Should Amsterdam Strip Name of ‘Nazi Collaborator’ From City Building?
Image by getty images
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 CEO & publisher 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.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
