1 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onThis version replaces the previously uploaded version Sommer’s List Between opportunism and righteousness in WW II Amsterdam Preface The genesis of this text is a search for a Jewish family chronicle branching out into investigative history, involving a secret black market operation directed from Berlin during World War II in the occupied Netherlands. It is an example of micro-history meeting macrohistory, a kind of exercise not yet very common, so there are as yet no Lixed rules for the narrative. The research uncovered the stories of a group of German Jews struggling to lead normal lives in abnormal circumstances in Amsterdam. The way they did was not conventional. Neither was the man who offered them the opportunity to make a living before all were caught up in the rolling out of the Final Solution. So while the narrative is not written with any scientiLic or literary ambition, it uncovers uncomfortable facts and gives insight into the dilemmas of individuals trapped in a hostile environment. Also the fact that some actors had connections to the resistance while working under the orders of the occupiers raises yet to be answered questions. A strange request On the 17th of June 1943, Hanns Albin Rauter, highest SS man in the Netherlands, head of police Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer in den Niederlanden (HSSPF) and second in charge after Reich commissioner Seyss-Inquart received an odd letter from a man called Michael Sommer, asking him to facilitate the emigration to Portugal of eleven jewish buyers - who had worked for the Vierjahresplan (Quadrennial Plan) - together with their families.1 All of them were refugees from Germany who had been trapped in the Netherlands when the German army invaded the country in May 1940. They all lived in Amsterdam, The Quadrennial Plan was the second plan of that name, called out by Göring. The Lirst one was meant to plan autarchy in the German economy. The second Vierjahresplan was essentially the systematic buying up of large quantities of raw materials and manufactured goods on the black market in the countries occupied by the Third Reich. A special organisation was created to serve that purpose. Hanns Albin Rauter was known as a hardliner and he was at that point in time supervising the rounding up of Jews in the Netherlands following the plans of the Wannsee conference, Lirst and foremost in Amsterdam, where the majority of the Jews stayed. On 20. May 1943, an ordinance had been issued, forbidding Jews to stay in Amsterdam. He was preparing a large round up to be held the following sunday. This letter must have utterly annoyed him. From Hamburg to Amsterdam Michael Sommer had had one and a half year to get to know the written and unwritten rules by which he had to abide. On 31. December 1941 he was registered at Hotel Suisse, The letter has been published as document 132 in the collection of primary sources on the extermination of European jewry West- und Nordeuropa, 1940-Juni 1942. As such it stands as exemplary. Note 21 accompanying the text states that an answer to this letter by Rauter is not available. The formulation used in West- und Nordeuropa suggests that the letter was Liled or that no consequences are known, This is however not the case. According to documents in the Dutch archives, Richard Fiebig, Sommer’s superior at the time intervened to have the matter referred to him. After the letter to Rauter had been sent, there followed an exchange of numerous letters and memos between the various German services involved. So there is more than enough documentation to show the sequels of this letter. 1 2 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onKalverstraat 22-262. This was a short walk away from the SS headquarters and from Amsterdam central station, a logical place to start with. He got into contact with an old acquaintance of his, Hans Plümer3. Sommer and Plümer knew each other from their days at the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce. When Sommer was called in, the black market organisation which was started shortly after the invasion of the Netherlands was in a process of change. It was not any longer under the wings of the Wehrmacht of general Christiansen, but was being transferred to the Vierjahresplan organisation of minister Göring, headed by plenipotentiary Josef ‘Seppl’ Veltjens4. Veltjens was at the helm of the operation involving Sommer. On May 19th 1940, Hitler had signed a decree putting Görings’s authority above that of Seyss-Inquart in all matters concerning the Quadrennial plan. Veltjens was not on the forefront of the nazi hierarchy, but was unusually inLluential. He was present at the ceremony for Seyss-Inquart’s take-over of the power in the Netherlands on May 29th 1940, together with Wehrmacht general Christiansen’s and the general’s son. He also accompanied general Von Schrötter and Konteradmiral Hintzmann during negotiations with the Dutch tycoons of heavy industry in June 1940. Thus he already got a foothold in the Netherlands prior to his Schwarzaktion/Blau-Aktion.5 Veltjens was already at the head of a “Sonderunternehmen” under the authority of his good friend Wehrmacht commander-in-chief Christiansen directly after the invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940. However, to the secret services of the Allies, in the Lirst period after the invasion of the Netherlands, he was known as paymaster of the Luftgau, meaning that at Lirst he succeeded in keeping his special missions secret. He started without delay. Among other things he conLiscated thirteen Dutch coasters for his “Sonderunternehmen”, which shows the measure of power he already commanded.6 Veltjens was no stranger to maritime enterprises in a military context. His shipping company Aschpurwis & Veltjens (50% Aschpurwis 50 % Veltjens), under Panamean Llag but based in Hamburg, had been transporting strategic freight between Hamburg and Spain between 1936 and 1939 where it gained experience at cloaking and fooling the enemy. It was in 1940 and possibly later used But according to a high ranking policeman he was already in the Netherlands in August 1941. He was registered in may 1942, without having to justify himself for having failed to do so when he arrived. Source (H. Stoett, in the Sommer Lile Staatsarchiv Hamburg) 2 Hans Plümer was born on 30. 10. 1898 in Hamburg. He was an ofLice manager at the Hamburg chamber of commerce and industry who had been employed at the German Consulate in Amsterdam and switched to service in the occupation administration. In the Netherlands he became trustee for a large jewish industry, Hollandia Kattenburg in Amsterdam (specialised in waterproof coats and thus important for the Wehrmacht) in february 1942 and for the jewish diamond Lirm Albert Sluizer (Albert Cuypstraat 2) in january 1944. Diamonds represented his main activity. 3 Nuremberg trial, 15 March 46 DR. STAHMER: What reasons made you put Colonel Veltjens in charge of centralising the black market in France? Goering: Colonel Veltjens was a retired colonel. He was an ace in the Lirst World War. He then had entered business. Therefore, he was not sent there in his capacity as colonel, but as an economist. He was not only in charge of the black market in France, but also of that in Holland and Belgium. It came about in the following manner: After a certain period during the occupation, it was reported to me that various items, in which I was particularly interested for reasons of war economy, could be obtained only in the black market. It was then, for the Lirst time, that I became familiar with the black market, that is that copper, tin, ... Goering omitted to say that Veltjens’ business was producing and smuggling arms in breach of the Versailles treaty. 4 The Lirst phase of the operation is called by L. De Jong “Blau-Aktion I”, the second “Blau-Aktion II”. The presence of Veltjens in The Hague in May 1940 is proven by a photograph of him among the intimi of Christiansen when Seyss-Inquart was conLirmed as the Reichskommissar. He was also named in various newspapers at the time. 5 6 BArch, RM 15/140 Gewinnung von 13 holländischen Küstenmotorschiffen für das sog. Sonderunternehmen "Veltjen" [sic] (nicht näher beschriebene Aktion des Reichsmarschalles Göring) 3 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onfor cloaking military transports as civilian ones.7 Veltjens himself was not involved in approaching buyers and sellers of goods, except sometimes when industrial diamonds were concerned. Back home, he was an entrepreneur at the head of an industry which produced optical systems (Navigation Joseph Veltjens KG) for military purposes, handled diamonds needed as exchange currency and diamond grit for polishing purposes. 8 But diamonds were Lirst and foremost an instrument in the economic warfare of Germany. While the Reichsmark was rapidly losing its value, diamonds became a precious means of bartering. Before transferring to the Vierjahresplan of Göring, Veltjens had been a head (Gruppenleiter) of the ‘Sonderstab für Handelskrieg und Wirtschaftliche Kampfmassnahmen’ directly under its chief admiral Otto Groos. This was a special department of the German intelligence agency Abwehr organised to procure all war materials essential to both the Axis and the Allied Powers by breaking the blockade and buying these materials from foreign markets. Another part of this economic warfare was to deprive the Allies of materials and goods they needed. Germany would often buy such materials to create scarcity without intending to use or even transport them to Germany. Once put at the head of the black market operation by Göring, Veltjens organised a network of purchasing bureaus throughout the occupied territories. Plümer had already been approached by Veltjens shortly after the capitulation of the Netherlands. He had been sent to the Netherlands in June 1940 to help organise a covert operation. The mission was the large scale buying of goods on the Dutch black market for the sole beneLit of the German industry. Plümer had worked in the Hague and shortly at the German consulate in Amsterdam under its secretary Dr. Ernst Kühn, who had become head of the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle 9. In 1941 there was already a rapidly increasing scarcity of metals and leather in the Third Reich – and all kinds of other goods, but the focus for Sommer was mainly metal and leather. The German industry was geared towards war production, but it was also necessary to get household goods from occupied territories. And then there were mundane needs like toothbrushes and condoms for the Wehrmacht and the SS or champagne and liver pâté for the ofLicers. The black market operation under Veltjens did also supply those. There were already various purchasing agencies at work , but Sommer was soon to become a major player. A secret operaCon with a pilot Already before the secret executive order about what was to become known as the BlauAktion had been issued, Veltjens travelled to The Hague as delegate of Göring. His Lirst ofLicial appearance as such was at the already mentioned meeting of General Von Schrötter with the representatives of the Dutch government anf the Dutch industry on 1. June 194010. 7 “Germany had an easier time avoiding the Observation Scheme. Arms ships were assigned to a shipping Lirm, Aschpurwis & Veltjens, registered in Panama, a non-NIC state. Once in the open ocean, “Panama” steamers changed call signs and name boards, pretending to be ships actually in other parts of the world, until they could sneak into such as the remote Spanish port of Vigo at night under escort by Nationalist or German warships. From April 1937 until the end of the war three or four a month made the voyage without difLiculty, slipping past the French warships on NIC patrol. How German arms got to Spain remained a mystery to the NIB until the end” – In : International efforts at sea to contain the spanish civil war 1936-1939 Willard C. Frank, Jr. in Peacekeeping 1815 to today, Proceedings of the XXIst Colloquium of the International Commission of Military History Henry Aschpurwis, Veltjens’ business associate, used the fortune amassed during the war to expand his business. He became a real estate tycoon in Hamburg and was called, "König der (king of the) Mönckebergstraße" * 24. 11. 1930 21. 1. 2002 There is evidence of Veltjens direct involvement: ‘Verzoek van Jac. Vos voor het toetsen van en instemmen met de opdracht van Oberst J. Veltjens voor de levering van briljanten ter waarde van Ll. 10.000’ NIOD 117a Rijksbureau voor Diamant His main Lirm was Wamunit, producing weapons and ammunition. He was also branching out into Motorenwerken J. Veltjens. Speichert & Veltjens near Frankfurt supplied metals to the war industry. 8 The Wirtschaftsprüfstelle was a German “aryanisation” bureau. Ernst Kühn was born on 25 august 1908 in Königsberg. He had been a member of the nazi party since May 1st 1933 and had the rank of Obersturmbannführer in the SS. Already in november 1940, he had been involved at the ministry of economy in Berlin in the preparation of the liquidation of jewish Lirms, in particular in the Netherlands. 9 10 Niederschrift über die Besprechung mit Minister Fischböck in Den Haag am 1.6.1940, RvO, HSSPF, 65A 4 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onThereafter he prepared the systematic looting of the Dutch industry by way of black market purchases and the setting up of the parallel bureaucracy involved. He was accompanied by Plümer to present the modus operandi of the black market operation in the Netherlands on 3. November 1941 to the Hauptabteilung Gewerbliche Wirtschaft and to brief the key persons to be involved. Hauptabteilung Gewerbliche Wirtschaft was the German agency in the Netherlands responsible for the selling and buying of goods on the Dutch market, which was steering the corresponding Dutch agencies, the Rijksbureaus. As historian Hein Klemann puts it “the Rijksbureaus, originally autonomous institutions of the Dutch ministry of trade, now became subordinate to the German hierarchy, in the Lirst place to Speer’s planning organisation. Target was the ‘Einheitliche Steuerung der Rohstoff- und Produktionslage’, the uniLied planning of raw materials and production”. Until the end of 1941, there had been no need for such an operation in the Netherlands, as the pre-war Dutch stockpiling had been impressive.11 The Dutch authorities were to be kept in the dark on the operation. The only Lirm Veltjens named on that occasion was the Lirm Balta N.V. of Amsterdam “owned by a Jew” (he did not mention that the Lirm had been founded by the non-jews Von Cramon, Matak and the Linanciers of bank Rhodius & Koenigs). The Jew in question was Ernst Theodor Heymann, who was like Veltjens a WWI veteran combat pilot and like him an entrepreneur in the German war industry. Heymann’s Balta N.V. company was the very Lirst authorised to operate by the Vierjahresplan12. But Sommer must already have been approached at that point, because he started his activities in Amsterdam shortly thereafter. The fact that Veltjens stated the Lirst authorized black market purchasing bureau would be Balta, headed by a Jew and that this statement went unchallenged by any participant of the meeting (according to the minutes), shows that involving Jews was part of the cloaking strategy and known at higher levels. In the following months, the label “Juden Aktion” appears time and again in the correspondence on the “Blau-Aktion” and on occasion “Schwarz-Aktion”. The terminology used within the various German bodies involved was largely euphemistic (Ungeklärte Warenbestände = uncleared goods, the moniker S-Aktion was used instead of Schwarz-Aktion). Veltjens, who acted upon Göring’s orders, thought he had enough authority to proceed with his operation and to inform Reichskommissar SeyssInquart, the top man in the Netherlands only casually. Seyss-Inquart however, did not appreciate this. On 19. December 1941 he let Heinemann be informed that while the metals collected in the frame of the Blau-Aktion by any means were at the disposal of the Vierjahresplan, and could sent to Germany He would decide on other goods in due time , but for other goods like shoes, clothes, textile etc. his approval would be necessary.13 Even in June 1942, German observer could report: “ The procurement of the necessary raw and auxiliary materials did not initially cause any difLiculties thanks to the stock policy pursued by the Netherlands; The Netherlands had stocked up so abundantly that - despite heavy withdrawals of raw materials into the Reich - the existing stocks could be used to produce German orders until well into 1941.” NIOD 93‚ B4: Tätigkeitsbericht der Zast für Mai und Juni 1942. Den Haag, den 15.Juni 1942. 11 During his interrogation on 27 april 1947, Plümer also named the black market operator Smits (who had been condemned for trafLicking coffee) and Gemona headed by (F.) Von Kaufmann (not to be confused with Karl Kaufmann), bureau Matthias Rohde in collaboration with Hans Tietjen [sic] and Israel van Messel as agents working with the Heymann group. Source: NIOD 281-283. Tietjen is a misspelling of Tietje. Hans Tietje was director of Nedeximpo and had previously been manager at Otto Wolff (metal trading) in Cologne. His wife Helene was jewish. Tietje was an art collector and is named as a supplier of Göring by the -as of 2018 still ongoing - international looted art project. Israel van Messel was a Dutch jewish businessman trading in various goods (born 14.01.1897 in Harlingen). He was somewhat of an oddball in the group. Athough Dutch, he spoke german Lluently. Van Messel was given a passport and permits to travel abroad and traded in France, Spain and Portugal (in this last country, probably buying portuguese wolfram. Portugal had large amounts of ores at its diposal). Van Messel is also named in the looted art investigation. Sommer had a clash with him on 10 August 1942 (NIOD 095 #16) Van Messel was doing business with De Winter & co, the Hague and had been a middleman for supplies to the German marine by Daalmeyer Rotterdam and Van Gelderen Schiedam. Sommer saw this as a breach of arrangements. “Ich machte ihn darauf aufmerksam dass er die Finger aus dem Metallmarkt herauszulassen hätte, andernfalls ich dafür sorgen würde, dass derartige Schweinereien, wie sie bisher vorkamen, nicht mehr gemacht werden können.” (I brought to his attention that he had to stay away from metals trading, and that I would take care that such Lilthy business as had already taken place could not happen again.) 