135 municipalities investigating the trade of expropriated Jewish property in WWII

Over half of the municipalities where Jewish property was expropriated and resold during the Second World War have investigated their role in this looting or are still doing so. That is evident from a survey by research platform Pointer of all 218 municipalities where it is known that Jewish homes and land were traded during the war.

A total of 135 municipalities have scrutinized this loot-and-trade. 74 of them have already completed the investigation. Eindhoven, Apeldoorn, Lochem, and Winterswijk, among others, have donated tens to hundreds of thousands of euros to Jewish foundations and memorial centers in response to the results as a moral restoration.

During the Second World War, the German occupier traded over 7,100 Jewish-owned properties in the Netherlands. The administration of those transactions is in the Verkaufsbücher, which was digitized in 2019. Most of the expropriated property was resold to entrepreneurs and real estate dealers, but the Verkaufsbücher shows that several Dutch municipalities bought up Jewish properties from the Germans.

According to Pointer, the 135 municipalities investigating the loot-and-trad mainly want to know whether this applies to them or whether they played a different role in the expropriation. They also examine how they handled Jewish people who returned home after the Second World War. For example, some municipalities collected back taxes from Jewish residents who had gone into hiding or were in concentration camps during the war.

Of the 218 municipalities where looting of Jewish property happened, 53 told Pointer that they are not investigating it. Some say they do not see the need for an investigation or will wait for people to come forward and request one. About 30 municipalities did not respond to Pointer’s questions about the matter.

Pointer has been researching the looting of Jewish-owned properties and land during the Second World War for some time. Since the digitization of the Verkaufsbücher, the research collective has published several articles abou tit, after which dozens of municipalities launched investigations into their role in the looting and resale. In 2021, Pointer won a Sigma Award, the prize for the best data journalism in the world, for publications about this topic.