Antisemitic Legislation in the Occupied Netherlands

After Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the Jewish population of the Netherlands was gradually deprived of its civil rights and freedoms, which ultimately resulted in the seizure of property, internment, deportation and murder. 

The Nazi decree 6/1941 of 10 January 1941 instructed all people with at least one Jewish grandparent to register as such with their local authority. From September 1941, the Jewish population was no longer allowed in public spaces. From 2 May 1942, Jews were forced to wear the yellow star.  

The Nazi decree 189/1940 of 22 October 1940, which forced the registration of all businesses owned by or employing Jews, was followed on 12 March 1941 by decree 48/1941, which prohibited Jewish people from running a business and authorized the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle (Bureau for Economic Investigation) to appoint a non-Jewish administrator. Thousands of businesses owned by Jews were “aryanized” and liquidated. In August 1941, the Nazis set up a looting agency under the misleading name Lippmann, Rosenthal & Co Bank (LiRo). The first LiRo decree, 8 August 1941, forced Jews to surrender their financial assets to this agency and the second LiRo decree, 21 May 1942, to surrender any valuables such as artworks and jewellery.

The Nazi term ‘Möbelaktion’ or ‘M-Aktion’ described the systematic confiscation of furniture, musical instruments and household items from early 1942 in occupied France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In Amsterdam, the ‘Möbelaktion’ offices were located at 796 Prinsengracht.

The Möbelaktion was first a division of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg and then, in April 1942, became part of the newly-created Dienststelle Westen (Western Agency). In his 2004 publication Nazi Looting. The Plunder of Dutch Jewry During the Second World War (p 203), Gerard Aalders notes “In the Netherlands, unlike France, the Dienststelle Westen operated under the name of Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg – Hauptarbeitsgruppe Niederlande (ERR – Central Task Force Netherlands)”.

In the occupied Netherlands, as elsewhere, the Möbelaktion targeted the property of Jews who had fled the country or who had been deported to camps such as Westerbork and Vught. Investigation and inventorying teams were dispatched to homes and to shipping and storage companies. Everything from bedlinen to paintings was confiscated and local Dutch removal companies were used to transfer the property to storage depots. Most items were eventually sent to Nazi Germany to replace property destroyed during Allied bombing raids. In the Netherlands, the Möbelaktion left unwanted items to LiRo, another Nazi looting agency operating in the Netherlands.

Located in the province of Drenthe in the north-east of the Netherlands, the Westerbork camp was originally built by the Dutch government in 1939 to house Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. After Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, Westerbork remained a refugee camp under Dutch administration until July 1942, when the Nazis took over its management and transformed Westerbork into a transit camp, adding more barracks and constructing a barbed-wire fence. Westerbork still had a longer-term population, from its pre-war beginnings as a refugee camp. However, from July 1942, most people arriving in the Westerbork transit camp would be there only for a few days before being deported to concentration and to death camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Theresienstadt and Bergen-Belsen. The first deportation transport left Westerbork on 15 July 1942 for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Between 15 July 1942 and 13 September 1944, around 100,000 Jews - of a community of 140,000-150,000 in the Netherlands in 1939 - and 250 Sinti and Roma were deported from Westerbork. The Westerbork transit camp was liberated by the Allies on 12 April 1945.

Nazi Germany’s Eleventh Ordinance to the Reich Citizenship Act, issued on 25 November 1941, stripped German and Austrian Jews who had left the German Reich - including Jewish refugees from the Nazi regime and Jews deported by the Nazis - of their citizenship. Their assets were confiscated by the Gestapo and by the fiscal authorities in Nazi Germany and in the territories it occupied.

The Dienststelle Mühlmann (Mühlmann Agency), based in The Hague, was led by the Austrian-born art historian and early Nazi Party member Kajetan Mühlmann (1898–1958). Mühlmann had first honed his looting skills in occupied Poland from 1938 before being asked by the Reichskommissar (Reich Commissioner) of the occupied Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart (1892–1946), whom he knew from Austria, to turn his attentions to the Netherlands. The notorious Austrian art historian and appraiser of looted art Franz Kieslinger (1891–1955) also worked for the organisation. The staff of “Dienststelle Mühlmann” also included Mühlmann’s half- brother Josef Mühlmann (1886-1976) and the art historian Edouard Plietzsch (1886-1961).

