Compensation announced for unfairly taxed survivors
Made the far-right presentable: Le Pen
THE HAGUE’S city council has announced a 2.6 million euro (£2.2m) restitution fund for Jewish families forced to pay taxes and ground rent on property confiscated during the Holocaust.
Research by the council found that until 1955, survivors of the Holocaust who returned to the Dutch city were sent bills for taxes on their homes charged while they were in hiding or concentration camps.
The city has long been under pressure to grant restitution to Dutch Jews. In 2015 a Holocaust survivor, Eddy Boas, who was deported to Bergen-Belsen as a toddler, told the Dutch news site Omroep West his family was shunned when they tried to return to their house in The Hague. He said: “My parents knocked on the door of our house, but other people opened. They told my parents to get lost. The police and the municipality did nothing.”
Mr Boas, who now lives in Australia, said his father was ordered to pay back taxes to the municipality after the war to cover the period his family spent in Bergen-Belsen. “It is a scandal that this happened,” he said. “The municipality of The Hague made big mistakes and the Dutch state should be held accountable.”
After it was occupied in May 1940, the Netherlands collaborated with the Nazis in deporting Jews to concentration camps and up to three quarters of Holland’s 140,000 Jews were killed.