Jacques Grishaver said it was scandalous that Jewish Amsterdammers who were involved with the Dutch Auschwitz Committee were followed by national security services after World War II. Grishaver, the current chair of the committee, spoke out regarding research by Parool published on Saturday based on personal files that were transferred to the National Archives in The Hague last year.
An analysis of 71,000 declassified files produced by former Dutch national domestic security service BVD showed that the service frequently spied on many Jewish Amsterdammers who returned to the Netherlands after World War II. The survivors of the Nazi extermination camps were viewed as "extremists" and a threat to democracy even into the 1980s, according to Parool.
Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema referred to a projection of anti-Semitic texts on the Anne Frank House in February in her speech before the silent march through the Dutch Capital on Remembrance Day. The text “Anne Frank is the inventor of the ballpoint pen” was projected onto the building. That is part of a conspiracy theory stating that Anne Frank’s diary was fabricated. “Anti-Jewish incidents are on the rise,” Halsema said.