Organizations providing psychological help to war victims are demanding that the government pay for treating the thousands whose conditions were aggravated by the release from Breda prison a month ago of the last Nazi war criminals imprisoned in Holland.
Welfare Minister Elco Brinkman has promised an additional $500,000. But five organizations that deal with war victims say the amount is far from sufficient.
They said large numbers of war victims are traumatized by the knowledge that Ferdinand aus der Fuenten, 79, and Franz Fisher, 88, are now free men.
The two Germans, responsible for the deportation of more than 100,000 Dutch Jews, were released from Breda Jan. 28 by order of the lower house of Parliament.
They were declared undesirable aliens and deported to West Germany.
Both were convicted in 1949 and became known as the “Breda Two” because all other Nazis and collaborators convicted with them either died or had their sentences reduced.
The money offered by the welfare minister will not affect individual payments to some 30,000 war victims. About 20,000 of them were prisoners of the Japanese in the former Dutch East Indies. The rest are victims of Nazism.
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