Willem Briedé

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Willem Hendrik Benjamin Briedé (* 1903 in Amsterdam ; † January 1, 1962 in Ratingen ) was a Dutch collaborator during the Second World War . He was a member of the Henneicke column , which hunted Jews .

biography

Willem Briedé attended middle school, which he left without a degree, and worked as an accountant in the Amsterdam slaughterhouse. According to his own account, he knew something “about bookkeeping and modern languages”. In 1934 he joined the National Socialist movement NSB . On April 1, 1942, he was hired as the head of personnel at the " Household Property Registration Office " in Amsterdam. This position was endowed with a monthly salary of 290 guilders, a substantial sum at the time. The "Hausrater registrationstelle", subordinate to the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg , inventoried and confiscated Jewish household effects that were needed for the establishment and repair of administrations, offices and apartments for employees - among others in the Rhineland. As part of this activity, Briedé picked up a suitcase with money once a month from the “plunder bank” Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co. Sarphatistraat (LiRo) in order to pay the salaries. The background to this was the principle that the persecution of the Jews should take place “cost-neutrally” and that they should therefore indirectly finance their own extermination. After eight months he became the head of the "household goods registration office" and his monthly salary was increased to 390 guilders.

From March 1943, the employees of the "Kolonne Henneicke", a subdivision of the "Household Goods Registration Office", to which Briedé now also belonged, were given the additional task of tracking down Jews in hiding, arresting them and delivering them to the former theater and now the Hollandsche Schouwburg collection point . The Germans offered a bounty of 7.50 guilders per Jew. The historian Ad van Liempt calls Briedé and his colleague Wim Henneicke “two top executives in the last chapter of the deportation of Jews in the Netherlands”, with Henneicke being more responsible for the “operational” part of “work” and Briedé for organization and administration. Henneicke kept a meticulous record that from March 4th to May 12th bonuses were paid out for 6,770 "arrested" Jews and from May 13th to June 8th for 757 "arrested" Jews; 723 arrests were made in August and September. From March to October 1943 the column tracked down a total of 8,000 to 9,000 Jewish people, most of whom were killed in concentration camps .

Briedé also took an active part in raids and arrests. A witness later reported that he was verbally abused by Briedé when he was arrested. He apparently knew where the valuables were hidden, so it was obviously a denunciation . When asked who the traitor was, Briedé frankly mentioned the informant's name because he (the witness) “would be gassed anyway and could no longer speak”.

On October 1, 1944, the column was disbanded because, on the one hand, it had served its purpose - there were almost no Jews left in Amsterdam and it was declared “ Jew-free ” - and on the other hand because of allegations of embezzlement, bribery and attacks against female prisoners stood in the room.

Briedé then worked for the security service (SD) in Velp for some time . He officially resigned from the SD on November 11, 1944, and left for Germany with his German wife Maria and their 14-year-old daughter. The rent for the apartment, which was furnished with valuable furniture (formerly owned by Jews), continued to be paid for a few months. Briedé's wife died a few weeks after the end of the war.

On April 29, 1949, Willem Briedé was tried in absentia in the Netherlands and the death penalty was imposed on him. The reasoning for the judgment stated that he had worked intensively in the implementation of criminal measures for the deportation and extermination of Jews and "did not even hesitate to hand over small Jewish children to their worst enemies several times in person." The whereabouts of 100,000 guilders from Jewish property that Briedé had confiscated remained unclear in the process. The death penalty against him could never be carried out as Briedé could not be found by the Dutch judiciary. Most recently he lived in Lintorf near Ratingen , obviously close to relatives of his deceased wife. At times he works for a shipping company in Düsseldorf . In 1962 Briedé died of liver cirrhosis in a hospital in Ratingen.

literature

  • Ad van Liempt: bounty. Paid denunciation of Jews in the occupied Netherlands . Siedler, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-88680-801-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Barbara Lüdecke: Willem Briedé from Amsterdam. In: barbara-luedecke.de. Retrieved October 11, 2016 .
  2. ^ Van Liempt, Kopfgeld , p. 116
  3. ↑ Van Liempt, Kopfgeld , pp. 13/14.
  4. ↑ Van Liempt, head money , p. 48
  5. ↑ Van Liempt, Kopfgeld , p. 33
  6. ↑ Van Liempt, head money , p. 19
  7. ↑ Van Liempt, head money , pp. 54–55.
  8. ↑ Van Liempt, head money , p. 307.
  9. ↑ Van Liempt, head money , p. 309
  10. ^ Van Liempt, Kopfgeld , p. 310
personal data
SURNAME Briedé, Willem
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Briedé, Willem Hendrik Benjamin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch collaborator
DATE OF BIRTH 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1962
Place of death Ratingen