Hitherto unpublished disclosures of how Dutch police helped the Nazis round up Dutch Jews and others for deportation to concentration camps during World War II, appear in the current issue of the weekly “Accent” which has obtained the secret files of the post-war Police Criminal Investigation Department (PRA).
In the first of a series of articles on Dutch collaborators, “Accent” reported that some 17,000 Jews in The Hague were arrested and deported by Hague police who, in some cases, appropriated Jewish property for their own use. They also assisted Amsterdam police to round up Jews in Amsterdam’s old Jewish quarter, the report said.
None of these policemen was ever prosecuted after the war, except for a few who were officially members of the Dutch Nazi Party. According to “Accent,” several police collaborators were appointed to PRA after the war to conduct investigations into the wartime activities of other Dutch collaborators. Future articles in the series will deal with police in other Dutch cities during the Nazi occupation.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
