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Netherlands: Struggle for Democracy

Netherlands spent years spying on Jews 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.

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.

The documents showed that the BVD also appeared to infiltrate the home of former Auschwitz Committee Chair Annetje Fels-Kupferschmidt.

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.

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.

In one case 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.

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.

https://nltimes.nl/2023/12/23/netherlands-spent-years-spying-jews-involved-dutch-auschwitz-committee-wwii

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Делаем нехитрый вывод: старый, недобрый антисемитизм никуда не исчезал и после WWII. Просто затаился на время. А теперь пошел в атаку с новой силой. И единственное, что поможет его одолеть - это сила оружия. А евреям в галуте пора крепко подумать, хотят ли они дожидаться второго Шоа.

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