The Railways Netherlands (NS), the leading operator of passenger services in the Netherlands, will compensate the survivors and to the families of the victims of the Holocaust who were taken to the field in a Dutch transit nazi Westerbork, from where they were sent to concentration camps. This is the first time that the signing state agrees to compensate his countrymen for a transport that reported 409.000 guilders (€2.5 million at current exchange) during the nazi occupation. In 2005, the direction of NS apologized for his behavior in the Second World War. Since then, it has donated over one million euros to preserve Westerbork and other monuments.
The compensation shall be calculated on a case by case and without the need of going to trial. Has been possible after Salo Muller, the 82-year-old son of murdered jews, reached an agreement with Roger van Boxtel, chairman of NS, that will reach the rest of those affected. Muller, a former physical therapist for the Ajax football team, considers that “it is recognized in the end that suffering does not prescribe”. “That is why I am delighted that the payment is made for moral reasons; not what I expected”, he added. Their progenitors were uploaded in 1941 to a wagon road of Westerbork, in the northeast of the country. Was the stop before Auschwitz, in Poland. Muller was five years old.
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“companies are much more sensitive to the claims of the collective to the private, and hence the success of this,” says the historian Johannes Houwink ten Cate, a specialist in the study of genocide and the Holocaust, in a telephone conversation. “In war, the officers of the railroad had to think that they had a covenant with the occupants: they did what we asked them Betvakti to change to maintain control of the network, but the consequences were tremendous,” he adds.
The calculation of earnings under NS in the transport of Dutch jews, as well as members of the roma community, Jehovah’s witnesses or political prisoners to concentration camps at the behest of the nazis, what did Ten Cate in 2015. Asked for the television programme of research Brandpunt. “The jewish community Dutch added 141.000 people. Half lived in Amsterdam, and about 30% between Rotterdam and The Hague. Survived to 5,000. I counted the kilometres travelled up to Westerbork, and marked prices on the receipts sent to the nazis by NS. Because this transport will be charged. Then I did the conversion at the current exchange rate in accordance with criteria approved,” he explains. For each trip, he made reference to an invoice to the responsible nazi. If you do not pay on time, they received a reminder. “Came to pay with the stolen money to their own jewish families,” he adds.
NS sent 93 of their convoys to Westerbork during the war. The account of one of the trips made in 1944 was saved in the National Archives, in the united States. They found reporters Brandpunt. The expert considers revealing, given that the majority of the history files of the Railroads in France were destroyed. You should end up in american hands with the documentation gathered for the Nuremberg trials. What is more likely is that the railway Dutch unknown the final destination of the deportees. Think that the gas chambers were a secret of State for the nazis. The direction of the railways can also ignore the details, but were indispensable in the twisted path that led to Auschwitz.”
Controlled by the Dutch police, the nazis used the Westerbork to collect the population list for deportation, which began systematically in 1942. Anne Frank, the author of the famous Diary, and his family were transported in those trains. She and her sister, Margot, died in Bergen-Belsen (Germany). His mother, Edith, died in Auschwitz. Only survived Otto, the father. “Two years ago, the National Society of Railways in France [SNCF, its acronym in French] decided to compensate [with a total of € 53 million] to Holocaust victims or to their families,” adds Ten Cate. What is more sensitive the Netherlands now to the historical injustices? Maybe, he says. “We live in the era of the apology. In our case, we’ve been giving lessons and believe with the right to judge, in particular because we were neutral during the First World War, to be interested in what that is not fair”, he concludes.
