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Search Ordered of Villa Suspected of Being a Distribution Center for Neo-nazi Literature

July 13, 1984
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The home of Mrs. Flora Rost van Tonningen, widow of a notorious Dutch Nazi, has been ordered searched by the public prosecutor in the Amhem district on suspicion that it is a distribution center for neo-Nazi literature.

Mrs. Tonningen, herself an unregenerated Nazi sympathizer, has used her villa in recent years as a meeting place of militant Flemish neo-Nazis and others of their ilk from abroad. The authorities believe it may be the place from which a neo-Nazi pamphlet titled “Levensbron” (Life Source) is circulated.

Her late husband, Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, was one of the top Nazis in Holland both before and during the German occupation of that country and a fanatical anti-Semite. Beginning in 1936 he was editor in chief of the Dutch Nazi daily Het Nationale Dagblad. During the occupation he was appointed president of The Netherlands State Bank.

He was arrested immediately after the liberation of Holland in 1945 and committed suicide in prison. His wife maintains he was murdered. Before their marriage she was leader of the womens corps of the Dutch Nazi movement. Their wedding, in December, 1940, was a Nazi social event, attended by the Gauleiter for Holland, the notorious Arthur Seyss Inquart.

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