Kajetan Mühlmann “established an art dealership of a sort, the "Dienststelle Mühlmann", for the disposal of expropriated works, which were no longer brought to him by his own looting parties but by the Security Service (SD), the Reichskommissariat für feindliches Vermögen (Reich Commissariat for Enemy Assets) or collaborating art dealers, from whom Mühlmann made purchases at reduced prices. Alongside the head office in The Hague, he soon opened subsidiaries in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. The dealership took 15 per cent commission on all sales, except those to Hitler and his intermediaries, and was thus soon able to finance itself.”(Lexikon der Österreichischen Provenienzforschung, see link below)

Established in 1859, the much-respected Jewish-owned Dutch bank Lippmann-Rosenthal & Co. on Nieuwe Spiegelstraat was placed under German control in 1940. In August 1941 a second Lippmann-Rosenthal was opened by the Nazis at Sarphatistraat. Lippmann-Rosenthal Sarphatistraat, commonly referred to as ‘LiRo’, was entirely separate from the original bank. However, it relied on the original’s trusted reputation to mislead the public about its purpose, robbing Jews of their assets.  

Prohibited from owning accounts at other financial institutions, Jews were required to transfer their assets to LiRo. In May 1942, Jews were instructed to present their valuables, including artworks, jewellery, furniture and gold, at the bank. Much of the “deposited” property was then sold on the Dutch and German art markets, while high-ranking Nazi officials would visit the depot to select works for their own collections.  

Roughly 3,500-3,600 paintings were “deposited” with the “LiRo Robber Bank”.

The Feindvermögensverwaltung (Administration of Enemy Property) was under the jurisdiction of „Reich Commissar for the Occupied Netherlands“ (Reichskommissar für die besetzten Niederlande”), Arthur Seyss-Inquart, as was the Dienststelle Mühlmann. Both agencies were in competition with the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR).

On 27 November 1940, the Abteilung für Feindvermögen (Administration of enemy Property) established the “Sammelverwaltung feindlicher Haushaltsgeräte” (Collective Administration of Enemy Household Goods) – abbreviated to SfH - which targeted the property of Allied nationals and of Jewish refugees and, from May 1941, confiscated and liquidated Jewish property in shipping and storage companies. By late 1944, the SfH had liquidated around 1,000 containers, the majority of which belonged to Jewish emigrants. Most of the property was sold off through Dutch auction houses. Assets deemed particularly valuable, including paintings, were transferred to the Dienststelle Mühlmann or the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg.

The ERR, named after its director, NSDAP party member Alfred Rosenberg (1893-1946), was a Nazi looting agency active in occupied Eastern Europe, France, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. It comprised several sub-divisions (Sonderstäbe) that targeted all categories of fine and decorative art as well as books, archives and archaeological artefacts.  

In the Netherlands, the ERR was active from September 1940. Its Amsterdam headquarters were at 264 Keizersgracht with storage and packing depots located at a number of other addresses. In the Netherlands, the ERR was in direct competition with other Nazi looting agencies such as the Dienststelle Mühlmann (Mühlmann Agency) and Feindvermögensverwaltung in den besetzten Niederlanden  (Enemy property administration in the occupied Netherlands). Unlike in France, the ERR in the Netherlands was only “tangentially involved in the extensive wartime seizure of art” with its looting activity focused on Jewish libraries and archives, household goods as well as the libraries and archives of Masonic lodges.

Some of the cultural property looted or sold under duress in the Netherlands during World War II was recovered by the Allies in the post-war period and returned to the Netherlands, notably from the Munich Central Collecting Point. This recovered property came under the stewardship of the Dutch government.  

Established on 11 June 1945 and dissolved as of 1 November 1951, the Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit — often referred to by its initials SNK — was tasked with the recovery of looted and forcibly sold cultural property and for its restitution to the rightful owners. As per Dutch Military Decree of 25 July 1945, anyone who had knowledge of artworks sold to or confiscated by the Nazis was to report this to the SNK. Since 2015, the digitized SNK registration forms (Aangifteformuliere) have been accessible on the Dutch government website Herkomst Gezocht (Origins Unknown).  

The SNK was moderately successful in its mission of returning artworks to private individuals. Those seeking to recover property in the Netherlands faced significant hurdles - compounded by irregularities at the SNK (addressed from 1948).  

The SNK organised three “claim exhibitions” in 1949 and 1950 to facilitate further restitutions. Between 1949 and 1953, the SNK and its successors sold part of the artworks returned to the Netherlands by the Allies. In 1950, the SNK was succeeded by the Hergo Bureau (Bureau for the Restoration Payments and Property), active between 1950 and 1952.

The remaining artworks are known as the Netherlands Art Property Collection (Nederlands Kunstbezit or NK Collection) and became part of the Dutch National Art Collection, which loaned works to Dutch cultural institutions and government buildings. The NK collection is searchable online.

The SNK archives are located at the Dutch National Archives (Nationaalarchief) in Den Haag.

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