12 13 NIOD 249 5 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onBeforehand, the heads of the departments of the occupying administration ofLicially involved in collecting goods for German military and civil consumption had already expressed their reservations towards the black market operations ordered by Göring and supervised by Veltjens. In practice the Blau-Aktion followed its own course and the leading persons like Sommer enjoyed a large amount of autonomy, though they had to submit to lengthy cloaking protocols. Veltjens started a pilot trial before the Blau-Aktion had been discussed and vetted by the council of ministers of the Reich. He had appointed Hans Plümer as his representative in the Netherlands and Belgium and Sommer as Sonderbeauftragte somewhere during the last months of 1941, while he was still waiting for the ofLicial executive order of Göring appointing him as Sonderbeauftragte of the Vierjahresplan for Europe, which came in June 1942. Sommer’s career Michael Sommer, born on 18. March 1894 in Büdesheim near Bingen, was the son of railway man Josef Sommer. He liked to call himself Captain although when in the Netherlands, he was working as a civilian. At the age of fourteen, he had joined the merchant navy and in 1910, the imperial navy. For a short while, he sailed on the imperial yacht Iduna in a low rank. There is no indication that he ever earned the rank of captain. During WW I he was a second mate on a submarine. He also worked for the “Unterseeboots Abnahme Kommission”. He followed courses in marine schools in Lübeck and in 1920 had passed his exams to allow him starting an ofLicer’s career at sea. It is probably in this period that he met his Lirst wife (a protestant girl, while he was a catholic), whose son was born in January 192114. He then joined the merchant navy and was a Lirst ofLicer on smaller freight ships, working for a Norwegian shipping company, mostly to Africa; and on the Tela, a larger ship as third ofLicer and as a marconist for the Woermann line and further on the Holland America Line S.S. Leerdam. This last occupation was his introduction to the Dutch way of life. In 1922 he followed a course at the sea school in Rotterdam to become a shipping controller. He stayed in Rotterdam where he worked for a shipping agent until 1926. During the period he had lived in Rotterdam, he had his Lirst wife Johanna and son Karl Heinrich with him from May 1923 on 15. In 1926, he returned to Hamburg and became a controller in the Hamburg harbour (Schiffseichaufseher) and sworn expert of the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce (Schiffseichmeister). He devised a controlling system for the Hamburg harbour, in particular for coal and potash. He took advantage of his international experience and worked with various large shipping companies. He earned well on commission basis. Between 1926 and the end of 1939, he was at least twice a month in the Netherlands, controlling ships in the harbours of Vlissingen, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. He had joined the nazi party in 1932 (as number 998.815) “following the communist riots in Hamburg”, he told Dutch detectives when interrogated in 1948. He wanted to clean the Hamburg harbour of “bad inLluences”, so he said. This is however in contradiction with his alleged involvement during the case against international transport union man Arie Treurniet, as related after the war bij Daan d’Angremond, a member of the Dutch resistance 16. It can also be an indication that Sommer was a double agent. In the Netherlands, he was regularly in contact with the international branch of the national-socialist party, which was active in the neutral Netherlands. In January 1936, he had been invited to give a talk at a meeting of this organization at hotel Britannia in Vlissingen (Flushing) and reported about the Vlissingen harbour in which 14 His registration in Rotterdam indicates “states he is married”. He did therefore not present a marriage certiLicate. 15 Johanna Käthy Schnoor born March 2, 1899 in Kiel, son Karl Heinrich born Januari 20, 1921 in Kiel - Stadsarchief Rotterdam te Rotterdam, Bevolkingsregister Gezinskaarten Rotterdam 1880-1940, 1880-1940, archief 494-03, inventarisnummer 851-447, Staatsarchiv Hamburg 351-11_16514 and 221-5_142. D’Angremond knew Sommer previous to his involvement with the Vierjahresplan. 16 6 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onJewish Lirms were active for bunkering German ships, a situation he found inadmissible17. It is also said that he had bullied a jewish man on a German ship in the Vlissingen harbour into bringing a “German salute” (i.e. Hitler salute) to the captain. While he seems to have adhered to the ideology, he had a number of altercations and rows which resulted in doubts about his usefulness for the party. There were seven cases in which he was accused of various infractions, but was cleared in the end in all cases. He had some trouble with the Hamburg party leadership and was even in custody for two weeks. He had expressed his distate of nazi bigwig Karl Kaufmann in a restaurant. He was befriended with a sister of Kaufmann who had a disagreement with her brother. It appears he then was involved in the internal struggle between security chief Ferdinand Funke 18 and Kaufmann in 1933. The competing factions spied on each other and Sommer spied on the Kaufmann family. Kaufmann won the struggle and later became Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter, exercising absolute power in Hamburg, which certainly meant he could get rid of opponents easily. In 1934, it was Kaufmann who had Sommer expelled from the national-socialist party. It was time for Sommer to keep a low proLile in Hamburg. He did however actively lobby against the expulsion and got his party membership back. In 1939 Sommer just had been exempted of military service and had applied for Dutch citizenship shortly before the war started. The invasion of the Netherlands took place while he was in Hamburg, which was unfortunate for his plans. In the course of 1939-1940 he had worked for the marine division of the German aviation (Luftgau) and the organisation Todt (Generalbevollmächtigte für die Regelung der Bauwirtschaft), coordinating the transport of building material for the northern part of the Atlantik Wall, Wehrkreis X. He also seems to have been a purchaser for the marine. In 1940, he is said to have ordered marine uniforms at the Hollenkamp department store in Amsterdam19. War or no war, he still wanted to go to the Netherlands. He spoke and wrote the language Lluently. But his motives to become an expatriate were not innocent. He was in serious trouble in Hamburg, not only politically (because of the hostile Reichsstatthalter Karl Kaufmann) but also privately. He had been arrested several times and had been brought seven times before a nazi party tribunal, one time after a row about his refusal to get his son enrolled in the Hitler Youth. He had outstanding debts and after his divorce in 1936, he had continuous disputes with his ex-wife about unpaid alimony for their two children. Moreover, he had antagonised various people in his function of freight controller. The association of Hamburg coal traders was persuaded he favoured shipping companies in his estimates of freight and got either bribes or favours in return.20 He was warned to leave Hamburg. Doing business in Amsterdam was a golden opportunity to avoid hard times in Hamburg. But there was probably more to it, and it would have been secret. Wehrkreis X also housed Abwehrstelle X Gruppe IC/Marine under Von Wettstein, which among others coordinated spying activities in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Sommer, considering his background and activities, would have been an ideal asset for intelligence work in harbours, but there is no positive proof of his participation in spying activities. Sommer and his Jewish circle When still in Hamburg, Sommer got in touch with Walter Messow, a Jewish man who worked in the leather business for a certain Franz Voges of the Nack & Lamprecht wholesale Lirm. Walter Messow’s brother Richard was already well established in the Netherlands. He Staatsarchiv Hamburg Wiedergutmachungsakte 16514 Michael Sommer. Sommer also speaks of the Rote Marine. This communist organisation was founded in Hamburg in 1925 and had members in various units of the German marine. 17 Funke had assigned various men to spy on Kaufmann and other local party leaders. Kaufmann uncovered the spy ring and although Funke managed at Lirst to stay in place, he was Linally relieved of his functions. See also Ilse Graßmann Ausgebombt, Braunschweig 1993 p. 138 18 Conversation with Kees and Tom d’Angremond (sons of Daan), 12 May 2016. Hollenkamp Ligured in Sommer’s regular phone list at work. (NIOD 095) 19 20 NaHa CABR 86804 (PRAC Amsterdam 84055) 7 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onhad left Hamburg for Amsterdam in 1934. Voges and Sommer visited Amsterdam to meet with Richard Messow. Messow introduced Sommer to Mau van Zwanenberg, a Dutch Jew who was a former commercial director of the pharmaceutical company Organon in Oss, in the southeast of the Netherlands. Van Zwanenberg was on the rebound, having been released from prison recently 21. They began making plans. Van Zwanenberg knew about a group of Jewish men who knew their way around. This is Sommer’s story as he told it when interrogated in 1948. But the investigators of the Netherlands War Crimes Commission thought otherwise. They were persuaded that he did not come to Holland driven by personal motives but was in fact sent on a mission by the nazi hierarchy. They could not Lind any application for travel to the Netherlands, while there were strict regulations and control of travel outside of Germany. The only persons not required to Lile in an application were those who travelled at the service of the German Government.22 In 1962, the higher court of Hamburg quoted a declaration by Kriminalobersekretär Von Rönn from the Gestapo, who stated Sommer had been a member of the Sicherheitsdienst (short SD), the German security agency.23 Sommer must indeed have been connected to the SD and made use of these ties. That he was involved is supported by evidence, but he seems never to have admitted it after the end of the war. The fact that shortly after his arrival he got an ofLicial job as Sonderbeauftragter (special envoy) at the metal trading Lirm Oxyde also points in that direction24. According to Oxyde director Heinz Lichtenstern, Sommer had been dropped in at his Lirm by the Sicherheitsdienst of The Hague. In a letter to the head of the ‘Ein- und Ausreisestelle’ in Amsterdam, dated 11. June 1943, Sommer clearly stated his function to be ‘Sonderbeauftragter des Amtes VI, Berlin’25. Amt VI stood short for the Sicherheitsdienst, Auslandsnachrichtendienst (section for foreign countries headed by Walter Schellenberg). So Sommer’s afLiliation to the Sicherheitsdienst is not only a matter of hearsay, but conLirmed in writing. Sommer’s brief for his mission had been devised by the Vierjahresplan and there was in principle no reason to transfer the responsibility for Sommer’s operations to the SD once he was in the Netherlands, so there is good reason to conclude that he was with the SD prior to his move to the Netherlands in 1941. One of the directives Veltjens gave, was to keep the operation cloaked at all times. So the Oxyde staff would not have been informed about Sommer’s superior being Veltjens as head of the black market operations Göring’s Quadrennial Plan26. Even so, connections of Sommer with the SD have been reported by various witnesses. Heinz Lichtenstern took immediately a strong dislike of the man who NaHa 2.14.08 -949. Interrogation of Sommer in Amsterdam, 22. January 1948. Zwanenberg is spelled Swanenberg in the report. Maurits “Mau” van Zwanenberg had been commercial director at Organon, the pharmaceutical industry which was owned by his family. He was the black sheep of the family . In 1938 he had been condemned for sexually abusing dozens of female factory workers, a fact exploited to the full by anti-semitic propagandists. He was initially condemned to two years of prison, but had appealed with success. After one year or so in prison, he moved to Amsterdam shortly before the German invasion. He does not seem to have been taken on into the core group of the Sommer organisation, as he did not beneLit of any protection: he died in Auschwitz-Birkenau on 13. August 1942. He had been caught for not wearing the yellow star imposed on jews since May 1942 and was released at Lirst, but following a hate campaign against him by the Dutch national-socialist party, he was apprehended and sent to Auschwitz without delay. His wife who had stuck with him in hard times, was able to go into hiding and survived. 21 22 NL NaHa CABR correspondence between Dutch and US investigators Staatsarchiv Hamburg- Wiedergutmachung 16514 221-5 Verwaltungsgericht 142. In May 1950, Carl August von Rönn formerly of the Hamburg Gestapo had been sentenced to two years jail. 23 A “Sonderbeauftragter” was always a person sent on a special mission by the nazi hierarchy. When claiming Wiedergutmachung, Sommer stated he had an independent business. However, the Liles concerning him in the Dutch archives show his operation was from the start totally under the authority of the Vierjahresplan of Göring. 24 NIOD 095 inv. nr. 16 Sommer stated his allegiance to the Sicherheitsdienst in order to speed up things for an auditor of the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle, Greiffenhagen who was looking for a room to rent. 25 The Oxyde affairs were in any case monitored by the Sicherheitsdienst Referat III D, headed by SS Sturmbannführer Hans Joachim Fahrenholtz, as shown in the Liles concerning non-regular purchases by the Oxyde trustee Heinrich Strasburger. These purchases lead to Strasburger being put under scrutiny between October 1941 and February 1942. NIOD 039-1045. 26 8 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onshowed up at Oxyde on rare occasions, but when he did, had little diplomacy while approaching anybody present, including the sitting Treuhänder, Heinrich Strasburger. Sommer also had to report regularly to security ofLicer Kriminalrat Dr. Ernst Christof Freytag in Hamburg. On the one hand, he enjoyed the protection of the Sicherheitsdienst in order to perform his task for the Vierjahresplan. On the other hand he was under surveillance. He was in a gilded cage, but the fact that he enjoyed the protection of the Sicherheitsdienst contradicts his testimony that he had to Llee Germany for fear for his life. It looks more as if there has been a deal, whereby his precarious position in Hamburg was a means to keep a hold on him. When he arrived in Amsterdam, in August 1941, Sommer had a young wife (his second, whom he had married in 1938) and a baby son born in 1939. His wife Annemarie and son Rüdiger joined him later. He left hotel Suisse on Kalverstraat for a posh Llat on Apollolaan 197, on one of the most prestigious lanes of the southern part of Amsterdam. In July 1942, he moved to a stunning villa on the other side of the street on Apollolaan 178, with a garden on the canal while retaining the Llat27. He had it renovated and decorated lavishly by architect W.H.M. Blaisse for a sum amounting to more than two years of his salary as Sonderbeauftragter. He obviously had by then amassed enough riches from his black market dealings. He later claimed he had earned 3 millions guilders in 1942-1943. Then the war turned sour and his eldest son Karl-Heinz got killed in combat on the Eastern front in April 1943 and in August 1943, his villa got burglarised28. In the Lirst half of 1943, Veltjens had passed on his responsibility for the troublesome Sommer to the German ofLicial Richard Fiebig who kept a close surveillance on him and was working directly under minister Albert Speer, minister of the Reich for Armament and Ammunition29. Before that, Fiebig had already been facilitating Sommer’s operation in many ways30. Good days in Amsterdam In his letter to Rauter, dated 16 june 1943, Sommer mentions having been active in Amsterdam for some two and a half years. This would mean he indeed began his work there in early 1941, before being ofLicially under contract for his black market mission. It was Hans Plümer of the Veltjens organisation for the Netherlands and Belgium who introduced Sommer to Fiebig. Plümer had been previously employed by the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, which had also been responsible for Sommer’s accreditation as a shipping inspector. Sommer began work under the authority of Veltjens, but had an agreement with Fiebig. In the background was the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle. This bureau for economic and Linancial auditing had been put in place by the German commissioner for Linance and economy with the purpose of evaluating the Jewish Lirms prior to transferring them to Germans (aryanisation) or liquidating them. Dr. Kühn had become its director after his prewar job at the German consulate in Amsterdam, where Plümer had also been employed.31 The time was ripe for men like Michael Sommer. On 12 March 1941 Reichskommissar SeyssSommer bought the villa from Ferdinand Pas, head of the propaganda division of the catholic radio association KRO, who bought a more luxurious home. Later, Pas had dealings with the resistance and pinpointed the Sommer villa as a target for a heist. However the group was arrested before the heist could take place. 27 6 april 1943 Danksagung Für die uns erwiesene Anteilnahme zum Heldentode unseres Sohnes Karl-Heinz Sommer danken wir herzlichst. M. Sommer und Frau. nebst Familie. Hamburg, 13. Isestrasse 35 A'dam-Z., Apollolaan 197. 30 augustus 1943 In Abwesenheit des Bewohners haben Einbrecher in einer Wohnung an der Apollolaan in Amsterdam einen Besuch abgestattet. Eine grosse Menge Bargeld im Gesamtwert von 151950 Gulden wurden entwendet. Auch einige goldene Schmucksachen und silberene Bestecke wurden mitgenommen. Die Untersuchung ergab, dass die Einbrecher auf die anstossende Garage und von dort auf einen Balkon geklettert waren, wo sie ein Fenster erbrochen hatten. From Deutsche Zeitung in den Niederlanden 28 When interrogated in august 1947, Fiebig indicated that he had been warned by Veltjens that Sommer was troublesome and undisciplined. His behaviour and his private spending was disapproved of. Fiebig had never trusted Sommer and therefore kept an eye on him 29 In a letter concerning Ralph Hamburger, on 4 november 1942, Sommer indicates he is “Beauftragter von Herrn Richard Fiebig der der Beauftragter für die Niederlande des Reichsministers für Bewaffnung und Munition ist.” NIOD 095-16 30 31 After director Kühn’s departure for the Balkans, Sommer had to do with the hardliner Dr. H. Schröder from September 1942 on. Unlike Kühn, Schröder was not a friend of Veltjens. 9 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onInquart had issued a Verordnung (ordinance) 48/41 that enabled the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle to carry out compulsory 'Aryanisations'. Coincidence or not, this had happened after Kühn had complained to Seyss-Inquart that as the head of the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle he did not dispose of means for compulsory aryanisations. From 12 March 1941, the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle was entitled to nominate Treuhänder i.e. trustees who would have the power to keep, sell or liquidate the businesses entrusted to them. To facilitate Sommer’s startup, Fiebig had an account opened for him at H. Albert De Bary bank for which he furnished letters of credit. With the help of Fiebig’s funding, Sommer rented a large shed on Borneokade in the eastern part of Amsterdam harbour, discreet enough to stock the goods purchased on the black market. According to Sommer when interrogated after the war, he started an independent business, and acquired the necessary capital by selling a stamp collection32. Although the stamps sale would seem to have been a real one, it is excluded that it could ever have been enough to Linance the black market purchases. It looks more like a ploy to avoid revealing the real source of the funds. The connection of Sommer to Veltjens is enough reason to see this stamp sale as an alibi. While Sommer was to get acquainted with his new line of work, he at Lirst stayed at the Hotel Suisse on Kalverstraat, were he also entertained his business acquaintances. To care for an easy transition, he had been allowed a steady income as a Sonderbeauftragter at Oxyde, which was since 1. January 1941 headed by a German called Heinrich Strasburger. Strasburger had been an employee of the Otto Wolff company, a large metal trading corporation in Cologne. Otto Wolff had a (secret) contract with Oxyde, established in 1938 when M. Lissauer & Co, Oxyde’s mother company, had been allowed by the German authorities to transfer its seat to Amsterdam – at a price. One of the clauses of the contract was that Oxyde would continue to export goods to Germany through the company headed by Otto Wolff, which had de facto aryanized M. Lissauer & Co and taken over its headquarters in Cologne. While the invasion of the Netherlands had disrupted the dealings of Oxyde with the Otto Wolff company, the secret deal was not off. Strasburger’s presence was a means to insure compliance. Strasburger clearly still had links to his Cologne employer Otto Wolff. His function as a Verwalter (administrator) had been changed into trusteeship of the Lirm in July 194133. His loyalty to his Cologne Lirm remained. He even purchased scrap metals for the Cologne Lirm while already in charge at Oxyde, which was in breach of the ofLicial directives of his superiors in the Netherlands. But more important, the Otto Wolff company was secretly involved in the Vierjahresplan as a channel for cash Llow between countries and a clearing house, under the orders of the Friedrich Kadgien, Göring’s aide in foreign currencies matters34. Otto Wolff had already established subsidiaries and afLiliated Lirms in all key countries for the supply of raw materials long before the war, which made it an obvious candidate for such a position within the Vierjahresplan organisation. Sommer was to Strasburger an alien element imposed upon him and was not a specially welcome addition to Oxyde, but had to be tolerated and facilitated. Unlike Strasburger, he was not a metal man and as such he was of little use to Oxyde. It is not clear whether Strasburger had been aware from the start about the connection of Sommer to the Vierjahresplan. Considering the position of the Otto Wolff Lirm as a furnisher of foreign currencies for the black market operations throughout Europe, it seems probable Strasburger had been informed. In any case, to others at Oxyde the connection of Sommer with the Vierjahresplan was to remain secret in accordance with Veltjens’ directives, which Staatsarchiv Hamburg Wiedergutmachung 16514. This explanation is in fact a continuation of the wartime cover used for the cloaking of the covert black market operation. Anyway, admitting any spying activities would have jeopardized Sommer’s chances for compensation. 