I had the privilege today to interview Hans Knoop.
Hans Knoop is a Dutch journalist who was best known for the role he played in the unmasking and arrest of the war criminal Pieter Menten.
Knoop was born during the Second World War to Jewish parents in hiding. Knoop grew up in Amsterdam. In 1963, Knoop started his journalistic career as a reporter at De Telegraaf. For this newspaper he would repeatedly write about the Weinreb affair. Later he was a correspondent in Brussels and Tel Aviv, also for the AVRO. From 1968 to 1971 he was editor-in-chief of the Nieuw Israëlietisch Weekblad.
From 1974 to October 1977, Hans Knoop was editor-in-chief of the opinion weekly Accent. The Menten case took place at that time. Knoop managed to discover material that was incriminating for Menten and continued to report the case in the news. After Menten fled the country, Knoop tracked him down in Switzerland.
Menten was involved in the massacre of Polish professors in Lviv and the robbery of their property. According to witnesses, he helped shoot as many members of the offending family in Galicia, then turned on other Jews in the area. It is believed that Menten personally oversaw the execution of as many as 200 Jews.
He had an estate in Waterford, in Ireland. After his release from Dutch jail in 1985. he was denied entry to Ireland by the then minister of Justice, Michael Noonan, a Limerick man.
Hans Knoop’s story is currently on Apple TV and Amazon Prime TV as “The Menten Files” and in some regions as “The Body Collector” on Netflix
It is quite a long interview, but is well worth it.
source
History of Sorts 
Leave a comment