Dutch Railway Refers Holocaust Survivor To Customer Service
(JTA) — Responding to a restitution claim by a Holocaust survivor, the Dutch national railway company referred him to its customer service department — which told him they cannot find his paperwork.
Salo Muller, who was a boy when he was separated from his parents 75 years ago in Amsterdam before their murder in a gas chamber in Auschwitz, based his claim last year on the 2015 discovery of documents in which the Nederlandse Spoorwegen national railway company, or NS, billed German authorities for the transportation of Jews to transit camps.
The company earned the equivalent of at least $2.7 million from these transports, on a per capita payment system, the NOS public broadcaster reported Monday, the 75th anniversary of the first shipments of Jews to the Westerbork transit camp in the northern Netherlands.
NS apologized for its role in the murder of 75 percent of the pre-war Jewish population of the Netherlands, which comprised approximately 140,000 people. It also funds various commemoration projects, including at the Westerbork memorial museum with over $1 million. But NS has resisted calls to offer compensation to victims and their descendants, as the French railway system did in 2015, paying $60 million.
Muller, a retired physiotherapist who was known nationally for treating some of the best-known soccer stars of the Netherlands in the 1970s and 1980s, contacted NS directly requesting compensation.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