32 The Otto Wolff was a large Lirm based in Cologne, trading and processing metals which grew larger through a signiLicant number of aryanizations and still larger after the war. It had various afLiliates in a number of countries with strategic importance, which made it the ideal vehicle to get hold of foreign currencies. In 1937, Otto Wolff , with approval of the German authorities, had reached an agreement with M. Lissauer & Cie, sealed by a contract. This contract allowed M. Lissauer & Cie to transfer its assets to its afLiliate Oxyde in Amsterdam. 33 34 Fold3 OMGUS –External Assets Investigation- Otto Wolff- Report regarding the Vierjahresplan 10 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onis probably the reason he was believed to have been dropped at Oxyde by the Sicherheitsdienst (the German security people), which was formally the case. Sommer started pocketing a monthly salary of a thousand guilders from Oxyde, and this continued for 25 months. This salary was equivalent to that of German trustees appointed at the head of large Jewish Lirms. The next step for Sommer’s further involvement, was being made Treuhänder (trustee) of a Jewish Lirm, meant to be aryanized or shut down, but which would be kept running for the sake of the black market operation. According to Heinz Lichtenstern, Sommer Lirst tried to use Oxyde for this purpose, but was denied this opportunity by the two former directors, Kurt Salomon and himself, still key members of the Oxyde staff 35. Oxyde was conducting transactions for the Dutch Rijksbureau voor Non-ferro Metalen36 and accepting Sommer’s “offer” would have jeopardised this relationship. But choosing Oxyde as Sommer’s home base and involving its employee and former director Heinz Lichtenstern was certainly not the best way to keep the black market operation secret from the Rijksbureaus. Sommer had probably not been aware of the long standing and amicable business relationship between Heinz Lichtenstern and Rijksbureau director Egbert de Jong, which pre-dated De Jong’s nomination as director of a state agency. The Rijksbureau for non-ferrous metals operated under the close supervision of the German Josef Mexner of the Rüstungsinspektion (Armaments inspectorate), department Metal – which shows that Dutch civilian administration was under military control, at least where considered necessary. The Rüstungsinspektion was responsible for the provision of goods and services to the occupation army. The Dutch Rijksbureau also still resorted under the authority of the Dutch secretary-general Hirschfeld of the Dutch ministry of Commerce. Hirschfeld in turn had no Dutch superior, since his minister was in exile in London37. Providing goods to the German war economy through the regular “legal” market was taken care of by the Zentrale Auftragstelle (short ZASt) which placed orders with the Dutch industry. At one point, 60 % of the Dutch production was exported to Germany. The ZASt centralised the orders as much as possible. The Rijksbureau for nonferrous metals, although under pressure to deliver large quantities of scarce metals to the German economy, did its best to lower the quotas established and to keep sufLicient stocks for the Dutch industry. Oxyde as an experienced trading Lirm was an important ally when trying to secure raw materials and ores. For its control of the Netherlands (like in Norway), the Third Reich made use an occupation model it called Aufsichtsverwaltung (supervisory administration), a model requiring a relatively small number of German administrators and which kept the existing administrative structures of the Dutch state in place. The directives were given to the Dutch administrators at a high level (like secretary-general Hirschberg of the ministry of commerce and transport), whereafter they had to devise the means by which their organisation would meet the German demands. The Vierjahresplan actions including Sommer’s mission introduced a wedge into that construction, as it counteracted the operation of the Rijksbureaus, which imposed a system of price regulation, permits and quotas. Not only that, the Rijksbureaus also had inspectors who were instructed to report irregularites and if necessary, to refer persons responsible for black marketing or fraud to the Justice department. In fact, the Aufsichtsverwaltung could only work well if all the Dutch involved collaborated fully, which was not the case. Parachuting special envoys like Sommer carried the risk of disrupting the implementation of the supervisory administration, as it introduced a rupture in the line of command. 35 Staatsarchiv Hamburg Wiedergutmachung 16514 Lichtenstern letter 1950 Rijksbureaus (national ofLices) were organisations of Dutch branches of the economy subordinated to the Dutch ministry of industry – which during German occupation got their instructions directly from the Reichsstellen, Berlin organisations of the German branches. They had been set up in 1939 or 1940 before the invasion with directors coming from the industry. 36 Hirschfeld enjoyed a quite unique position. Although originally a German jew, he was listed on a secret list of jews allowed to walk “star-less” and continued to do so throughout the occupation period. After the war, he continued his career as a high ranking public servant. 37 11 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onIn Amsterdam, Sommer had the time in his life. When he Lirst arrived, he was poor as a church rat . In no time, he could afford a stunning villa, two cars with chauffeur, a housekeeper and other staff and could invite pals from Hamburg to feast lavishly with him38. According to himself, during his stay in Amsterdam he amassed some 3 millions guilders. According to the Dutch police, he spent some 50.000 guilders per month, a huge amount of money.39 After the war, the Dutch state claimed around half a million guilders in unpaid taxes from him. Sommer and “his jews” After having been turned down by Oxyde former directors Heinz Lichtenstern and Kurt Salomon, who were still inLluential in the Lirm, Sommer then turned to a smelting Lirm called Wemeta for cloaking purposes. Alfred Gossels of Wemeta candidly wrote to Sommer in january 1942, mentioning that the factory had been idle for four months, due to legal restrictions. Wemeta was taken off the list of Jewish Lirms to be liquidated and the approved by the Rüstungsinspektion (Abteilung gewerbliche Wirtschaft) and the Wirtschaftprüfstelle (Dr. Küsel). Wemeta was more than cloaking alone. In a letter to his superiors, written on 1. June 1942, Sommer proposed to them to set up a large operation to buy out-of-service gas meters. For years Wemeta had been buying old gas meters in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Scandinavian countries and recycling the metals they contained. One of the metals won from them was tin, which by 1942 had become very scarce. 40 In a letter written in 1943, Sommer was quite open about using Wemeta for cloaking purposes: ‘I have worked in cloaking with the Lirm Wemeta and did not receive any salary as such. I therefore ask the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle to consider Wemeta as a special case, and do so until our mission is completed.’ 41 In another letter, he insists that the assignments of Wemeta Company were always treated in a strictly conLidential manner and his contract as a trustee “was kept in a special cabinet”. Shortly after the beginning of his black market career, he bought a few Jewish Lirms for a ridiculously low price. The Jewish sellers were trapped in a precarious position and had little choice. In exchange for their Lirm, he offered them to work for him as buyers, operating as though they were still owners of the Lirm. This was a well known technique used by the Nazis in occupied countries, a part of the strategy of cloaking German businesses. In internal memos, they quite openly talked about this practice, called Tarnung in German. During his brieLing of 3. November 1941, Veltjens as special envoy of Göring had explicitly stated Tarnung as the necessary technique to put the black market operation (soon to be called Blau-Aktion) in place. In the case of Sommer, this cloaking happened with Filmchemie owned by Siegfried Grünberg, EMA of Erich Malachowski and N.A.K. of Kurt Cohn. Sommer got to know Erich Malachowski (who lived in the Netherlands since 1932) through Messow. Malachowski even sold the assets in his Lirm EMA Metaalwaren in order to participate in the venture as early as November 8th 1941, after which he sold the totally downsized Lirm for a modest 300 guilders to Sommer to be used for cloaking purposes and did ofLice work for the modest salary of 250 guilders per month42. Sommer relied not only on Jewish acquaintances from Hamburg, but also on Hamburger middlemen like Carl Rudolf Freitag. One of his important clients was Georg von Landis from Hamburg, (responsible for an important order for the wood logging industry of German occupied Ukraine), who was welcomed at the Amsterdam Central station by a car with chauffeur. And the Kühne & Nagel management was also from Hamburg, as was Hans Plümer, Veltjens’ deputy. It seems Sommer was part of a Hamburg clique. 38 39 Staatsarchiv Hamburg Wiedergutmachung 16514 . letter from police commissioner Stoett It is not clear whether this included the salaries of his staff and the running costs of his business, like renting warehouses. 3 million guilders of 1943 amount approximately to 19 million euro of 2015 (http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/calculate.php) 40 NIOD 039-648 41 NIOD 095 42 NaHa 2.09.10 inv. 121726 (with reference to WFA 1322). Malachowski was not working as a buyer. 12 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onBy May 1942, when Jews were compelled to wear a star badge, Sommer had fourteen men listed as eligible for exemption and entered his application through the hierarchical channels (see appendix). The Lirm Cufeniag was another matter. It operated under its owner Hermann Wallheimer, but was delivering supplies to Sommer from July 1942 on. Wallheimer had been introduced early on to Sommer by the metal trader Julius Philipp, a mutual acquaintance who was living in Hamburg before Lleeing to the Netherlands 43. According to Hermann Wallheimer, Sommer had offered to acquire Cufeniag, which he, Wallheimer at Lirst refused. In July 1942, Wallheimer was summoned for the Arbeitseinsatz (forced labour). After a failed attempt to Llee to Switzerland he knocked at Sommer’s door. Arrested during a round up on 8. August 1942, he and his wife Hildegard Freund were released from Westerbork on 10. August 194244, following an intervention by Sommer, who had been approached by Wallheimer’s mother and mother-in-law. But it seems plausible that he was one of the buyers of Sommer at an earlier stage. Sommer was later to acknowledge Wallheimer as his most important supplier. In any case, during his post-war interrogation Wallheimer indicated that in early 1942 Sommer and Paul Jonas of Wemeta reached an agreement while guests at his appartment. According to Wallheimer, it was Jonas who had asked Sommer to become Treuhänder (trustee) of his Lirm Wemeta rather than the other way round, to help him save his Jewish employees. “Es ist in Ordnung” (it’s allright) was Sommer’s short answer. The following day, Sommer returned from the Hague with his trustee appointment. The letter by Rüstungsinspektor Aster to the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle asking for the appointment of Sommer is dated 12. January 1942. This is probably what Sommer showed to Jonas the following day. The ofLicial registration took some more time 45. This speedy arrangement points to the fact that even though Jonas was the initiator, this trusteeship was perfectly in line with the occupiers’ cloaking policies. Paul Jonas became in practice the deputy of Sommer on a regular basis. Sommer obtained for him as for Richard Messow a high level of protection, which included free travel throughout the Netherlands and a permit to ride a car. Apart from his regular buyers, Sommer enlisted competent occasional helpers like the cousins Siegfried and Benno Barmé from Wuppertal, who had been industrialists with outstanding knowledge of non-ferrous metals. 46 He also managed to spread his activities to the province. The metal trading Lirm of Salomon van Laar and Jacob Clarenburg functioned as Sommer’s subsidiary for the Utrecht region. It was Paul Jonas of Wemeta who had approached Clarenburg whose Lirm was under a German Verwalter after April 1942, until it was taken over by the German Omnia Treuhand when the Blau-Aktion was tuned down in 1943. Sommer’s involvement in the Filmchemie Lirm of Siegfried Grünberg was somewhat different. He offered Grünberg protection against formal control of the Lirm and payment of a substantial monthly salary. Mr. Ed Emmering, Grünberg’s legal advisor had drawn the contract in the early spring of 1942. 47 Apart from this, Sommer on occasion dealt under the Llag of a Lirm called Union, initially set up in 1919 by German Jewish immigrants but taken over as a cloaked Lirm, which was under supervision of the German authorities in the Hague, but had ofLices (Prins Hendriklaan 8 and Singel 194) and established warehouses or ofLices in Amsterdam and the 43 Julius Philipp had founded a metal Lirm with his brother Oscar in Hamburg in 1901. This Lirm was to become a mighty multi-national in the second part of the twentieth century with a turn over of $ 23.6 billions in 1980. Julius Philipp had a falling out with his brother, left Hamburg in 1934 and operated in Amsterdam as an independent trader on Prinsengracht 1083. The Lirm was taken over by Treuhänder H.G. Küpper of The Hague He died in deportation in Bergen-Belsen, as did his wife Helene. His son Richard was murdered in Mauthausen. His children Herbert and Mary beneLited of an exchange. His son Ernst emigrated to South America. Wallheimer refers in 1949 to Philipp as a mutual acquaintance in his testimony in favour of Sommer – Staatsarchiv Hamburg Wiedergutmachung 16514 351-11. 44 Joodse Raad Card Arolsen archives item 12834929 (online 2019-12-3) The documents of the Dutch Chamber of Commerce indicate that a trustee was appointed on 5. March 1942 according to Dutch law. 45 46 47 Staatsarchiv Hamburg Wiedergutmachung 16514 351-11 13 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onprovince. 48 Union was the haven of three German-Jewish dealers, Ernst Theodor Heymann, Max Fleischmann and Heinz Bandermann. They (and Israel van Messel) were possibly the Jewish traders whom Van Zwanenberg mentioned to Sommer during their Lirst conversations in Amsterdam. Heymann and Bandermann had already started delivering goods for general Christiansen, Supreme Commander of the German Armed Forces in the Netherlands after June 1940. Heymann was established in the Netherlands since 1938. Bandermann had come from Berlin where Mannheim & Wolff, the Jewish wholesale textiles Lirm where he worked had been liquidated in 1937. He initially operated from within his own Lirm in The Hague, but branched out in Amsterdam after his Lirm was merged with Union. Heymann - who with his Lirm Balta was named as the primary cloaking Lirm for the Veltjens on 3. November 1941 (see above) - joined forces with Bandermann. Neither Heymann nor Bandermann seem to have been subjected to anti-semitic measures at Lirst. Some witnesses even speak of them as “Ehrenariër” (honorary aryans) . The three Union men kept a status of their own and were not subordinates of Sommer. Bandermann who like Heymann was blond and blue eyed, was a “Mischling 2. Grades” and is rumored to have been member of the NSDAP and the SS until he was kicked out because of his non-aryan origins, he would hardly have felt Jewish.49 Ernst Heymann’s parents were Jewish, but practising christians and he was married to a gentile woman, general’s daughter Lotte von Cramon. Max Fleischmann had married a gentile woman in London after the Nuremberg laws banned mixed marriages in Germany. When the obligation to wear a star was introduced, Heymann applied for exemptions for his employees and buyers. He himself was not registered as being Jewish and traveled frequently to Germany, Belgium and France with special passes at a time when this was forbidden for Jews50. In any case he enjoyed special privileges, although according to the Nuremberg laws he was a 100% Jewish. Heymann and Bandermann, like Sommer, took on Jewish employees, mostly German-Jewish. Hans Plümer as Veltjens’ right-hand in the Netherlands was the link between Sommer and the Union men51. Bandermann followed direct orders from Josef Mexner of the Rüstungsinspektion. At least he still did in april 1942, when he acquired 20 tons of aluminium cable.52 The relationship between Sommer and the Union group was hobbly, to say the least, as he treaded on their turf and vice versa. At Lirst, he had been assigned to work closely with them, but he soon got in touch with plenipotentiary Richard Fiebig through Plümer in order to operate separately. The reason to introduce Sommer into Union operations might have been that even Jews with a “mixed marriage” or “half jews” could not be allowed to operate independently anymore after 1941. In any case, Sommer was the liaison with German controlling authorities – in particular the Sicherheitsdienst - whenever difLiculties arose due to the illegal character of the goods handled. Not only the Dutch authorities were unhappy with Göring’s orders concerning purchases on the black market. The heads of the various German agencies supposed to maintain law and order were also reluctant. Whenever they had a Sommer operative apprehended for black marketing, Sommer would get him free. This was felt as a sabotage of the Dutch regulations. Tilburg, Kaatsheuvel, Dongen, Breda, Waalwijk,Helmond, Geldrop, Neeritter, Enschede, Veenendaal, Maastricht, Venlo, Den Haag, Oldenzaal, Oisterwijk, Gilze-Rijen, Chaam, Den Bosch and Bussum 48 According to De Jong’s Koninkrijk der Nederlanden vol 7 p. 222 Bandermann was half jewish. But a pencilled note on his Sachsenhausen/Mauthausen registration mentions that according to the list of the SS political section he was a second grade Mischling – a quarter or less jewish. Also he received a high salary of 1500 guilders monthly, double as much as a Jewish director under German trusteeship. The two lines of the ofLice of Union on Singel 194-196 were listed in the phone directory of 1943 under the name of Heinz Bandermann. According to the Sicherheitsdienst man Hans Joachim Fahrenholtz, Bandermann had been a member of the N.S.D.A.P. and the SS, but was kicked out after his origins had been checked. (interrogation report NaHa CABR 64109) 49 50 The passes are kept in Heymann’s Lile CABR 64109 Plümer as Treuhänder of Hollandia Kattenburg in Amsterdam “delivered” 800 Jews for deportation in 1943 (source: Presser). But as Veltjens right hand in the Netherlands and Belgium, he was mainly interested in diamonds. 