— Jan Bulder, a 68-year-old former Nazi collaborator who rounded up Dutch Jews for deportation to Auschwitz, was arrested at Schiphol Airport last Thursday as he returned from a vacation in Spain. He is expected to stand trial for war crimes committed in 1944 when Bulder was employed by the “Judenreferat 4-B”, the agency charged with deporting Jews from Nazi-occupied Holland. Bulder’s job was to hunt them down in their hiding places.
He was charged specifically after World War II with having arrested at least 20 Jews in The Hague, including children and many others in different localities. All were sent to Auschwitz where only one survived. Bulder also served for a time with the Waffen SS on the Eastern front and collaborated with the Germans in other capacities.
High on the wanted list of war criminal and collaborators when the war ended, Bulder was arrested but escaped before his trial and fled to South Africa in December, 1945 with a false passport. He returned to Holland in 1969 under an assumed name but later reverted to his real name. According to State Prosecutor Louis de Beaufort, Bulder thought he was safe because of the statute of limitations on the prosecution of war criminals. He was apparently unaware that an amendment to the law in 1971 extended the period.
Bulder had been living alone in The Hague but was under surveillance and his arrest was planned for some time. De Beaufort said he expected to find prosecution witnesses among Bulder’s former colleagues in the “Judenreferat,” all of whom served sentences of 15-20 years.
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.
