Netherlands: Anti-Semitism watchdog calls for city to rename hall honoring Nazi-sympathizer

Via JTA:

In a rare move, a Dutch watchdog on anti-Semitism called on the City of Amsterdam to rename a municipal hall bearing the name of a former official who helped deport Jews to their deaths.

The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, on Saturday urged the city government of the Dutch capital to scrap the honor it conferred more than 30 years ago to Piet Mijksenaar, a late top official with the city.

The move followed the publication last month of a historian’s book about the Asterdorp Ghetto in Amsterdam’s north, which detailed Mijksenaar “enthusiastic help with the deportation of Jews, and that he strived to make this process rapid and efficient,” as CIDI described it in a statement.

According to Het Parool daily, Mijksenaar also helped save two Jews from the Hollandsche Schouwburg – an Amsterdam theater house that Nazi occupation forces turned into an internment camp for Jews. But his record of collaboration with the Nazi occupation had remained obscure.

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