51 52 NIOD 039-648 14 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onAlmost all the Sommer staff members were registered as Jews (although lorry drivers were as a rule non-jewish, as Jews had been stripped of their driving licenses on 23. January 1942). This made them more vulnerable than Heymann, Fleischmann and Bandermann and allowed putting more pressure on them. It also meant their salary could be kept at a low level as they knew any misstep could lead to the loss of protection for them and their families. And eventually cost them their lives. Bandermann was less vulnerable: he was a bachelor. There are two questions which can be answered only by considering the context of GermanJewish entrepreneurs in the Netherlands. First, why would a covert German operation in the Netherlands make use of Jewish traders operating in relative freedom while Jews were being increasingly ostracized and second, why would Jewish entrepreneurs freely subject themselves to the orders of a German special envoy like Sommer ? The Lirst answer is that the Vierjahresplan was a result driven operation using any tactics necessary to come to its ends. Sommer was given a free hand to achieve the Vierjahresplan goals (a fact expressed by his status as Sonderbeauftragter). Moreover, the Lirst Blau-Aktion already involved Jews, though they had a mitigated Jewish background and an overpowering German identity. With the so-called Blau-Aktion II, after July 1942, Sommer made full use of the Jewish networks of “his” Jews and thanks to his approach, was more successful than the Lirst Blau-Aktion, thus keeping his superiors’ support until the politics changed. The answer to the second question could be that Sommer approached Jewish entrepreneurs who were already solidly established in the Dutch economy and had employees and their families in need of an income. Although there has been no comprehensive research on the economical activity of Jewish German entrepreneurs, they are estimates. There were hundreds of them, from one-man outLits to medium-sized factories. More than 10.000 people depended on them for their income. The anti-jewish measures step by step strangled those enterprises. The entrepreneurs were under a huge and steadily increasing pressure. When Sommer became trustee of Wemeta, they had already had to register the Lirm as a Jewish under the 22.10.1940 ordinance nr, 189/40 and had to register themselves as jewish under the 10.1.1941 ordinance nr. 6/1941. Then there was an ordinance allowing the arbitrary take over of Lirms on 12.3.1941 (nr 48/1941). The next step was having their travels restricted to certain zones (4.6.1941). And to top all this, they had to transfer their accounts above 1000 guilders to a blocked account at the LiRo looting bank under the 8.8. 1941 ordinance (nr. 148/1941). They even were forbidden to ride a motorised vehicle after 23.1.1942, and more was to come. It was clear that without protection, Wemeta would be unable to continue any economic activity, would soon cease to exist and its Jewish owners and employees would be without income and at the mercy of any arbitrary measure. The black market poliCcs of the Third Reich OfLicially, black marketeers could be punished with death in Germany and the occupied territories. But under the surface, the nazi regime was pragmatic. The justiLication of the Quadrennial Plan was rhetorics of the Third Reich about attaining a heroic autarchy, but beneath it was a practice of looting all the occupied territories and sucking their economies down to subsistence level. Already on 16. June 1940, Göring was entrusted the control of the economy of all occupied territories. Under the cover of the discourse of a pure and honest market, to be cleansed of the bad inLluence of Jews and black marketeers (said by the nazis to be by and large the same persons), there was the practice of organising and exploiting a black market economy on a large scale. Already in November 1941, Göring had sent Veltjens to the Hague to brief all the heads of German agencies to be involved in the coming black market operation. But the secret executive order issued by Göring to entrust him ofLicially with the whole operation in all occupied territory came only 6 months later on 16. June 1942 (this is the date most historians consider the start of the operation, but at least in the 15 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onNetherlands, the preparatory measures took place much earlier)53. Already before the war, the leaders of the Quadrennial Plan had put a structure in place to rig the market, control prices and allocate goods. An important instrument in this structure was the network of Überwachungsstellen (supervisory agencies) per economical sector which was created in July 1942 after the Lirst phase of black market buying threatened to spin out of control. There were Live of them over occupied Europe. The role of the Überwachungsstellen was not to steer the operation, but mainly to control the regularity of the purchases and the reports of the purchasing agencies, and see to it that the Ligures tallied. As the Quadrennial Plan was being turned into an organized skimming of the market, these surveillance bodies became a means for covert operations on the black market. People like Sommer would turn to them to insure protection for those implicated in dealings which according to laws and regulations were illegal but were at the same time managed at the highest governmental level. Even the terminology in their own circles was part of the cloaking, as the black market operation had changed colour to blue by calling it “BlauAktion”. In his directive for the operation, Veltjens spoke of “instructions for the winding up of stocks of merchandise of uncertain origin”, another typical example of nazi euphemism. The Vierjahresplan needed people with Llexible morals to take on the black market job, somewhere in the grey zone between legality and illegality, under a decree “on the clariLication of unexplained goods”. Michael Sommer Litted the bill. He was at Lirst under the protection and authority of colonel Josef (Seppl) Veltjens, put by Göring at the head of the black market operations for the whole of Europe. Although it was Göring who ordered the operation, it had been approved by the German cabinet at large, in spite of minister of Linance Schwerin von Krosigk’s warnings about the inLlatory effects of the drive and the Linancial drain it would cause. Veltjens’ previous job had been as head the Abwehr (secret service) section for economic warfare. This was a logical career step. Veltjens could count on the collaboration of delegates of all ministries in the Netherlands to turn a blind eye on his dealings, as the whole operation had been ordered at the highest level. Despite his objections to the plan, Schwerin von Krosigk made enormous amounts of money available. A trace of this is contained in a letter dated 25. November 1942 to the German plenipotentiary in the Netherlands Richard Fiebig in which he was informed that 500 million Reichsmark were being assigned to purchases on the black market. On the same day Schwerin von Krosigk warned Göring that 822 million RM had already been spent for that purpose that year.54 Veltjens’ most trusted assistant in the Netherlands was Hans Plümer, who managed operations from The Hague. Plümer was also active in Belgium, mostly for the looting of diamonds. Plümer was ready to use any means to acquire goods, including conducting business with well-known Belgian diamond smugglers via Switzerland and selling smuggled diamonds on the black market in England and the USA to procure the Vierjahresplan with foreign currencies. His work also included smuggling raw diamonds to the Netherlands, letting them be split and polished by highly specialised Jewish diamond workers in the Netherlands and smuggling them out again. Furnishing industry diamonds to the German war industry was part of the scheme 55. The looting of diamonds was directly under the authority of Göring and his aide Friedrich Kadgien and was kept separate from the handling of other goods, as it was considered part of the currencies policy (rather than as raw material). Thus the Sommer and Union purchasing organisations were not involved in See for example Johannes Koll, Die Deutsche Besatzungspolitiek p. 425. Already at the Nuremberg trial, june 1942 was the date quoted as the start of the operation, whereas Veltjens had already been sent to The Hague in november 1941 to brief the heads of agencies involved. But Louis de Jong speaks of Blau Aktion I and Blau Aktion II, Blau Aktion II following Görings order of June 1942. 53 54 NIOD 266 OfLice of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes (Berlin Documentation Center) BBT 6078 55 Memo 2. April 1942 CABR 64109 III nr. 21. The most infamous of these trafLickers was Breugelmans, who had ammassed a fortune of 500 millions Belgian Francs at the end of the war. Proces-verbaal Krijgsraad Antwerpen, 31.10.1947 [Auditoraat Generaal, Brussel (AG), Dossier Zaak 557- 797 ‘Gustave Breugelmans’, Karton II, nr. 3]. 16 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass ondiamonds. Part of the cloaking in the Netherlands was through plenipotentiary Richard Fiebig conducting his affairs under the cover of a Lirm called Pimetex (sometimes spelled Pimitex in the literature), which would be the buyer of black market goods and was created in the course of 1942 as part of the vast cloaking operation involved in the black market purchases. Fiebig had been appointed by minister Fritz Todt to integrate the Dutch economy at the service of the German war effort. But Todt died on 8. February 1942 in a crash. Under Todt’s successor Albert Speer as minister for armament and ammunition, Fiebig gained still more inLluence as he was assigned to a number of new functions within which he was accountable to Speer in Berlin rather than to Seyss Inquart in The Hague. Veltjens’ operation was under the cover of a Lirm called ROGES (RohstofZhandelsgesellschaft mbH), which handled the Linancial side. These phony Lirms were all funded by the treasury in Berlin, with full knowledge of the Linancial and political top of the party. ROGES and Pimetex were complementary. ROGES was mainly set up for “legal” handling and Linancial backup, furnishing in advance the funds used to pay black market suppliers in cash. It was a commercial Lirm in public ownership which received its directives from Reich ministries and the Reichsstellen. It was in charge of the funding of purchasing agencies and supervised transportation to Germany. Pimetex was explicitly created as a cover for the black market activities in the Lield and started its operations in France where it tested its methods. As Karl Hettlage, former chief of the division for Economics and Finance of the Speer ministry declared in 1945, Pimetex was strictly controlled by both the Ministries of Trade and Industry and of War production and their permission was required before each individual purchase. According to him, the prices paid were generally three times the regular prices. The foreign (i.e. non German) currencies necessary for external exchanges were arranged by the ministry of Trade and Industry through the “Deutsche Verrechnungsbank”. Foreign credit was “loaned” from the exporting occupied country, “to be repaid after the war”. Private bankers and import-export businessmen like Hans Tietje and Aloïs Miedl, Germans (both married to a jewish wife) who were already established in the Netherlands well before the invasion of May 1940, took care of the cash Llow as part of the cloaking operation. 56 Another cloaked Lirm involved in the Netherlands was Gemona, lead by F. Von Kaufmann. In short, the Netherlands as occupied country furnished the funds to buy goods on the black market for the German war economy. In April 1942, Seyss-Inquart had called on the Dutch to make a “voluntary” contribution to Germany’s “war on Bolshevism”, and to be made retroactive to July 19, 1941 (as testiLied by him at the Nuremberg trial). In total, the Netherlands contributed to some 2,150 million RM of the German war effort under this “loan”. The total debt incurred by Germany in this way to all the occupied countries was in 1945 estimated to be around 8,500,000,000 marks. (Under the London Agreement on German External Debts of 1953 the repayable amount -which also included claims from World War I and damages incurred during WW II- was reduced by 50% to about 15 billion marks and stretched out over 30 years, which was a substantial boost to the German economical recovery .) In a 1942 memo, Veltjens stated : ”The Linancing of the purchases and the transport of merchandise are effected by the Roges of the Reich. The merchandise is then distributed in the Reich by the Roges, in conformity with the instructions of the Central Plan, or by departments designated by the Central Plan, and each time prioritised according to the needs of the different qualiLied services." While Roges was the Linancial vehicle of the operation, the German transport Lirm of Kühne & Nagel was put in charge of the logistics. The goods gathered in the Netherlands were to be exported to Germany as military goods and thus be free of any export or import taxes. Kühne & Nagel had been granted in the Netherlands the quasi monopoly for the logistics concerning goods to be transported to Germany for the German state – including the Shortly before the war, Miedl had been arrested suspected of espionage in possession of a very large sum in banknotes. He had been freed immediately after the German invasion . Miedl was from 1940 on, an important agent of Göring for his “acquisition” of works of art owned by Jewish collectors and art dealers in the Netherlands. He had taken over the art dealing company of Jacques Goudstikker shortly after the latter had died on his way to Great Britain. 56 17 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onfurniture from Jewish households.57 For the transport of goods of the Blau-Aktion, they also made use of hired trucks from Dutch Lirms. This had two reasons. The Lirst was they did not have enough capacity in the Netherlands and second, making use of Dutch trucks was a good way to avoid advertising that a German Lirm was transporting black market goods. Kühne & Nagel also organized extensive shippings for Sommer to the Ukraine by train, when waggonloads of maintenance equipment including tractors and a complete smithing workshop were expedited to the Reichskommissar for the Ukraine in the fall of 1942, probably to be used for the exploitation of the Ukrainian forests 58. When metal samples were offered to Sommer, they were checked by an inspector, a ROGES/ Pimetex man called R. Böhm or a colleague of his called Jacob. The same happened at Union, where nothing would be purchased before the German controllers59 Otto Schäfer, Hans Schäfer, Strauss or Rudolf Tenzler had vetted the goods. A price would be agreed and the shipping papers processed. Every freight transported would be covered by so-called Sicherheitsstellungsbescheinigungen which would protect the drivers when stopped at checkpoints. Daily business of Pimetex with Sommer was taken care of by the Lirm Nedeximpo (run by Hans Tietje and his son Alfred)60. The goods once accepted by Pimetex, became the property of Roges (i.e. the German state) and the funds necessary to the purchase were advanced to Sommer. The money earned by Sommer and his organisation was an agreed percentage of the turnover, around 5%. After control and acceptance, the goods would be fetched by the shipping Lirm Kühne & Nagel who got a receipt from Sommer and made the delivery to German military and civilian buyers, but also to some Dutch clients like the state railway company. Kühne & Nagel leased lorries from Dutch Lirms and rented warehouse spaces for transit goods. All the handling steps were monitored. The forms were furnished by the Überwachungsstelle (ÜWA) which controlled Sommer’s book keeping. The ÜWA was in turn accountable to Göring’s ministry. As opposed to “wild” black market, black market operations steered by the Vierjahresplan were accompanied by an extensive bureaucracy and a paper trail (though entries were coded).61 Sommer took regularly care to get in touch with the deputy head of the Überwachungsstelle for the metal sector, Dr. Küsel. Dr. Küsel was then to ease the way with other controlling bodies in order to circumvent the rules. Sommer’s rude behaviour towards the inspectors of the Dutch bureaus which had the task of controlling the market and implementing the prohibition of black marketeering metals and leather62 shows that he considered himself above such petty rules and under protection from high quarters. And indeed, most of the Kühne & Nagel were later involved in the Möbel-Aktion. This drive headed by Alfred Rosenberg looted all the content of the houses of deported jews and put it at the disposal of the German population. After the war, Kühne & Nagel grew into a multinational of logistics. There was a lot of public upheaval when the company commemorated its 125 years of existence while covering up its wartime past. Within the Netherlands, they worked together with Dutch shipping Lirms. K & N had branches in Rotterdam (Westerkade 31), Amsterdam (De Ruyterkade 46), Spuistraat 198-212 until the end of 1943 and Nieuwe Doelenstraat 5. 57 58 NIOD 095 #25 The controllers were not mere employees of Pimetex, but businessmen with their own companies in Germany who saw opportunities in the Netherlands. 59 Hans Tietje, whose wife Helene Vorenberg was jewish, was a middleman in the looting of art by Göring and in furnishing old masters paintings to the new to build Führer’s art museum in Linz. Before moving to Amsterdam, he been a manager at the Otto Wolff Lirm (metal trading) in Cologne, which had aryanized the Jewish Lirm M. Lissauer & Co. Thanks to his secret activities, he and his family were on a list of people with the highest level of protection. Hans Tietje had had business dealings to the jewish magnate Daniel Wolf, whose villa Groot Haesenbroek was taken over by Wehrmacht general Christiansen (and renamed Fliegerhorn) immediately after the invasion of the Netherlands. Wolf had left for England and the US where he died in 1943. He was also doing business with Alois Miedl. After the war. Tietje had practically no problems concerning his past in the period 1940-1945 and could go on with his business. 60 The fact that at least one the jewish traders was able to amass considerable amounts of money (see below) shows it was still possible to fool the controllers, either by ruse or bribery. Sommer said during his Wiedergutmachung case that he had learnt only after the war that ROGES worked for the German war industry, but this is highly implausible. 