Netherlands spent years spying on Jews involved in Dutch Auschwitz Committee after WWII
An analysis of 71,000 declassified files produced by former Dutch national domestic security service BVD showed that the service frequently spied on many Jewish Amsterdammers who returned to the Netherlands after World War II. The survivors of the Nazi extermination camps were viewed as "extremists" and a threat to democracy even into the 1980s, according to Parool.
Jews who worked with the Dutch Auschwitz Committee were routinely spied on by the BVD, the predecessor to the current civilian intelligence service, AIVD. The committee was founded in 1956 as a special interest group for those who survived the Holocaust, and early on, the BVD managed to have access to an informant serving as a board member.
"These were different times, but the fact that you are going to make a report about Auschwitz commemorations, about the people who came there to remember their family that had been massacred, to embed the BVD there? It defies any idea of civilization. That cannot be justified, not even with time,” said Jacques Grishaver, the chair of the Committee for the past 25 years.
Parool journalists reviewed the files, which combine to form a paper archive that would extend for 550 meters if stacked. The files are accessible to the public but may not be copied, and no lines were redacted.
It showed how the BVD compiled reports about the Auschwitz Committee meetings, Holocaust commemorations around the Netherlands, and trips to memorials at concentration camps abroad. The BVD also spied on information evenings where Jews shared their thoughts about financial damages and medical problems incurred as a result of being deported from the Netherlands to the concentration camps.
The spying began as Jews arrived back in the Netherlands after the War to discover that their friends and family had been murdered, and new residents were living in their homes. At the same time, the City of Amsterdam was insisting Jews pay the city for leasehold land fees they defaulted on because they had been deported from the country.
Amsterdam Jews, many of whom spent decades trying to obtain financial compensation, were spied on at various points. The BVD compiled lists of Jews who attended such meetings, and kept memos where Jewish survivors were often refered to as extremists. "What's extremist about a bunch of old Jews who came out of the camp? Those people did a good job by drawing attention to the victims,” said a perturbed Grishaver when presented with research from Parool journalists.
“No one ever knew this,” he added. “And when you read it, it actually makes you cry. All those names you read are people who have been through so much. Almost all of them have lost their families. And yet they were monitored as enemies of the State.”
In one example cited by the newspaper, the BVD compiled data about Auschwitz Committee meetings regarding protests against German war criminal Willy Lages, who led the Nazi intelligence service SD. He helped coordinate mass deportations of Jews, an estimated 70,000 in total, who were sent to German and occupied Poland concentration camps. He was convicted in the Netherlands of war crimes, and handed a death sentence in 1949, which was later commuted to life in prison in 1952. Due to his ailing health, he was released from prison in 1966.
His release was discussed at the home of an Auschwitz Committee board member in September of 1966. "All thought it was a shame, because this man should have remained in prison until his death," an informant told the BVD about the meeting. Incidentally, Lages lived for another five years in Germany after his release.
The documents showed that the BVD also appeared to infiltrate the home of former Auschwitz Committee Chair Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt. Her husband, Hans Polak, was arrested by the Nazis in 1944 and died at Dachau. She survived Auschwitz and later remarried a Resistance fighter. Fels-Kupferschmidt's child from her first marriage, Chaja Polak, was born in 1941, and she was not captured by the Nazis.
Polak, now 82, remarked that her mother and stepfather often welcomed Holocaust survivors and Resistance members in their home after the war. "Many Resistance members and Jews from all over the world came to visit," she said. "The idea that there was BVD infiltration in my home gives me an unpleasant feeling.
She remarked with dismay that the BVD did not keep a personal file about Lages, but that they kept a file on her mother and classified her as an extremist. "I see that as a very great injustice."
It was also clear that other organizations in the Netherlands also cooperated with the BVD to carry out the spying, like the Marechaussee. The branch of the military handles border control in the Netherlands. When Auschwitz survivors traveled to Warsaw in 1965, the Marechaussee shared information including "a list of persons who participated in the commemoration of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp" with the BVD.
The AIVD suggested that the BVD spying on Jews needed to be considered in a larger context. During the Cold War, the BVD may have been trying to learn about possible associations with the Communist Party of the Netherlands, which had some links to the Auschwitz Committee. Grishaver found the reasoning to be an unfair rationalization, as the spying also focused on Committee members who were not Communist Party members.
Polak also said it was unjust to target the Dutch Auschwitz Committee in such a manner. “I think that all these people who worked so hard to put Auschwitz on the map and let the world know what happened there, who worked hard to to support survivors financially because the vast majority of them lived in poverty after the war, that their names must be cleared of this blame.”
