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Amsterdam Fined Holocaust Victims for Unpaid Taxes While They Were in Camps
(JTA-Times of Israel) The City of Amsterdam collected more than $10 million from Holocaust survivors who were charged ground lease fees for periods they spent in hiding or in concentration camps, researchers said. The team of researchers for the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, or NIOD, wrote their findings at the city's request, the Het Parool daily reported Tuesday. Nazi authorities began in 1942 the deportation and murder of 75% of the 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands then. Many of their houses were used by Nazi officers and local collaborators. The city went after Holocaust survivors for missed payments as late as 1947 and imposed fines on them for missing payments. "What has come to light is a scandalous procedure, in which people were stripped of their homes and then made to pay for those who moved in in their place," said Ronny Naftaniel, a former chief negotiator for the Dutch Jewish community in restitution talks and a member of the supervisory committee of the NIOD research.