61 62 documented by A. J. van der Leeuw in ‘Huiden en leder 1939-1945’, p. 183 18 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass ongoods brought in by Sommer (or rather his purchasers) were being sold to Pimetex. The Pimetex operator controlling Sommer was a man called August Vornholt 63 who was accountable to Richard Fiebig. When a black market delivery either of Sommer or Union was seized by the Dutch authorities for having been acquired or sold illegally, Vornholt would have the goods released, if necessary with an order from his superiors in The Hague or if more clout was called for, from Berlin. Sommer also operated as a Lixer for Union. Fleischmann from Union on occasion referred black market suppliers to Sommer when they needed help 64. In principle, the directives given by Veltjens on 3. November 1941 was not to intervene whenever black marketeers were caught and let the Dutch justice handle them, but in practice this proved contrary to the goals of the operations and not feasible in all cases. Sommer indeed intervened on various occasions on behalf of Union. He kept his own crew out of harm’s way for as long as possible. According to his letter to Rauter, Sommer had been ordered to reach his goals by any means available. Putting Jews to work in exchange of a measure of protection was one of these means. The leadership of the Vierjahresplan had agreed to it, Sommer stated, and the B. d. S. (Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD) Wilhelm Harster had been approached by the Vierjahresplan to facilitate the operation. Harster had in his department a section J with the mission of an all-encompassing battle against the Jews 65 and so his approval was needed when protection was needed for Jewish purchasers. In the last resort the approval of the Dutch IV B 4 bureau was needed, which was in steady contact with the Reichssicherheitshauptamt RSHA IV B 4 directorate of Adolf Eichmann and taking its orders from Berlin. On 13. July 1942, the various departments of the occupying forces concerned had struck a deal in the Hague on who was taking his share of what sector in the black market operation for German occupied Europe, whereby all goods would cross the border from the Netherlands to Germany tax free 66. Veltjens had organised a marathon of twelve meetings over three days with heads of operations of all sectors across Europe. Each meeting took place with its own agenda and participants group. The conclusions of the various meetings were summarised in the last, plenary meeting. This was a pivotal moment for the so-called Blau-Aktion II, with new structures and protocols. After the third day, Veltjens established the deLinitive list of actions to be taken. The Dutch Blau-Aktion II was redeLined. Richard Fiebig would let Michael Sommer take care of non-ferrous metals, cables, machines, textiles and leather. The Union group, operating initially from the Hague would be assigned to “raw materials and sundry goods ”. Union had originally been a Lirm with German-Jewish founders in Amsterdam, but was taken over at an early stage and used to camouLlage that it was totally in the hands of the German occupiers. Dutch suppliers would seem to sell their goods to this regular Dutch Lirm, based in Amsterdam. Ernst Theodor Heymann of Union was a personal acquaintance of Veltjens and had like him turned to arms dealing after the First World war. They both had been combat pilots during World War I and were members of the old boys network of former WW I aces. Moreover, Heymann had been co-owner of Steffen & Heymann, a Berlin Lirm founded well before Hitler’s rise to power. It was building and trading heavy weaponry and aircrafts in Europe, Asia and Africa. As such it was one of the major players in the rearmament of Germany, in breach of the Versailles treaty. Heymann continued on the same path after 1933, as a representative of German arms producers, among others Schmeisser machine pistols.67 August Vornholt, born 14.3.1905 in Backwede. He was on duty in the Netherlands since 1.6.1942 and worked in the lower rank of SparstofLkommissar. He was a go-between for Richard Fiebig. 63 64 NaHa CABR 106385 Max Fleischmann 65 After the war Harster got a 12 years prison sentence for this and other crimes. 66 Note, 28 juli 1942, by J. Veltjens (NIOD Doc II—663, a-4). 67 Steffen & Heymann were for example awarded a large loan to build an airLield in China; Bundesarchiv, R 3101/18956 19 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onHeymann had been badly injured in combat and was decorated for it. He had lived in Wassenaar near The Hague since 1939 in an exclusive neighbourhood, not far from commander-in-chief Christiansen’s villa where Veltjens and Göring were guests when their business called them to the Netherlands68. Christiansen had the same World War I background as Heymann. Heymann’s father-in-law was general August von Cramon - who had been General a la suite in Kaiser Wilhelm II's court - which gave him implicit protection69, although the general was a monarchist who did not join the ranks of the nazis. His brother-in-law Hellmuth von Cramon was also a good friend and his business partner (as a co-owner of Steffen & Heymann, and later on in the Netherlands). In any case, Heymann had enough leverage to get his subordinate Fleischmann released when the man was arrested in March 1942. For all sectors which had not been explicitly assigned a task within the German controlled black market as for private enterprises or persons and were not covered by the agreement, any kind of black market activities remained forbidden by German law (not to mention Dutch law). Heymann had organized black market buying before Sommer’s arrival with Max Fleischmann and Heinz Bandermann. Bandermann’s Lirm had been approached Lirst and operated initially from the Hague in close contact with the SS authorities. Later Bandermann’s Lirm, which had never been registered at the Chamber of Commerce and thus was already operating in a grey zone, was incorporated into Union and its main ofLice transferred to the centre of Amsterdam (Singel 194-196), not far from Central Station and the warehouses of its western harbour. Before the war, Heymann had become the director of Balta, a Dutch import-export Lirm ofLicially specialised in trade with the Danube countries, set up by his brother-in-law Hellmuth von Cramon70 and von Cramon’s Romanian business partner Ionel Demeter Matak , with a participation of the bank Rhodius & Koenigs (director Alfred Flesche). In fact the Lirm was the representative of German arms producers like Haenel and imported The villa was occupied by Christiansen short after its owner, Daniël Wolf, had Lled to Paris and subsequently to the US. . All the properties of Wolf in the Netherlands were impounded. Daniël Wolf was a wealthy businessman who had furnished weapons to the Republicans during the Spanish civil war. Göring was also a guest in the villa when he visited the Netherlands, mainly for his art looting sprees. 68 69 General Von Cramon who died in 1940 had voted for Hitler against Von Hindenburg (who was an acquaintance of his.) 70 The company’s shares were on 31,12,1938 in the hands of H. Von Cramon, Ionel D. Matak and Rhodius Koenigs Handel- Maatschappij, but Matak transferred his shares to Von Cramon. During the occupation, Rhodius Koenigs was headed by the notorious spy Alfred Flesche, who also headed the Bank voor West-Europeeschen Handel, one of the Linancial vehicles of the nazi regime in the Netherlands and was head of the German Chamber in Commerce in the Netherlands. From 1923 to 1926, Flesche was a proxy and from 1926 to the end of 1939, the director of the company Rhodius Koenigs. After the capitulation in May 1940 he became member of the board of Rhodius Koenigs. The bank granted loans, mainly to companies that carried out orders for the Wehrmacht. This bank also participated in a combination of banks led by the banker Rebholz, who sold American funds from Jewish property. Rhodius Koenigs was part of the organisational structure of the Otto Wolff conglomerate for the Vierjahresplan. It resorted under Otto Wolff Kommissions Gesellschaft Köln-Rhein. The other two participants in the Netherlands were director Heinzelmann/Amsterdam-Rotterdam and Rebholz Bankierskantoor-Amsterdam. (NIOD 249 inv. Nr. 0194 a) A link of the Cramon family to the Netherlands was also emperor in exile Wilhelm who stayed at castle Doorn. August von Cramon had been one of the emperor’s aides. Hellmuth Georg Johannes Adalbert Wilhelm Erdmann von Cramon (Quaritz 6 Oct 1892- München 20 Nov 1966) (married to Isabel Nanny Margherita (Daisy) von Gruschwitz on 23 Sep 1916) was an international import-export trader (PhD in economics in 1922). His mother-in-law, Eliza Ardill, was British. After his import export Lirm for aeronautical products went bust, he sought employment at the German foreign ofLice. He was appointed as a diplomat by secretary of state Lammers in january 1934 and was a member of the German intelligence agency Abwehr: (Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Onderzoeksarchief Frans Kluiters, 2.21.424, inv 18). In 1936, he was in regular contact with king Carol II of Rumania. (BArch, N 266/93) . In 1939, he, his wife and three children were registered in The Hague, not far from Ernst Heymann’s home. Hellmuth von Cramon as all arms dealers considered himself a businessman. After he quit diplomatic service, he founded Südost Handelsgesellschaft von Ramin which furnished foreign arms to the German army, among others Spanish Astra pistols in 1941-1944. He was one of the 857 war criminals interrogated by the Chief Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality –(source: Nuernberg Interrogation Reports) and reported at length on the Abwehr unit he was connected with and its organization. After the war he stayed in Austria in the villa at Aussee which was under his wife’s name. 20 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onGerman arms for the Dutch ministry of Colonies 71. It very much looks like Hellmuth von Cramon, who was at the service of the German intelligence agency Abwehr (which he conLirmed when arrested by the US military intelligence service in Austria in February 1946), established Balta in Amsterdam in 1938 in the then neutral Netherlands as a cover for economic spying but also for importing German weaponry to the Netherlands, which was Heymann’s line of business. Neither Hellmuth von Cramon nor Ernst Heymann lived in the Netherlands at that time, but such a Lirm offered a foothold in the Netherlands. Heymann must have known about his brother-in-law’s professional background and possibly participated in his intelligence activities. It would be no mere coincidence that the ofLice of Balta was at the address of Rhodius & Koenigs, a German private bank. Heymann must have had regular dealings with its director Alfred Flesche who was arrested for espionage shortly before May 10th 1940, when the Netherlands were invaded (and immediately released after the invasion). During Heymann’s trial, his contacts with the spy Flesche were pointed out, but the spying activities of Hellmuth von Cramon were not known to the Dutch judges at that time. Sommer’s dealings with Bandermann and Fleischmann took place informally until the creation of Pimitex. Between November 1941 and August 1942 Union had a turnover of some 30 million guilders. Sommer supplied goods to Union and received a 3 % commission for his services.72 Max Fleischmann ran daily affairs at the Union Amsterdam ofLice and worked together with Sommer. He was beneLiting of an exemption which made it possible for him to travel unhindered within the Netherlands, Fleischmann was a co-owner of a Lirm called Topy, set up by German Jews in 1937, which was specialized in shoesoles, in particular heel irons. Topy had been a business partner to Heymann’s Lirm Balta before the war and was a supplier to Bandermann’s Lirm previous to Fleischmann joining Union. 73 Fleischmann knew of Heymann’s acquaintance with inLluential Germans and had come to him, offering his services against protection. After he received the conLirmation he and his family would be allowed to leave for Switzerland eventually, he left the daily management of Topy to his partners Max and Josef Schwarz and worked full-time for Union. After Bandermann joined the Amsterdam operation, there was still a small ofLice in The Hague, headed by Bernhard Schott, whose background was in industry (as a high ranking manager at IG Farben in Germany and in the Netherlands Nederlandsche Verf en Chemicaliënfabriek Delft). The interventions of Sommer, Union and their men on the market were causing havoc for the Rijksbureaus, the Dutch Central Crisis Control authority and their inspectors. The whole staff of these public agencies was devoted to uncovering black market activities and bring black marketeers to justice. The black market activities initiated by the Vierjahresplan went on right under their noses, under the wings of Göring and Speer. On one occasion in September 1942, 700 kg of smuggled raw wool for Union were impounded but the smuggler refused to give any information, referring to captain Sommer. The smuggler believed that the whole operation was being carried out under the wings of the German Wehrmacht and had been instructed to refer to Sommer to have the goods released 74. When contacted by phone by the inspector, Sommer summoned him to give up the wool, which the inspector refused. This was one occasion when the immunity Sommer offered to his suppliers did not work. The black market was destabilising the Dutch economy. The Dutch authorities, even though under control of the Germans, still did have their say to some extent. But there was also unrest among the Germans about the irregularities of the Blau-Aktion. Carl Egner, ‘Referent 71 NaHa CABR CABR 64109 , correspondence between Heymann and Von Cramon. 72 NIOD 180a Handelstrust West ; NA 64109 I (Heymann) Interrogation of Sommer, 9. 2. 1948 73 NaHa CABR 106385 Max Fleischmann idem. The inspector believed that som 35.000 kg of wool had been smuggled out in the past months by purchasing agencies of the Germans. 74 21 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onfür Banken und Börsen’ made enquiries about the operations.75 In January 1943, the Dutch bureau for hides and leather was granted a restriction of Sommer’s leather purchasing activities (which resulted in lay-offs at the warehouses). The metal buying was allowed to go on for a while. On 6 May 1943, a letter from Hauptabteilung Gewerbliche Wirtschaft to all delegates at the Rijksbureaus put an ofLicial end to the Blau-Aktionen.76 In July 1943, Heymann, Bandermann and Fleischmann were arrested on the speciLic orders of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt RSHA Berlin (Eichmann). At that point, Sommer knew that the end of his own operation was in sight. The rationale of the whole black market operation is difLicult to fathom. The historian Gerard Aalders, who has studied the plundering of the Dutch economy during the war, expresses his puzzlement about it: ln the period from 1940 to 1944, Dutch industry supplied goods with an approximate value of one billion guilders to Germany. The share of the black market in these transactions was, incidentally, no more than a few per cent, which raises the question of why the Germans took so much trouble with it, certainly when one considers the negative inZluence this policy had on the population, a policy that moreover ‘attacked the economic roots of the German occupation of the Netherlands'.77 Possibly, the expectation was that some strategically important goods which were well hidden could only be recovered in this manner. The Osnabrück and Cologne connecCon Sommer had to operate under a lot of pressure for the Vierjahresplan. He had committed himself to delivering certain amounts of goods monthly. In his letter to Rauter he tells in so many words that trying to Lind sufLicient capable aryan buyers had amounted to nothing, and that the only way to deliver the goods as fast as agreed was to use the services of Jews. The German Jews whose services he used were experienced in matters of metals, leather and other required goods in the Netherlands, were able to communicate in German with the German occupiers and in Dutch with the locals and moreover knew exactly how the local market functioned. Quite soon, Sommer had abandoned Hotel Suisse and found an ofLice nearby on the third Lloor of Rokin 84 in Amsterdam. The building was a prestigious property which had been owned by a printing Lirm and was in the hands of the Buitenlandsche Bankvereeniging of the notorious Alois Miedl 78 and had earlier housed a high class establishment, Restaurant Riche. In the basement was a club which served all kinds of expensive beverages which were in short supply elsewhere. There is no document indicating how Sommer had been allowed to settle in this building. The connection of Miedl to secret operations of Göring could have been the reason. In Sommer’s own words, Hotel Suisse was getting too risky for his Jewish business partners, as SS men walked in and out constantly. He had found space to stash the goods in warehouse F on the Java dock and warehouse S of the Borneo dock which had been rented in the eastern part of Amsterdam harbour. As soon as the word spread that goods could be sold at a much better price than the ofLicial prices of the Dutch Rijksbureaus with impunity, offers began to Llock in. And the word had spread very quickly in the smoke Lilled little cafés where the black market crowd met. So much so that Sommer and his helpers soon had to be selective about which supplier to choose. 75 NaHa CABR 106385 PV Walter Müller 7 July 1947 76 NIOD FiWi, HA Ge Wi, 10 A 90 77 In: The Plunder of Dutch Jewry During the Second World War, Berg Publishers, 2004 The connection of Miedl with Union has been conLirmed by Walter Müller, head of the Sicherheitsdienst foreign intelligence unit (NaHa CABR 106385 PV 7 July 1947) Fleischmann was the Union liaison with Miedl. Miedl is better known as the middleman for Göring art purchases after he had taken over the business of the art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. Goudstikker had died accidentally while Lleeing to England when the Germans invaded the Netherlands. According to Ralph Hamburger, who was junior clerk at the Sommer ofLice, Miedl was often seen on the Sommer premises. Heymann was on friendly terms with Alfred Flesche, who was arrested as a spy in 1940 and was invlolved in Balta, the Lirst cloaking Lirm of Veltjens. The Buitenlandsche Bankvereniging had been taken over by Miedl from the Jewish bankers Flörsheim and Lisser Rosenkrantz. Miedl had an associate in Zürich, the lawyer Arthur Wiederkehr, who often travelled to the Netherlands in connection with ransom money paid by Jews trying to secure emigration, and in connection with art looting. In particular, he held six looted pictures for Miedl, Live of which were from the Paul Rosenberg Collection (Paris); offered one of them, the Van Gogh "Self Portrait, " for sale to the armament industrialist Buehrle. Miedl had a German Jewish wife, Dori Fleischer, who died in 1967. 78 22 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onThere was a strict procedure followed to cover the tracks. While the books were being controlled by Pimetex, Roges and the Überwachungsstelle, the Lirms or persons delivering goods were registered by a letter and number code and could only be related to the goods and the payments though a concordance list kept in a well hidden shabby black notebook. A total of some 150 such codes were issued by the Sommer organisation. The cloaking techniques had already been worked out and applied Lirst in France within the Veltjens organisation.79 For every step, there had to be a cover up. The shipping Lirm Kühne & Nagel which serviced all the operations, would get its instructions from a Pimetex man. Kühne & Nagel had its own warehouses, the Oranje Nassau at the Veem warehouses complex on Van Diemen street 10 and 12, near to the west side docks; and near to Amsterdam Central Station, a large storage facility on Steenen Hoofd nearby and another one on the Borneokade in the eastern part of the harbour, nearby the Sommer facilities. Proximity to water was an important asset as the Dutch waterways provided a Linely mazed transport infrastructure, less costly and not hindered by road blocks. The sorting of metals was done in smaller premises scattered throughout Amsterdam, but mostly in buildings located in the Entrepot Dok vicinity, where the scrap metals Lirm Roba had its warehouse. Oxyde employees who had previously had ofLice jobs worked alongside experienced metal sorters. The Oxyde ofLice work had dwindled to a trickle. Oxyde, which before the war had a turn over of millions of guilders, was in the red. Alfred Brünell, who previously had an ofLice job at Oxyde, described how he and other white collar employees had to learn metal sorting from experienced metal sorters who had been working for jewish scrap metals Lirms.80 Financial director Fritz Stein of Oxyde was appointed supervisor of the metal sorters and was allowed using public transport to reach warehouse Dordrecht at Entrepotdok 16, which was rented by Oxyde.81 Some smelting could take place in the Wemeta building on Prinseneiland 32a, nearby Steenen Hoofd, a warehouse location on Westerdokseiland near Amsterdam Central Station and near the warehouses of Kühne & Nagel on Van Diemenstraat. Alfred Gossels who was the manager at Wemeta, could easily cycle between Prinseneiland and warehouses when necessary as long as he had a travel permit in his pocket 82 or send his junior employee Louis Goldwein on errands. Sommer did not bother with the daily business at Wemeta. He was in fact the Lixer of the whole operation, not only helping out ‘his’ people and their families, but also Union employees and suppliers whenever one or other shady operation was threatened. The Lirm Wemeta, where Sommer became a trustee on 5. March 1942, was a metal Lirm founded in 1936 by three German jews, Paul Jonas, Justus Nussbaum (the elder brother of famous painter Felix Nussbaum) and Alfred Gossels. Before the war, it had specialised in the dismantling and recycling of gas meters from the Netherlands, Belgium and Scandinavian countries. According to Sommer, they had developed special techniques for dismantling the meters and regaining the metals used in them. They had also trained workers for this special task.83 Jonas was the older and more experienced businessman from Cologne, the cousins Nussbaum and Gossels from Osnabrück were more practical ones and had the energy of youth. They had been juniors in their fathers’ metal business and had set up a scrap metals In France there were many bureaus buying goods on the black market, not only for the Veltjens organization, but for practically every entity of the occupying forces: Wehrmacht, Gestapo, SS etc. The most disreputable was the Otto organization of Hermann Brandl, alias Otto, which made use of the services of organised crime gangs. The Otto bureau was supplied mainly by Joseph Joanovici, a jewish refugee from Bessarabia who was later condemned for collaboration, although he had bought the freedom of 150 resistance members. After the Vierjahresplan operation was terminated, Alfred Toepfer (13.7.1894 HamburgAltona- 8.10.1993 Hamburg), who had been Veltjens delegate in Paris, went on buying on the black market. After 1945, Toepfer used his fortune to continue his career in Germany and died a respected maecenas, with a foundation Linancing cultural projects. 