Posted on 04/25/2014 8:53:00 AM PDT by DTA
Congratulations on surviving Auschwitz, now here’s your tax bill –Dutch intern reveals Amsterdam’s postwar shame
Imagine you had survived one of the Nazi death camps, but on returning home found that you owed the city council back rents and taxes on the house the Nazis had stolen from you, and to add insult to injury, had to pay fines for late payment. <
That is exactly what happened to 217 Amsterdam Jews, and now the city is considering compensating them .
“They were completely expropriated. And then, after the Second World War, they were taxed for the period in which they didn’t enjoy the house, and where they had not the ownership of the house. And not only were they taxed, they had also to pay fines on it,” says the former director of the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel, Ronnie Nathaniel.
The scandal came to light four years ago when part-time interns combing through the city archives came across letters of complaint. After a lonely four-year battle one intern, Charlotte van den Berg, has today obtained public recognition.
“It’s something I think we should be ashamed of. And it was an episode in history we thought we had closed, but apparently that is not the case,” says the leader of the D66 party Jan Paternotte.
Often the houses were sold to Dutch collaborators who fled after the war. Some 75% of the Netherland’s Jews were deported, in part because of the efficient Dutch civil service. A pity, say some, that it could not have been as efficient once the fighting had ended.
ping
Don’t let de Blasio hear about this. It might give him some ideas.
I guess this is where OUR government got its insensitivity from. At least over insensitivity to those not in the genre of the modified American victim......
Governments the world over are heartless money grubbers.
In the US, it takes 20 to 25 private sector workers support one government employee.
The EU roils my guts.
Congratulations for surviving the HELL of WWI in Europe and receiving the Medal of Honor — now here’s YOUR tax bill.
ALVIN YORK AND THE IRS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDrBWPI1Ctk&list=UUFDlhK80EdO28R-iGTXiGaw
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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