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.
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.
A total of 135 municipalities of 218 have scrutinized this loot-and-trade. 74 of them have already completed the investigation.
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.
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.