To van Dijk

Ans van Dijk during her trial in Amsterdam (February 24, 1947)

Anna "Ans" van Dijk (born December 24, 1905 in Amsterdam , † January 14, 1948 in Weesperkarspel ) was a Dutch collaborator during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II . On January 14, 1948, she was executed by firing squad at Fort Bijlmer . She was the only woman among a total of 39 people who were executed for collaborative crimes in the Netherlands after the war.

biography

Ans van Dijk was considered a difficult child, from the age of five she was under constant care by a pediatrician. Her mother died when she was 14 years old and her father was subsequently placed in a psychiatric hospital. She herself came to a home. In 1927 she married Abraham Querido, who like her was of Jewish origin. The marriage remained childless. Ans van Dijk led an inconspicuous life as a housewife in Amsterdam until 1935. Then she divorced her husband and opened a hat shop with a friend (Maison Evany) ; the two Jewish women had a lesbian relationship and lived together in an apartment above the shop.

After the occupation of the Netherlands by the German armed forces , all shops owned by Jews had to close in November 1941, including Ans van Dijk's shop. Her friend fled to Switzerland in 1942 . Van Dijk stayed in the Netherlands and supported other Jews by finding hiding places or papers for them. In January 1943 she was forced to find shelter herself and hid in the attic of a house in Amsterdam. She was betrayed by two Jewish women whom she had previously hidden and who had been arrested. On Easter Monday 1943 van Dijk was arrested by Bureau Joodsche Zaken (Bureau 11 of the Political Police), whose main task was to track down Jewish people in hiding. She was threatened with deportation to the east unless she would work for the Germans in the future. She chose the latter option, "out of sheer fear," as she explained later in her trial.

Ans van Dijk took the name Ans de Jong and pretended to belong to the resistance group Vrij Nederland . She promised Jewish people safe apartments to hide in, but where they were expected and arrested by employees of the bureau. At first she worked alone. Over time, two more Jewish women - Branca Simons and Rosalie Roozendaal - joined them. Ans van Dijk handed over at least 145 people to the Germans, more than 60 of whom died in concentration camps . The previously rather shy woman with little self-confidence literally blossomed through her work for the bureau: She received praise and recognition for her “good work” and 7.50 guilders for every person who helped Germans get online with her. She even betrayed her own brother's family. Pieter Schaap , their manager at the Security Service (SD), described them as the best of his ten "employees". "Bij hair ontwikkelt zich iets wat de aanklager later omschrijft as a 'satanic yacht instinct'. Ze verraadt like hair maar voor de voeten komt. Vrienden, familieleden, hair compagnon, de familie van hair vaste vriendin. "(Eng. =" She developed what the prosecutor later put, 'satanic hunting instinct'. She revealed who got at her feet, friends, family members, her business partner, the family of her steadfast friend. ”) Abraham Querido died on June 30, 1944 in the Blechhammer concentration camp ; there is no known connection between his deportation and the activities of his ex-wife.

After the end of the war, van Dijk moved to The Hague with her then girlfriend . She was arrested on June 20, 1945, and her trial began in February 1947, and 23 cases of treason were charged. She fully confessed. Requests to have them examined psychologically were rejected by the presiding judge, who asked them, “Hoe kunt u nog slapen? Ziet u niet steeds al die mensen voor u? "(Eng. =" How can you still sleep? Don't you see all these people in front of you all the time? "). It was because of treason for convicted death . Ans van Dijk made a petition for clemency to Queen Wilhelmina , which she rejected - also on the basis of a recommendation by the Council of Cassation. She converted to Roman Catholicism and was baptized the night before her execution . She was executed on January 14, 1948 and then buried anonymously.

Judgment in posterity

Koos Groen, a former editor of the Dutch newspaper Trouw , which was founded as an underground newspaper during the war, researched the story of Ans van Dijk after the files were released by the Justice Department in 1988. He was particularly moved by the question of why Van Dijk was the only woman who was executed after the war. There was no doubt in his mind that she was rightly sentenced to death, but in many similar cases the death penalty was not carried out. It is difficult to understand that “characters” like Ferdinand from Fünten and Willy Lages , who organized the deportation of Jews, kept their lives while a victim who became the perpetrator to save his own life was executed has been. Van Dijk's two accomplices were released in 1947 and 1959, and the employees of Bureau Joodsche Zaken were all at large by 1960 at the latest, according to Groen.

Groen attributes the lack of grace to Ans van Dijk to resentment towards her: she was Jewish and after the liberation there was an anti-Jewish climate in the Netherlands. Years of anti-Semitic propaganda by the Germans had had an impact. She was a lesbian and her personality and appearance were unattractive. In the process, she “blackened” one after the other and lied “as if in print”. The 18-year-old Rosalie Rozendaal, a “mooie meisje” (dt. = “Pretty girl”), received only a short prison sentence.

There is the assumption that Ans van Dijk would not have been executed had Queen Juliana already sat on the throne (she became Queen of the Netherlands in September 1948), as she was a staunch opponent of the death penalty and in the following years numerous requests for clemency in favor the petitioner decided. In 1952 it prevailed after repeated differences of opinion with the government. After two executions of Dutch people convicted of war crimes on March 21, 1952, the death penalty was finally abolished in the Netherlands.

In 2009, the journalist Sytze van der Zee dealt in his book Vogelvrij - De jacht op de joodse onderduiker with the question of whether van Dijk could have been the one who betrayed Anne Frank's family . According to van der Zee, Otto Frank knew that the traitor was a woman, but also that it was a Jew. That is why he was silent so as not to encourage prejudice. Van der Zee could not solve this riddle without a doubt: "De talrijke snippers bewijs the Van der Zee voor zijn stelling aanvoert, bieden stof tot nadenken, maar overtuigen uiteindelijk niet." (Eng. = "The numerous puzzle pieces that Van der Zee for makes his claim, provide food for thought, but ultimately do not convince. ")

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Nick Muller: De executie van de foute jodin. HP / De Tijd, January 14, 2013, accessed December 19, 2014 (Dutch). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Ben Verzet: Ans van Dijk. De Dokwerker, accessed December 20, 2014 (Dutch). 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Hetty Nietsch: Geexecuteerd: een verraadster, joods en lesbian. Trouw , August 20, 1994, accessed December 20, 2014 (Dutch). 
4. ↑ Bijzondere rule king: Afscheidsbrief van collaborateur Ans van Dijk aan de vooravond van haar executie (last letter of Ans van Dijk). NIOD, January 14, 2014, accessed December 30, 2014 (Dutch). 
5. ^ Anneke Visser: Een leven vol verraad. nrc boeken, September 17, 1994, accessed September 30, 2014 (Dutch). 
6. ↑ Laatste twee executies voltrokken in Nederland in the 1952nd In: Trouw . July 25, 2006, accessed December 30, 2014 (Dutch).  The death penalty was originally abolished in the Netherlands in 1870, but its reintroduction was decided in 1943 by the government-in-exile to sanction serious war crimes.
7. ↑ Bart Funnekotter: En de hunted become de hagers. (No longer available online.) Nrc boeken, February 19, 2010, archived from the original on December 30, 2014 ; Retrieved December 30, 2014 (Dutch). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.