79 80 81 as reported in Teichmann. Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, collection Ruth Stein-Kantorowicz, Stein identity papers Alfred Gossels reported his bicycle stolen from the Wemeta premises on Prinseneiland. Source: Police reports, Stadsarchief Amsterdam 82 83 Letter by Sommer, 1 June 1942, NIOD 039-648. 23 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onand car refurbishing yard of their own in Osnabrück. How Jonas joined forces with the Osnabrückers is not known. What is known is that Philipp Nussbaum, Justus’ father, stayed in Cologne for a while before the war, where he could have met Paul Jonas. His younger son, the painter Felix Nussbaum (who is now honoured by a museum in Osnabrück) stayed in Brussels. It is possible, even probable, that Sommer asked Jonas to seek new recruits for the Blau-Aktion within his network. Cologne was also the place Siegfried Grünberg (Filmchemie) came from, so there might have been a connection before the war, one possibility being the Jewish community of Cologne. There were a number of family connections within the group of buyers and employees of Sommer. While Alfred Gossels and Justus Nussbaum were cousins, Erich Jonas was Paul Jonas’ son and Ludwig Cahn was Paul Jonas’ son-in-law. Erich Malachowski was possibly a business acquaintance of Paul Jonas and brought in his father David. Hermann Wallheimer knew Paul Jonas (he reports Jonas and Sommer being invited to his appartment, prior to the take over of Jonas’ Lirm by Sommer) 84. Both Jonas and Wallheimer would have known metal dealer Julius Philipp from Hamburg who in turn knew Sommer. There were two persons called Boas, probably father and son. Samuel and Jonas Swart were brothers. Moritz Loewenthal had with him his son and his son-in-law Rudolf Bernhard Joseph. Sommer could exploit the trust bond these family connections created. Also, as he states in a letter to Ferdinand Aus der Fünten, Hanns Albin Rauter’s subordinate responsible for the rounding up and deportation of Jews, he needed to insure the motivation of the buyers working for him and consequently had to protect their families too.85 For the purpose of protecting the family members of his buyers, Sommer created a so-called Nebengruppe, for which he asked for lighter exemptions. The razor’s edge Between the moment Sommer started his work for the Vierjahresplan in the Netherlands in 1941 and the writing of his letter on 16. June 1943, the situation for Jews had changed radically. For Sommer it meant that the margins for operating with Jewish buyers, smelters, sorters and couriers were getting thinner by the day. He had to ask top dog Rauter and his lieutenants humbly for exemptions time after time. Some of his men had to carry large sums of money on them. Paying for goods on the black market was of course not a matter of payment by cheque or bank deposit. It was all cash and nothing but cash, in large bills, mostly 1000 guilders, while Jewish people were not allowed to carry large sums of money any more. If Sommer’s Jewish men were controlled at checkpoints, they had better have the right papers to explain what they were doing on the loose with large amounts of cash. Jewish people were increasingly subjected to measures restricting their mobility, while the essential part of the job of the Jewish Blau-Aktion men was visiting places all over town, province and country. Some even crossed borders on their way to Germany or Belgium and had to have a rock solid permit to do so . In the course of June 1942, Eichmann had ordered the deportation of 40.000 Jews from the Netherlands. In the following months and years, this number was steadily increased. Sommer had to manoeuvre between the demands from the ministry of armament and the growing pressure from the Eichmann delegates in the Hague, eager to send the agreed contingents of Jews from the Netherlands to concentration and extermination camps in Eastern Europe. With an increasing amount of Jewish workers being rounded up and sent to Westerbork, Sommer had a dwindling number of people at his disposal. In the meantime, the policy towards buying goods from the black market had changed. The destabilising effects of the operation on the markets and on inLlation had become obvious. The Dutch inspectors and judges Lighting black marketing could not make sense of it either. On 16. February 1943, Hitler issued an executive order to put a stop to all the black market operations, thus pushing Göring aside. There was in general a time lapse between an order 84 Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Wiedergutmachung M. Sommer 85 NIOD 95- 24 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onby the Führer and its implementation. But Richard Fiebig, the then ‘Beauftragter in den Niederlanden des Reichsministers für Bewaffnung und Munition’ gave already the order to seize 35 tons of metal owned by Sommer on the day after the order was issued by Hitler.86 On 13. March 1943 banknotes for 500 and 1000 guilders were banned by the German occupiers, in an effort to slow down the black market, an event which caused quite a turmoil in the ranks of the business partners of Sommer and Union. This was only the Lirst step of phasing down the Union and Sommer operations. Göring himself followed up with an order to stop the Vierjahresplan operations on 2. April 1943. All ongoing affairs were to be terminated by 1. October 1943. This meant that to be legalised, the existing stocks had to be made available to the German industry through regular channels. All the contingents already stashed away in warehouses had to be taken over by Lirms operating in the “legal” sector like Oxyde, Roba and Montaan, that is Jewish Lirms which had obtained permits from the Dutch bureau for nonferrous metals. Montaan was a Lirm owned by the Jewish brothers Nijkerk, which had been put under custody of a German 87. Oxyde was headed by an employee of the Otto Wolff corporation, Heinrich Strasburger. Roba had a Dutch Treuhänder, Gerrit. A. De Vries. The separation between the “legal” sector and the Blau-Aktion was not as strict as it seemed, especially after February 1943. Under the cover of Cufeniag, Sommer had contracts and dealings with Montaan Metaalhandel and Roba, which in turn would obtain permits from the Rijksbureau, transfering goods from the Blau-Aktion to the “legal” sector,“legal” meaning according to the laws and regulations of the Third Reich as imposed upon the Netherlands. By June 1943, it had become clear that buying on the black market would no longer beneLit from high level protection. It also meant that Sommer had lost his leverage. The Jews working for him were being rounded up and he could do little about it 88. Sommer sent letters to the various German bodies in the Netherlands he had become dependent upon, pleading to keep his cloaking Lirms from liquidation to allow him to get closure for all the ongoing operations. Three days after his letter to Rauter, Sommer wrote to Dr. Schröder of the Wirtschaftprüfstelle in Arnhem about the incumbent liquidation of Cufeniag. In this letter, he refers to the Vierjahresplan and to the mission he had received from Fiebig, the delegate in the Netherlands of the minister for Armament and Munitions and to his task as provider of metals for the aviation and armament industry.89 This shows that in contradiction with what Sommer stated in 1950 when applying for Wiedergutmachung, he was very well aware of the fact that everything he purchased and sold to Roges was part of the Vierjahresplan operation. In his letter to Schröder of the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle, Sommer explains the role of Cufeniag as a means for collecting and distributing the goods. He asks to delay the liquidation of Cufeniag for a few months, in order to round up his operation in a convenient way. Although he is aware that his operation will have to stop in a short while, there are still goods in transit. 86 NaHa CABR Wallheimer Letter 17 february 1943 FW/Gewi/Po Rüstungsinspektion to warehouse Cufeniag (Wallheimer) Montaan had been taken over quite early. Its co-owner Benno Nijkerk was in Belgium and active in the resistance DutchParis escape line, while his germanized company was supplying the German war economy. 87 88 The activities of Sommer’s Jewish helpers and their fate were documented in the Liles of the German police administration in the Netherlands as well as in Germany. From the Liles of the Barmé cousins in the Gestapo Liles in Düsseldorf (translation from German): „We have been informed that the Jews Barmé worked as metal buyers for a German agency (Union) on behalf of Captain Sommer. Both Jews were arrested on 14.1.43 respectively 3.3. for violating several Jewish decrees in Amsterdam and sent to the Jewish camp Westerbork as delinquent Jews. They will be deported to the East on the next group transport. Any notes on spying suspicion are not available. Presumably the Jews had been in correspondence with the German-blooded wife of Siegfried Israel Barmé, who lives in Wuppertal. “ Hauptstaatsarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf (HStAD) Personenakten der Gestapoleitstelle Düsseldorf; RW 58-22514 quoted in ‘Retterwiderstand in Wuppertal während des Nationalsozialismus’, Frank Friedhelm Homberg, PhD Düsseldorf 2008 https://docserv.uni-duesseldorf.de/servlets/DerivateServlet/Derivate-14457/ Retterwiderstand%20in%20Wuppertal%20w%C3%A4hrend%20des%20Nationalsozialismus.pdf 89 NIOD 95 ; Staatsarchiv Hamburg Wiedergutmachungsakte 16514 -114 letter of 20 June 1950 25 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onWhat he does not say is that in May and June almost all the Jewish workers employed by Cufeniag for the sorting of scrap metals and other menial tasks had already been sent to camp Westerbork. The only persons then involved in his operations were those still protected by exemptions. As the war dragged on, even the black market had anyway less and less to offer in terms of raw materials and the situation was being worsened by the disappearance of buyers and sorters as more of them had been being transferred to Westerbork or imprisoned at the Amstelveenseweg prison in Amsterdam. By the time Sommer agreed to close down Cufeniag, most of the Jewish people he had employed had already been deported with their families. In the transition period between the shutting down of the black market and the new “legal” operations, stocks hoarded by Sommer were still waiting in the warehouses. But there was a solution. Once sold to the “legal” Lirms operating with Rijksbureau permits, the goods could be resold to the Dutch bureau for non-ferrous metals to be sorted by the inmates of camp Westerbork. The Rijksbureau was in fact paying for the whole process of providing scrap materials to the camp. It was providing the money for buying through its covert organisation Stinonferin, for the transport and for the sorting. The “legal” Lirms were in German hands. In august 1943, Gerrit A. de Vries, the Dutch trustee of Roba and a trusted partner of Sommer had been replaced by German liquidation trustee Nagel, put in place by Omnia (effectively the organisation set up in the Netherlands as a sham Lirm for the sole purpose of managing aryanisation and liquidating Jewish businesses). The owners of Roba were out of sight. (Robert Baruch had left the Netherlands for Hungary on August 31. 1943 on one of the Live trains which brought Jews of Hungarian nationality to Hungary90, and Willy Cohn was in hiding in Amsterdam. Cohn survived and continued the Lirm after the war). Sommer seems to have been given a short respite. On 8. September 1943, the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle received a letter from Omnia: on 3. September 1943 an agreement had been reached between the Omnia representative and Sommer to liquidate Cufeniag whose owner Wallheimer was in custody. On 1. October 1943 the game was over and two weeks later Sommer was out of a job. Sommer and the equipment of Camp Westerbork In the spring of 1943, Sommer had landed a large order which was not (at least not directly) for the German war industry like the usual other war bounty. In order to complete this order, he managed to justify continuing his business for a little while. The Durchgangslager (transit camp) Westerbork was to be turned into a recycling plant, processing all kinds of scrap metals and second hand goods to be re-used in the war industry. It already had various workshops were prisoners were doing maintenance work for the camp or refurbishing goods for private companies. The camp was to a large extent self-sufLicient, with even its own farm. On 23 August 1943, by ‘Lagerbefehl’ 46 signed by camp commander Gemmeker, Dienstbereich 12 was added to already existing units which had been created. Dienstbereich 12 was meant to become the Westerbork recycling plant, disassembling and sorting supplies which could be brought into the camp mainly from barges. Small gauge rails were laid from the Oranje canal to the interior of the camp. When interrogated on 13 february 1946,91 Gemmeker described the process that lead to the creation of the Westerbork industry. Gemmeker had Lirst discussed the idea with the ‘kampoudste’, the Jewish head of the internal organisation of the camp. Such an idea could not be realised without the collaboration of numerous German ofLicials. So Gemmeker consulted the Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei, Harster. The following step was to contact Sommer for all practical purposes. To conduct the talks, Gemmeker sent the inmates Sax, Oberländer and Lichtenstern to Amsterdam, where they received their safe-conduct personally from Willy Lages, head of the so-called Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration. Next, the Dutch Rijksbureau for nonferrous metals was approached. Joseph Mexner, the German Beauftragte and supervisor mediated between Gemmeker and the Rijksbureau. Once Gemmeker was assured that his initiative was approved of, Westerbork could be Willy Lindner, Aline Pennewaard, De treinreis. De miraculeuze ontsnapping van Hongaars-Nederlandse Joden tijdens de bezetting, Amsterdam 2018 90 91 NaHa NBI 133431 Oxyde. Interrogation in prison Amstelveenseweg by detectives J. K. Wageman & B. Bonnevel 26 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onturned into a recycling plant. The machines and other equipment were ordered from Sommer and Sax, while Oberländer and Lichtenstern were assigned as the buyers responsible for collecting the supplies of scrap material to be sorted by the prisoners. But Egbert de Jong, director of the Rijksbureau had a different version 92. According to him, he and Heinz Lichtenstern, director of Oxyde, were friends and had devised together a ploy to keep Jewish prisoners at work in Westerbork as long as possible. Whatever is true, the operation could not be conducted without the full knowledge and approval of the German authorities. Anyway, there were agreed quotas of prisoners to be sent to Auschwitz, BergenBelsen, Theresienstadt and other camps, so for every Jew retained in Westerbork, there would be another person picked among the inmates population to replace him on the train to the camps in Poland. In February 1944, Westerbork was designated as the central place for dismantling shot down airplanes. Previously, the prisoners at camp Vught in the south of the Netherlands had been used as slave labour for this kind of work. The Allies were making progress and Vught was too near to the front lines. Tons of scrap metal were redirected from Vught to Westerbork to be sorted. Westerbork was a part of the large industrial network formed by the concentration camps as supply of slave labour, but before the expansion of the metal sorting, it had small workshops for the manufacture of clothing, the refurbishing of toys, furniture repair and such. Vught had a number of industrial workshops, even a department of Philips corporation (the Philips Kommando) inside the perimeter of the camp, manufacturing condensators for German combat planes. And it had been intended as the place to put inmates with diamond skills to work as a part of te overall scheme of diamonds looting. In a report to his superiors, camp commander Gemmeker writes page after page on the transformation of the camp into an industry. His prose has a veil of grey normality. The workforce instability is deemed a problem, but not a word is wasted on the causes of the Lluctuations: the fact that every tuesday a number of detainees were being crammed into trains and sent to Auschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt, thus depleting the population of slave labourers in his camp. In august 1944 he wrote further about the strong Lluctuations in the numbers of workers and their level of skill. “In the last months, there was a consolidation of the work circumstances allowing a better acquisition of skills and a signiZicant improvement of the productivity per head and as a whole. The expectation is that the use of new machines will lead to further improvements”.93 The Dutch bureau for nonferrous metals was totally involved in the project. It even helped to fund a 756 square meters large brick building in the camp to make it possible. All the loads delivered to and from the camp industry had to be approved by an inspector of the bureau. In July 1943, 17 tons of aluminium foil were delivered, followed by 33,5 tons unsorted scrap metals from the central warehouse in Rotterdam and various Amsterdam Lirms. By 31. August 1943 the Lirst batch of scrap metals had been sorted by prisoners and 5 tons of useful metals had been processed. The Rijksbureau received bills from camp commander Gemmeker and payed for the work of the prisoners at an agreed rate per hour per person. This was the usual procedure for German (and Dutch) Lirms using the slave labour from concentration camps, but must have been a rare occurrence for a governmental body in an occupied country. The work went on after the last train to an extermination camp had left the camp in september 1944. The work force even grew somewhat, as Jews who had been in hiding and were betrayed arrived at the camp while no one was deported anymore. Sommer was the supplier of the equipment needed to transform Westerbork into a factory. While the Blau-Aktion was being phased out, the transformation of Westerbork gave his business a new impulse. Already in June 1943, he had been approached to deliver 600 m of 92 93 interview with Ger van den Berg, son-in-law of Egbert de Jong on 17 march 2016 NIOD 250i 27 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onrails (and had problems with delivering on time)94. In endless lists, the items for all departments are detailed in the archives documents, from screws to a locomotive. (The well known Westerbork Lilm by Rudolf Breslauer documents the small locomotive, but also the work of inmates pushing lorries.) The receipt of the goods was in the hands of a German-Jewish inmate, the head of the Westerbork industry Hans Hermann Beyer. Beyer would be allowed to leave Westerbork if necessary and always returned (he was among the prisoners who stayed in the camp until the Canadian forces liberated it in April 1945). In the scarcity of the war economy, things did not always go as planned. When Sommer delivered the wrong gauge of tracks for the railway between the Oranje canal and the camp, meant to bring goods directly from barges to the premises of the recycling workplaces, he had to carry the costs of the mistake.95 Sommers’ list(s) The eleven buyers whom Sommer wanted to bail out in june 1943 were -in the same order as in his letter to Rauter - : Richard Messow, Paul Friedrich Jonas, Erich Malachowski, Hermann Wallheimer, Gustav Scheiberg, Alfred Gossels, Justus Nussbaum, Erich ]onas, Ludwig Cahn, Erich Katz and Philipp Nussbaum96. They were the core, the ones Sommer considered unmissable for his activities and/or worthy of his protection and who were still at large. Previously, there had been a list of sixteen names, signed by Fiebig, the so-called “Sommer list” 97. Some other important purchasers and many of the people with lesser jobs (members of the so-called Nebengruppe) had already been rounded up. A few managed to Lind a hiding place. The initial list which Fiebig had been providing with exemptions of the series 40.000 (to be explained hereafter) was much larger. It comprised buyers with their families and some sorters.98 Why the eleven were mentioned in a particular order is difLicult to fathom. Messow was his earliest contact in Amsterdam. Malachowski had been introduced to Sommer by Messow. 