Dutch Jews who lived in hiding during Nazi occupation seek reparations

As far as Germany is concerned, Dutch Jews deserve no compensation for living in hiding during the Nazi occupation. Reparations negotiators told Haaretz last week they plan to make the issue the focus of the next round of talks with Germany on whether survivors from Holland should be compensated.

Community leaders are also working to lift a stipulation stating that former residents of the Amsterdam Ghetto are not to be compensated for having to live there, because the ghetto is defined in Germany as "an open ghetto" whose inhabitants could leave.

Orly Joseph, a spokeswoman for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, said her organization will bring up the Dutch Jews' case in the annual negotiations with Germany.

The issue became relevant last month after community leaders succeeded in lifting an exclusion barring Dutch Jews from German reparations. In November, Dutch Jewry launched a campaign concerning a one-time 1,400-euro grant that most Dutch survivors received in the 1960s, which later excluded 2,000 people from receiving a monthly stipend of 270 euros.

Any recipient of the grant, known by the Dutch acronym CADSU II, became ineligible for compensation under the Conference's Article 2 fund for Western Jews. After Article 2 was expanded in June, Berlin allocated additional funds for Dutch survivors and upped the Article 2 stipend from 270 euros to 291 euros.

But the chairman of the Association of Immigrants from the Netherlands, Henoch Wajsberg, says the agreement still leaves out many survivors.

Professor Johannes Houwink ten Cate, head of the Holocaust and Genocide Institute of Amsterdam University, says that while the Amsterdam Ghetto was not an open-air prison like the East European ghettos, it was cut off from public transportation and had signs on its gates designating it as "the Jewish quarter."

He says people who lived in hiding suffered more than those in the ghetto: "These people suffered enormous psychological damage for many years, and especially the children.

Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1005789.html

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