The secret services allegedly monitored members of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee and infiltrated its meetings.
Jewish Holocaust survivors living in Amsterdam were reportedly monitored and spied on by the Dutch Internal Security Service (BVD) until the 1980s. The BVD considered them a threat to democracy.
An analysis of 71,000 declassified files from the former BVD, published by the newspaper Het Paroolclaims that many Jews who returned after World War II were spied on.
The unexpurgated files, kept by the National Archives, have been accessible to the public since 2022, and their pages reveal the extent of surveillance carried out by the secret services.
The BVD monitored members of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee, founded by survivors in 1956, and infiltrated its meetings, deeming it extremist.
They had a mole within the organization, compiled reports on future Holocaust commemorations, and organized trips to visit concentration camps in other countries.
At these meetings, Dutch Jews shared their thoughts on the economic damage and medical problems they had suffered following their deportation from the Netherlands to concentration camps.
Questioned by journalists from Het Parool upon this revelation, a citizen of the Jewish faith was surprised: “What is extremist about a group of old Jews coming out of the camp? These people did well to draw attention to the victims.”
“No one knew”he added, “and when you read the article, you have tears in your eyes. All the names you read are those of people who suffered greatly. Almost all of them lost their families. And yet, they were targeted as as enemies of the state”.
The customs police were also involved in espionage orchestrated by the secret services. Their job was to report people going to or from Poland, where the largest concentration camp was located.
Euronews has contacted the Dutch Interior Ministry for comment.
Dutch media report that the former BVD, now the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), has issued a statement saying that “the investigations had to be seen in the context of the Cold War and the threat of communism.”
“Holocaust survivors as such were not considered extremists or a threat to democracy, but an exception was made for people associated with the National Auschwitz Committee, which the BVD considered an organization of communist facade”, is it specified in the declaration.
A great injustice
At one of the meetings reported by the BVD, the Auschwitz Committee discussed the case of the German war criminal, Willy Lages, who headed the Nazi secret service, SD.
Willy Lages coordinated the deportation of some 70,000 Jews to concentration camps.
The German was tried in the Netherlands and sentenced to death. This sentence was never carried out as it was commuted to life in prison. Claiming a terminal illness, Willy Lages was released from prison, traveled to Germany and spent the last five years of his life at large.
This release was not to the Committee’s liking, as the Dutch press noted: “All those present considered the release of a person whose place of life is prison to be scandalous.”
Security services also allegedly spied on the former chairwoman of the Auschwitz Committee, Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt, whose husband was arrested by the Nazis and died in a concentration camp.
His daughter said she was shocked that the BVD did not keep a personal file on Willy Lages, even though it did have one on her mother, describing her as an extremist: “I consider this a very great injustice”, she confided.
The Dutch Communist Party, some of whose members were part of the Auschwitz Committee, also aroused suspicion and was spied on.
The declassified archives contain details of the meetings at which the Committee discussed the demand for compensation for Jewish survivors of the war.
Twelve years ago, the newspaper, Het Paroolreported that more than 300 Jewish residents of Amsterdam had to pay taxes on apartments or properties they owned but where no one lived because they were sent to a concentration camp.
The scandal was discovered by a Dutch woman working as an intern digitizing the city’s archives.