99 Paul Jonas was, perhaps together with Alfred Gossels and Justus Nussbaum, the Lirst one Sommer was in touch with when he took over Wemeta. Messow and Jonas had the most extended privileges. Jonas was the ofLice manager. We do not know how exactly Sommer recruited his jewish helpers. It looks as if he let his key contacts get in touch with possible candidates. It is also possible that he approached the Jewish Council, looking for adequate candidates. Another source might have been the Wirtschaftsprüfstelle, which maintained a comprehensive registration of jewish Lirms it audited. There is another list, mentioning the jobs of the persons employed by Sommer and there are various documents in the archives concerning Sommer and his crew. In total more than 80 Jewish persons were working for him at one point or another (and even more, if they asked acquaintances or family members for occasional help, and certainly more counting Union helpers who also delivered goods to Sommer). A number of them had menial tasks, such as sorting metals or carrying messages and/or money. In june 1943, those people could not count on the effectiveness of Sommer’s protection anymore. Even the number of buyers 94 NIOD wrbk_250i_0580_012.jpg NIOD 95. The connection between the Oranje canal and the camp was used among others to bring the carcasses of shot down planes from the ship ther came on, to the large hall in the camp. 95 Sommer did not include Union people on his list as sent to Rauter. Not only were they were the responsibility of Heymann, Bandermann and Fleischmann, but they worked on different locations. 96 According to police commissioner H.R. Stoett, (Staatsarchiv Hamburg Wiedergutmachung M. Sommer). There were a number of lists in circulation, each with a speciLic goal. 97 98 99 NIOD 077 invnr. 1436 -119 NaHa CABR 209.09 107773/11088, PV Sommer 29.1.1948 28 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass oninvolved in the Veltjens operation had been reduced to 26. The round ups were by then carried out without any consideration of exemptions. Moreover, by that time, Sommer had fallen out of grace. According to the jobs list, Messow was a leather trader and Jonas was a metals specialist. Most of the Sommer jews had already been metal men in Germany. In addition to Paul Jonas, his son Erich, Ludwig Cahn, Alfred Gossels, father Philip and son Justus Nussbaum, Hermann Wallheimer and Erich Katz were all nonferrous metal traders. Wallheimer specialised in bicycle spare parts when he started working for Sommer, also tools and such, dealing in smelt metals. His Lirm’s name, Cufeniag, was a reference to the kind of metals he specialised in (copper, iron, nickel and silver). Malachowski was the expert for steel and iron. Scheiberg bought and sold hides. His wife’s family (Van Esso) was in the hides business. The remaining buyers in Sommer’s group like Moritz Loewenthal, a buyer of textiles and his son-in-law Rudolf Bernard Joseph, who was a leather specialist, are not mentioned y Sommer in the list of eleven because they had probably already been rounded up and brought to camp Westerbork. Sommer had a special connection to Wemeta, the Lirm of Paul Jonas, Justus Nussbaum and Alfred Gossels, as he was named trustee of their Lirm at the very beginning of his mission. The eleven men mentioned in the letter to Rauter were the buyers who by June 1943 were the dwindled group of privileged jews still able to circulate in order to obtain goods from the black market. By that time, an ordinance prohibited Jews from residing in Amsterdam. In addition to the core group of eleven, Sommer asked for the same treatment for their families, even for Jacques Goldwasser, Richard Messow’s foster child, whose parents had Lled to the safety of Switzerland. Jacques’ brother Freddy had been in the care of the Jonas family before joining the Messow. The system of exempCons Sommer based the work of his staff on exemptions, which followed the system of exemptions put in place by the occupiers. The most important bestower of exemptions was the Jewish Council of Amsterdam. The occupiers traded a measure of protection in exchange for the activity of the council as a disciplining body of the Jewish community. The Jewish Council functioned within the framework of pre-war structures of Dutch society but through this continuity, it became an instrument of the occupiers’ anti-jewish measures. The German invasion, although it was socially disruptive, did not take away the “Verzuiling” (pillarisation) of society, in which each pillar (protestant, catholic, socialist) had a large measure of self-organisation. In each pillar, there were associations and foundation which took care of housing, education, health care, leisure, cultural activities and so on. The Jewish community was too small to have such an all-encompassing organisation, but it followed the same lines nonetheless. Moreover, there is a secular tradition of local jewish communities organising themselves around their community tasks. The Germans took advantage of this high level of self-organisation to manage the occupation in a lean and mean way. The higher level of power was controlled by Germans who issued directives which were implemented by Dutch nationals or local bodies, be it public or private, while the implementation was monitored by the occupying organisation. The exemption system was one of the instruments to carry out the annihilation of Jews in an ordered way, step by step. It was a shrewd scam. With each anti-jewish measure, came exemptions for certain categories. One of the categories was for Jews working for the Vierjahresplan. Richard Fiebig sanctioned this list with his signature. Those appearing on Sommer’s list would get a copy of it, which would give them a measure of protection. The more important buyers got a proper identity card with their exemptions speciLied on it, including the speciLication of their modes of travel. It was logical that people categorised as Jews would try and get hold of an exemption, and they did so to a large extent. Hiding was an option for only a small minority. The German occupiers bestowed the Jewish Council the right to propose a certain number of exemptions for people working for them. This had the effect that in Amsterdam the Jewish 29 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onCouncil had a large body of people at its disposal, willing to populate its ofLices, which were scattered in different premises around town. An exemption took effect with a stamp on the identity card next to the J. There was a code for each type of exemption, contained in the Ligures used. The Jewish Council exemptions had numbers beginning with an 8. The highest level of protection was from the list starting with a 12. Most of Sommer’s helpers had a code starting with a 4. On 2. May 1942, the wearing of a yellow star badge with the word Jood in the middle was imposed upon the whole Jewish population, bar a few exemptions. Among those exemptions were the most important buyers working under the authority of Sommer. The metal sorters for Sommer and Oxyde were not exempted from wearing a star, but Richard Messow who bought leather goods, and Paul Jonas, who was heading Sommer’s ofLice were on the socalled “Blaue Reiter” exemption list and were “star free”.100 The term Blaue Reiter referred to the blue coloured label on the top of their registration card in the central registration of the Jewish population, where the black and white J-label for Jews was replaced by a blue and white one. There were only a few dozens Jews with that blue label, reserved for “Protektionsund Angebotsjuden” (protection and exchange jews, who were able to provide a considerable amount of ransom money, diamonds or paintings by old masters). The voiding of exemptions was prepared in March 1943 101, but the implementation took some months. In August 1943, all exemption stamps on identity cards were voided. But there would be exceptions for speciLic times and purposes. For example, Erich Jonas was given a leave of absence between 8. and 10. October 1943 for a vaguely speciLied purpose (“Dienstreise”). There were only a few prisoners allowed this measure of relative freedom, for example the members of the so-called contact committee in Westerbork. But even after august 1943, there were exceptions. But even after that, there would be occasional exemptions in order to keep Westerbork provided for goods or for other exceptional reasons. The exceptional exemptions were put in a so-called A-B or Au-Be i.e. Ausnahme Bescheinigung list. And on 14. November 1943, three of the “legal” metal purchasers, Leopold Oberländer, Heinz Lichtenstern and Joseph Sax were released from Westerbork with their families in order to supply the camp industry with new stocks. Joseph Sax and his wife immediately went into hiding. The other two men received a safe-conduct from Lages and the permission to travel without a star badge on account of their activities for Stinonferin.102 The exempCons of Sommer The numbers of exemptions obtained by Sommer in 1942 all started with a 4. His so-called “Nebengruppe” had numbers starting with 411. The ‘40.000’ series of exemptions was meant for “Protektions- und Angebotsjuden”. The Ligures about the groups vary between some 448 and 800, which is little compared to the 17.498 Jewish Council exemptions. These exemptions were given because they carried out German orders and assisted in the deportation of Jews from the Netherlands. Angebotsjuden were Jews who were able to pay for their lives. Protektionsjuden were Jews with a special ability who would fulLill a special task. This was the case of the “Sommer jews”, 103 but also for virtuoso musicians or art specialists (the so-called Frederiks Jews). Some 15.000 people were given a stamp of exemption on their identity card because they were married to non-Jews or had converted to Christianity. When Plümer - who was already in the Netherlands at the beginning of 1941 - started on the 100 NaHa PRAC 84055 NIOD 077/1317 “Übersicht vom 16. März 1943 über bisher von der Deportation ausgenommene Juden”- .... 2.) Protektionsjuden... d) Schwarzaktion (Vierjahresplan) Für die Schwarzaktion arbeiten z. Zt. Noch 26 Juden (ursprünglich waren 39 Juden zurückgestellt). 101 All three men and their families survived. Sax and his family were helped by Egbert de Jong to Lind a hiding place in Rotterdam. 102 103 Explanation on exemption codes and Ligures according to Raymund Schütz, Vermoedelijk op transport. 30 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onBlau Aktion in the Netherlands in late 1941 as the assistant of Veltjens, there was no protocol for exemptions yet. In order to let “wirtschaftlich wertvolle Juden” (economically valuable jews) be effective in their work, he had to furnish them special passes. The Lirst he began with, were the Jewish wives of the German-Dutch businessmen Tietje and Miedl, who were to function as private bankers for the Blau-Aktion. But in the case of the larger groups of Jews who were to become active, there was no bureaucratic routine at the time. So Plümer turned to the various agencies involved, which had to coordinate their action104. They later developed a protocol, by which the head of an organisation involved in the Blau-Aktion would send in lists of person to be granted exemptions, with different grades between extensive freedom of travel and no application of the executive orders against Jews, down to a very speciLic travel pass between home and work on a speciLied line of public transport. The series numbers and corresponding speciLications were soon devised. When the BlauAktion started, there were no mass round ups and deportations. But after spring 1942, the Blau Aktion operators had also to get the protection from deportation “bis auf weiteres” (until otherwise decided). The coordination of the passes system was in the hands of B.d.S. (Befehlhaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des Sicherheitsdienstes) and his subordinates. On 28 May 1942, a letter to the security administration B.d.S., bureau IV B 4 (Wilhelm Harster), stamped ‘Secret’ in red, was sent by the bureau of the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht (written by Josef Mexner of the Rüstungsinspektion) with the subject ‘Judenaktion’. It asked the IV B 4 bureau to exempt 14 persons employed by the Blau-Aktion from wearing the yellow star imposed on Jews since 2. May 1942 and for a general travel permit 105. Heinz Lichtenstern of the Oxyde metal trading Lirm Ligured on this list (although mistakenly spelled as Lichtenstein). Not all the exemptions asked for were granted. In a letter dated 12 june 1942, four men of Sommer’s group are named among 28 people who got the highest level of exemptions: Emil Benjamin, Paul Jonas, Max Fleischmann and Richard Messow. Emil Benjamin who together with secretary Martha Stein and his brother-in-law Erwin Mittler 106 staffed the metals department of Union at the address Singel 194 in Amsterdam, was at times Sommer’s courier, carrying considerable amounts of cash. His case is a special one. He is also named in letter to Aus der Fünten with a list of Live informants of the Devisenschutzkommando (DSK), the German group chasing Jewish assets, dated 12 September 1942.107 In this letter Oskar Gerbig, head of the DSK, called those Live informants, among them Emil Benjamin, his most trusted and active agents, who had worked for him for a long time108. It is not known whether Sommer was aware of Benjamin’s DSK activities. Benjamin must not have been the only SD informant in place at Union. Probably his brother-in-law Erwin Mittler who assisted him was also part of the group. The purchasing bureaus were under constant surveillance of the SD and there were also nonJewish employees who could be recruited. On 22 August 1942, the Überwachungsstelle (i.e Falckenberg) after consultation with Hans Plümer of the Vierjahresplan, handed in three lists to Aus der Fünten of the Zentralstelle, labelled A. B and C. Category A were to be exempted of wearing a star badge, B-listed were to be handed a travel permit and were exempt of Evakuierung (deportation), C-listed were NIOD 077- 1305 -123 In a letter of 9 December 1941 and the following correspondence, the confusion about the passes was evident. Fahrenholtz admitted having talked to Plümer (spelled Blümer) in passing about such a apossibility. (# 127) 104 NIOD 077-1308 -196. The names mentioned were, in that order: Richard Messow, M. Van Zwanenberg, E. Malachowski, Paul Fr. Jonas, Alfred Gossels, Justus Nussbaum, Erich Jonas, Ludwig Cahn, Jac. Clarenburg, Salomon van Laar, Heinz Lichtenstein(sic), Max Fleischmann, Emil Benjamin, Bernhard Schott. 105 Emile Benjamin and Erwin Mittler were married to the Rosenzweig sisters respectively Eva and Ruth (Berlin 1904 and 1906). 106 107 Sytze van der Zee, Vogelvrij. Emil Benjamin had already moved to Amsterdam from Berlin in 1933. On so-called V-men (V= Vertrauen = trust) snitching for the DSK, see NIOD (G. Aalders) : Bij Verordening. De roof van het joodse vermogen in Nederland en het naoorlogse rechtsherstel, april 1988 Emil Benjamin and his wife had a Llat opposite that of Alfred Gossels and Minna Thormann in the Courbetstraat and possibly spied on them. In any case, Minna was arrested by the DSK, where Benjamin had worked before being rounded up. 108 31 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass ononly exempt of deportation (until further notice). This list would not be expanded and it did not imply the permit to use a bicycle or public transport All three lists contained the names of people of the Sommer and of the Union organisations. 109 The A list contained, again, the names of Paul Jonas, Richard Messow, Max Fleischmann and Emil Benjamin. This A list implies that Ernst Theodor Heymann and Heinz Bandermann, as they were not listed at all, enjoyed a special status. They did not need to be listed in order to enjoy privileges and were probably bestowed an identity pass without a J stamp – which dit not protect them from deportation in the end. Their Jewish ascendance was well known to Rauter, Aus der Fünten and Referat IV B 4. In fact, there is even a list of exemptions Bandermann applied for other than his own, implying that he had enough authority in the nazi hierarchy to be allowed to ask for exemptions and hand in a list. In September 1942, Sommer and Aus der Fünten had reached an agreement on principles of exemption for the Vierjahresplan people during a secret meeting which took place near the ruin of Baarn. According to survivors, Aus der Fünten was frequently seen in the Rokin ofLice of the Sommer organisation, but such a conversation required a maximum of discretion. The exemptions discussed concerned Jewish employees of Oxyde and Roba and the retained buyers of the Vierjahresplan. The exemptions were granted as agreed. One such example is Erich Jonas who on 19. September 1942 received an identity card with red J stamp but also a stamp from the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung which gave him access to all public transport lines within Amsterdam. He kept the card as a memento all his life. In 1943, he was granted an exemption of the ‘120.000’ series . It allowed the largest measure of freedom under the circumstances and the highest protection from deportation. There were around only 1100 of such cases. There were four categories of Jews and those exemptions were only granted upon proposal by a high ranking ofLicial of the occupants to one category. Plenipotentiary Richard Fiebig’s task as a facilitator for the activities of the Vierjahresplan included setting up the list of persons to beneLit of an exemption, at Lirst for a ‘40.000’ series exemption, then when the deportations started, for the ‘120.000’ series. But there were other ‘120.00’ lists where Jews employed by Sommer appear: a list proposed by the Überwachungsstelle (dr. Küsel) and a list by the Vierjahresplan (Veltjens/Plümer).110 Sommer’s people appear on them in varying constellations, but not all of his people made it to the ‘120.000’ series and were caught in round ups. The constellation of cloaked Lirms working covertly for the Blau Aktion was complemented by “legally operating” Lirms. The main ones were Oxyde and Roba, Lirms specialised in the buying and selling metals, run by German Jews and staffed mainly by Jews, but by that time operating under trustees (a German one, Heinrich Strasburger for Oxyde, a Dutch one G.A. (Gerrit) de Vries for Roba). Both these Lirms were actually dealing mostly with the Dutch Bureau for nonferrous metals and conformed to its rules of allocation and to its Lixed prices, but they did business with Sommer. When Hermann Wallheimer was arrested on 27. July 1943 and locked up in the Amstelveenseweg prison (Havenstraat 6) as one of Sommers’ men, it was Roba which took over the stocks from Cufeniag, Wallheimer’s Lirm. The Roba owners, Robert Baruch and Willi Cohn, were at that point unaccounted for, their Lirm had been taken over. Willi Cohn survived and re-started Roba after the war. One of the purposes of imprisoning the metal men, was to Lind out about the hidden money they still had at their disposal and to discover all the reserves of stashed scrap metals and other goods scattered in various locations. There is a report on Hermann Wallheimer’s interrogation and a letter of his wife Hildegard (a.k.a. Blacky) denying she knew anything about the sum of 1600 guilders her husband had left behind. In fact this sum was only a fraction of the money Wallheimer had been able to hide. The rules and exceptions of the exemptions system caused a bureaucracy of their own. Sommer had a list of key persons (Lluctuating between 12 and 15) and a so-called “Nebengruppe”, an additional group, for whom lesser exemptions were asked for. This 109 NIOD 077- inv. nr. 1431 -153 110 NIOD 077- inv. Nr 1436 32 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onNebengruppe consisted mostly of family members of the main purchasers. In July 1942, Sommer had listed three groups according to their rights to circulate by public transport and on bicycle and three groups where the most favoured would not have to wear a star, would be able to travel with permit, have a telephone line at their disposal and were free from deportation. Group 2 had to wear a star and had otherwise most of the same privileges. Group 3 wore a star, had no phone line and no general travel permit. Sommer thus created a hierarchy of privileges among his Jewish personnel, in line with criteria negotiated by Plümer and by him with the Überwachungsstelle and the Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung. The total number of high level exemptions for the Vierjahresplan people was 39. On January 26. 