Should Amsterdam Strip Name of ‘Nazi Collaborator’ From City Building?

Image by getty images

By JTA March 7, 2016

In a rare move, a Dutch watchdog on anti-Semitism called on the City of Amsterdam to rename a municipal hall bearing the name of a former official who helped deport Jews to their deaths.

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, on Saturday urged the city government of the Dutch capital to scrap the honor it conferred more than 30 years ago to Piet Mijksenaar, a late top official with the city.

The move followed the publication last month of a historian’s book about the Asterdorp Ghetto in Amsterdam’s north, which detailed Mijksenaar “enthusiastic help with the deportation of Jews, and that he strived to make this process rapid and efficient,” as CIDI described it in a statement.

According to Het Parool daily, Mijksenaar also helped save two Jews from the Hollandsche Schouwburg – an Amsterdam theater house that Nazi occupation forces turned into an internment camp for Jews. But his record of collaboration with the Nazi occupation had remained obscure.

While common in Eastern and Central Europe, the veneration of Nazi collaborators is relatively rare in the Netherlands.

Last year, Allseas, a shipping giant that built a large vessel and named it for the late SS officer Pieter Schelte, agreed to change the ship’s name following years of campaigning by anti-Fascist activists, including from CIDI.

The book detailing Mijksenaar’s collaboration, “Asterdorp” by Stephan Steinmetz, also revealed that Amsterdam hiked rent prices for Jews after they had been confined to ghettos comprising city-owned real estate.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $325,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO