A Dutch Holocaust survivor whose parents died at Auschwitz is not an easy refund from Germany, as well as the country’s rail network, which transported Jews to Nazi concentration camps, in his charge.
In 2018, Salo Muller controlled to pressure the Dutch public railway company to apologize and compensate those affected and their surviving relatives who were transported on their trains to Nazi death camps during World War II.
Nederlandse Spoorwegen agreed to resolve the case with 500 survivors and their direct descendants.
Today, former physiotherapist at 84-year-old Ajax football club Ajax has written to German Chancellor Angela Merkel requesting reimbursement from her government, as the national railway company Deutsche Bahn.
According to Muller’s own website, his parents were taken to the Westerbork camp in the northeastern Netherlands in 1941, when he was five years old. From there, they were taken to Auschwitz, where they were killed. Muller’s mother was arrested in a raid shortly after leaving her in kindergarten; moved the rest of the war underground.
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), the Dutch established the camp in Westerbork in 1939 to house Jewish refugees who had entered the Netherlands illegally, many of whom arrived from Germany.
Between 1942 and 1944, after the German invasion of the Netherlands, Westerbork served as a transit camp for Dutch Jews before being deported to Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland.
Between July 1942 and 3 September 1944, the Germans deported 97,776 Jews from Westerbork; Nearly 55,000 were sent to Auschwitz and more than 34,000 to Sobibor, to the USHMM. Most were killed when they arrived.
Muller’s lawyer, Axel Hagedorn, wrote in his letter to Merkel that the case focuses on “Jews, Roma and Sinti,” who were transported on trains to Westerbork concentration camps and then taken by the Nazis to death camps in Eastern Europe. direct train.”
Dutch Jews were forced to pay for their transport, which led to the German railways millions of Reichsmarks between 1941 and 1944, Hagedorn wrote.
“This suffering inflicted becomes reprehensible, as the on-board Jews had to pay the shipping prices themselves,” he added.
Hagedorn told CNN that there are other estimates of the cash the railroad earns this way, but that you may not be sure of the exact amount.
In his letter to Merkel, Hagedorn said: “Transport through the German Reich region is provided through the German Reichsbahn (railway). My consumer believes it is time for the Republic of Germany to take charge of its injustice.”
A spokesman showed the receipt of Muller’s letter and told CNN that he would be “carefully considered.”
The factor raised at a German government press convention on Wednesday.
Government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer said she had not personally noticed the letter: “Germany, of course, is responsible for the crimes of the Nazi regime.”
She added: “We will never see crimes committed through the Germans during World War II. To this day, they fill us with a wonderful dismay and shame.
In a statement provided through his lawyer, Muller told CNN: “In fact, I hope that awareness of the old duty will lead to a non-public meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel.”
Deutsche Bahn was founded in 1994, after the reunification of Germany. The company told CNN that while “not Deutsche Reichsbahn’s legal successor, it is aware of its former responsibility.”
Intense discussions about Holocaust reimbursement bills in the 1990s led to the creation of the Remembrance Foundation, Responsibility and Future and Deutsche Bahn contributed millions to their assets, a spokesman told CNN. In addition, it introduced a five-year allocation based in 2010 that he said benefited “survivors of forced labor, deportation and persecution.”
While the spokesman commented on Muller in particular, he said, “We present a critical review of the Reichsbahn’s role in the Nazi era.”
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