleaned out by A. Puls’s company.

A few days after the raids on Jewish homes, trucks from the Puls company would show up and empty the homes. The goods would then be handed over to the Nazis to Einsatzstab Rosenberg, the Nazi organization assigned to appropriating cultural property during World War II. It was led by Alfred Rosenberg.

The plundering of the Jewish homes soon became known as Pulsen, named after Puls. One of Puls’s trucks also showed up at the annexe where Anne Frank had been hiding after they had been arrested on 4 August 1944.

There were reports that some Amsterdam citizens tried to recover the properties of their Jewish neighbours before Puls would show up—the aim was to return the properties to their Jewish friends. Most of the Jews who survived the war never saw anything belonging to them ever again.

It does sicken me to the core to know there were companies like that without any scruples or moral compass, stealing from fellow citizens and handing it to the enemy in order to make a profit.

Abraham Puls was sentenced to death on 4 June 1947, but his sentence was commuted on 4 February 1949 to a life sentence. He was released on 25 May 1959.

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Sources

Abraham Puls; van verhuizer tot rovershoofdman

https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/detail/4dcd3d4e-025a-11e7-904b-d89d6717b464/media/cbee5313-fe4b-adad-3a8e-60523adda2f8?mode=detail&view=horizontal&q=joden&rows=1&page=345