1943, the number had been reduced to 31, and on March 20. 1943, they were 26 left. Four of those (the four noted above) were exempt of wearing a star badge. At that point, the report on the decrease of exemptions in the context of the plan for the extermination of Jews from the Netherlands declared: “The number of these black market purchasers will, according to the information from SS Sturmbannführer Hanke be further decreased.”111 The exemptions were not enough for Sommer’s operation to be able to function in a normal way. Sommer had to ask the authorities for additional permits of all kinds for most of his staff members and keeping them in a relatively free position require wheeling and dealing. In July 1942 Ludwig Cahn and Erich Jonas received injunctions sent by the Jewish Council on behalf of the occupying authorities, requesting them to present themselves to be sent to Germany for work, upon which Sommer asked the council to retract the request. Sommer had repeatedly to ask for passes, testimonies and other documents which would insure a safe travel and relatively free movement for his staff. After the executive order by Hitler to make an end to covert purchases by German ofLicials on the black market had been issued, it was only a matter of time before the exemptions protecting Sommer’s buyers and their relatives would come to an end. The end was on 7. June 1943, when H. J. Falckenberg from the Überwachungsstelle sent a letter to Aus der Fünten, stating that seventeen Jews working for Sommer were no longer needed – which meant they did not beneLit from any protection against deportation any more. Even after Blau Aktion black market dealing had been formally forbidden on 6. May 1943, Sommer continued some activities. But it seems that by August 1943, the whole network assembled by him had totally broken down, as major players like Hermann Wallheimer and Paul Jonas were imprisoned, as well as other people who were less essential to Sommer’s operations, but were necessary for daily routine. Your money or your life As shown in his letter to Rauter, Sommer had asked the eleven buyers to Lind foreign persons or Lirms who would be ready to vouch for the 5000 $ in exchange for a safe exit. They are listed in a separate letter sent by Sommer: mostly industries and individuals from Switzerland, Great Britain and the United States112. Sommer later stated he handed Rauter 60.000 dollars which he had acquired on the black market at 3,5 times the ofLicial rate. The money was pocketed by Rauter while Sommer was told he should be happy not to be arrested for this black market transaction, at least so he told the judges considering his Wiedergutmachung appeal. The promises made to Heymann and Fleischmann about an emigration to Switzerland were not kept either. The request for a safe emigration in return for money or valuables was relatively common in the occupied Netherlands. What was unusual, was the late time and the amount of money for which Sommer expected Rauter to let go the buyers and their families. 111 NIOD 077-13017 b -17 (26.01.1943) and -80 (20.3.1943). Hanke remained in contact with Heinz Bandermann after 1945. NaHa NBI 2.09.16.02 inv. nr. 31514 Kurt Hanke born 03.feb.1899 NSDAP-Nr. 190.626 SS-Nr. 53.211 SS-Sturmbannführer: 10.09.1939 SS-Sturmbannführer d.R. Waffen-SS: 21.06.1942 Pers. Stab RF-SS (10.43) 112 NIOD 095 33 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onTo the Allies, this was a matter of human trafLicking (not of “saving Jews”), and those involved were listed on a Blacklist. A number of middlemen claimed to have the opportunity to buy emigration permits from the nazi authorities. Heinz Bandermann, one of the three men in charge at Union, was one of them. In a small number of cases, families were able to emigrate at a relatively late time, but June 1943 would have been exceptional. A well known example of a successful exit is the industrialist Bernard van Leer who took with him a whole menagerie of Lippizaner circus horses, with which he toured in the United States. Josef Veltjens at one point facilitated the escape of the Van Daele family who owned felt hat factories (Hoedhaar) in the Netherlands and Belgium. Zoepf of the IV B 4 Eichmann bureau in The Hague gave his approval. A number of shady Swiss operators also established themselves as freedom peddlers, like Arthur Wiederkehr –an attorney and later banker- or Walter Büchi. They were known to the Allies and blacklisted as human trafLickers. Swiss historians have made a detailed study of their practices, which included dealing at the highest level, i.e. with Adolf Eichmann, and with the bonus of trafLicking old Dutch masters 113. They found that the amounts offered or payed back in 1942 were nearer the 50.000 dollars mark than the 5000 dollars Sommer thought he could offer in 1943. In 1940, it was still possible for a family of four to escape by paying 95.000 dollars. But as time went on, the price rose. The transactions involved German authorities like Wirtschaftsprüfstelle, Devisenreferat, banks in Switzerland, Germany, the United States or South America. And as time went on, it was not freedom anymore that would be offered, but a stay in an “exchange camp” like Theresienstadt or Bergen-Belsen. In reality, the eventuality of being sent further to Auschwitz was real and that is exactly what happened in a number of cases. Moreover, even the exchange camps became camps of death as ill treatment and illness took their toll. Extortion money had in most of the cases been paid for nothing. It turned out to be one more dirty trick. It looks like Sommer’s attempt was doomed to fail. It was too little too late and he was barking at the wrong tree. Rauter was a diehard who was not inclined to let his victims escape. But according to historian Louis de Jong 114, it was in fact Fiebig who brought forward the argument that the Jewish buyers knew too much, although he conceded they could be treated leniently, considering what they had meant for Germany’s interests. Veltjens was also consulted. In a letter written on 12. July 1943, he recollects the events and expresses no disapproval about Sommer’s request to Rauter. Considering their utility, the Jews listed should enjoy some freedom until “emigration” was deLinitively decided. Emigration (Auswanderung) was used as a metaphor for deportation (Aus der Fünten, responsible for coordinating deportation, was the second in charge of the Zentralstelle für Auswanderung) 115. It was Plümer who had transmitted Sommer’s letter to Rauter and who brought the information back about the furious reaction of Fiebig and the categorical refusal of the emigration plans for “Sommer’s jews”. Sommer subsequently was summoned to The Hague to meet Fiebig. Fiebig called him a rascal and reproached him his lack of loyalty. Thereafter Fiebig had written to Rauter asking him to Lile Sommer’s letter, stating that he could not allow war secrets to come into the hands of the enemy once Sommer’s Jews were abroad. He then wrote to Harster on 23. July 1943 insisting that not only was Sommer’s request inappropriate, but that it was contrary to the Reich’s interests to allow people with that kind of knowledge to escape abroad. Furthermore, Sommer was in any matter concerning his, Fiebig’s department, to be referred to him. Bettina Zeugin, Thomas Sandkühler , 2001. Wiederkehr was well acquainted with the Swiss general consul in Amsterdam, which made it easier to smuggle paintings for the notorious art dealer Alois Miedl. The post-war Art Looting Intelligence Unit reported Wiederkehr’s activities. 113 114 Koninkrijk der Nederlanden ... vol. 7, p. 232 Source: ITS Bad Arolsen Arch, nr. 7183 . Veltjens states that some 160 millions RM worth of goods had been collected from the Netherlands and sent to Germany. 115 34 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onAt the end of July, the RSHA (Reich security department, Berlin) issued the order to arrest the buyers involved in the Blau-Aktion of Veltjens. Notorious nazi ofLicials were involved.116 On 23. July 1943, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the highest ranking security man of the Reich sent the fatal telegram which on 27. July 1943 lead to the arrest order of 28 Jewish men and women who had helped keeping the German war industry supplied through the Dutch black market. At a point when the chances of winning the war were drastically diminishing, the nazi hierarchy preferred to make sure the Netherlands were “Judenfrei” – free of Jews – rather than letting its Ministry of Armament and Ammunition exploit them for the beneLit of the war effort. The final round up The Linal round up was a well prepared secret operation targeting the so-called Veltjens Jews and their relatives. That included people employed directly by Sommer, people employed by Union and others who participated on and off. Telegrams were exchanged, meetings were convened, lists established, logistics prepared. On 27. July 1943 the arrest followed. According to Leon Magnus, the son of one of the arrested metal men, some Lifteen men were rounded up and brought to the Amstelveenseweg prison in the same van, after which they were interrogated. But what Leon Magnus perceived was only part of the events. The list mentioned twenty six men, two women and their relatives. Not all the men of the original Sommer list of eleven in the letter of Sommer to Rauter were listed and arrested that one day (or rather night). Erich Katz, Justus Nussbaum, Richard Messow are missing from the Lirst list of arrestees. 117 They managed to escape arrest that day, but the next day they were rounded up, as was Ernst Theodor Heymann. Bernhard Schott was taken into custody a few days later in The Hague, where he resided. Heymann, Bandermann and Fleischmann were sent separately to the dreaded Scheveningen prison (the “Cellenbarakken” of the so-called Orange Hotel). While in Scheveningen Heymann was able to use his inLluence to help prisoners linked to the resistance as some of them have testiLied on his trial. What followed is somewhat unclear. According to L. de Jong, Fleischmann and Heymann were transported to Sachsenhausen/Oranienburg, where they were assigned to a Kommando with relatively light tasks. But Heymann was deported to Theresienstadt on a special one-person transport on 30. August 1944 from Westerbork, kept apart from a transport with a few hundred inmates from Westerbork to Theresienstadt the same day. Up to the last, he was being given a special treatment. Bandermann also seems to have received a relatively lenient treatment. He had been released from Scheveningen in the Lirst months of 1944. At Sachsenhausen he was assigned to an ofLice task. At the end of the war he was arrested by the US army in Mauthausen whereto he had been transferred from Sachsenhausen, which indicates he was on a list of suspected collaborators of the nazi regime. On the bottom of the arrest list, a few sentences summarize the operation: In total, 65 Jews (including relatives) and one “Lirst grade cross-breed’ (Bandermann) were provisionally taken into custody and kept in an assembly hall of the Huis van Bewaring II prison in Amsterdam (also known as Amselveenseweg prison). Among the arrested were 7 Jews under 16 years of age. On 30. July 1943, Hauptsturmführer Wenzky reported from The Hague to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt Amt IV with a list of his own mentioning 23 names.118 The two women were Ruth Loszinsky-Reich and Frieda Deutsch-Wasserzug. 119 They were secretary (Sachverständige) and liaison person respectively at Sommer’s ofLice and at Union. Some family members of the arrested Sommer and Union people were released again. Still a 116 117 118 NIOD O77-1436 NIOD 077 inv. nr. 1318 NIOD O77-1436 inv. nr. 10 Wenzky was from the BdS-Abteilung L. V Ruth Loszynski-Reich, secretary for Paul Jonas and Richard Messow at Rokin 84 and Frieda Deutsch-Wasserzug who fulLilled a similar role at Union were the only women in the group detained in the same prison (while there were more female employees, most of them non-jewish secretaries and stenotypists). 119 35 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onfew of the Sommer buyers remained at large for a short time. In a letter from Referat IV-B-4 to Fahrenholtz (Referat III D) 120 written on the day after the arrest, the possibility of retaining the arrested Jews for an exchange with Germans kept prisoners in enemy countries is considered. The Linal decision was to be taken after consultation of Richard Fiebig. And then on 31 august 1943, Fahrenholtz is informed that an emigration of the Sommer Jews is totally excluded, even though they might represent a substantial exchange value. In August 1943, the bureau of Rauter informed referat IV B 4 in the Hague (the German ofLicers acting on behalf of Eichmann in the Netherlands) that authority on Sommer had already for a few months been transferred by Veltjens to the delegate of the Ministry of Armament and Ammunition (another of Fiebig’s many jobs). Meanwhile Veltjens had taken his distance from Sommer, although in Lirst instance he had had no objection to Sommer’s request. 121 The relationships between Fiebig and Sommer had cooled down to an alltime low. Fiebig started taking measures against Sommer. He asked Generalkommissar Fischböck to end Sommer’s permit to end after September 1943. Rauter Lixed the date to October 1st. 1943 subject to the condition that Sommer would deLinitively round up all procedures to end his activities in the Netherlands. On 31. August 1943, Referat IV-B-4 informed Fahrenholtz that a procedure to make Sommer stateless was being considered.122 The fate of Sommer’s jews was sealed on 24. September 1943 by a letter from the ofLice of chief of security Harster to Referat IV B 4 in the Hague concerning jews and “Mischlinge” (“crossbreed persons”) employed by purchasing bureaus 123 . It referred to an order from his ofLice issued on 23. July 1943, listing twenty six persons who were mentioned by name and address. At that point, the policy had come to also target Mischlinge and Jews married to non-Jews who had previously been exempted from deportation. Referat IV B 4, which had the decisive position concerning who was to be deported and when, was pressing other stakeholders to release the last protected Jews for deportation.124 As from 29. September 1943, authority concerning those persons and their families was conferred to Referat IV B 4, setting Eichmann’s subordinates free to do as they wished with all the persons named. This could mean only one thing: deportation, and that included the Live persons mentioned above. There were some mitigating words: in consideration of the services rendered for the purchase of goods on the black market and subject to the necessary approvals, the persons listed were to receive a special treatment (probably meaning to send them to Theresienstadt or Bergen-Belsen instead of Auschwitz directly). Bandermann and Fleischmann were transported to Sachsenhausen after a stay at the Scheveningen prison which was mainly NL NaHa PRAC 84055. SS Sturmbannführer Hans Joachim Fahrenholtz born 7 february 1911 in Berlin-Stieglitz, was a security ofLicer , head of Referat IIID of the Sicherheitsdienst, specialized in tasks concerning the economy. He had a degree in economics . He was already monitoring Sommer earlier on. After july 1944, he was promoted as head of security. He was kept prisoner in the Netherlands until 1949. He died in 1995. 120 121 NaHa NBI 5649 (WFV 2499) 122 NaHa CABR 107773 correspondence between BdS IIID and BdS IB ;NL NaHa PRAC 84055 123 NaHa PRAC 84055 Letter BDS (IV-E 2a 150/43) to R IV B ref. 24-08-1943 According to that document, on 27 July 1943 19 persons were arrested: Ph. Nussbaum, D.J. Reisner, R. Loszynski-Reich, F. Simon, S. Cracau, J. Elte, L. Hamburger, S. Swart, A. Gossels, H. Goldberg, L. Cahn, E. Mittler, J. Swart, J. Nussbaum, F. Deutsch-Wasserzug, J. Schwarz, H. Fürth, M. Schwarz (see also list in annex) The BDS mentions in addition (possibly because they were arrested later than the rest): P. Jonas, G. Scheiberg,, E. Malachowski, E. Heymann, (Heinz) Bandermann and (Max) Fleischmann. There are discrepancies between various lists. NIOD 077-1318 has a list of 28 dated 27. July 1943 which mentions in addition E. Benjamin, H. Wallheimer, A. Löwenthal, E. Simons, J.A. Magnus and L. Broder. The list drafted by SS Haupsturmführer Wenzky of 30. July 1943 mentions 23 persons. On that list, the same six are missing, as are E. Heymann and B. Schott. Not counting relatives, 31 names of members of the Vierjahresplan organization arrested on or shortly after 27. July 1943 appear in the documents. Heymann was transported to Theresienstadt on an individual transport, on July 31, 1944. (such individual transports were exceptional). Memo by Werner NIOD 077-1317a-145 of 20. September 1943 indicating that the Vierjahresplan had made efforts to have Mischlinge stay in the Netherlands. One such Mischling was Ralph Hamburger, junior clerk at Sommer’s bureau, but probably it was Bandermann who was targeted most, as he enjoyed the highest privileges together with Heymann. 124 36 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onpopulated by political prisoners. After his custody in Scheveningen Heymann - where he was on friendly terms with prisoners from the Dutch resistance - was transferred to Theresienstadt. Once purchasers for the Quadrennial Plan were in Theresienstadt, the privileges given in the Netherlands were largely ignored and transport to Auschwitz followed in most cases. Ernst Theodor Heymann did however come to be part of the list of Prominenten (VIP) who were protected even in Theresienstadt and ofLicially exempt of being sent to an extermination camp. He was still in Theresienstadt when the Russian army arrived. On 12 october 1943, Eichmann’s delegate Zoepf issued a telegram from Referat IV B 4 in the Hague, listing all the concerned “jews of the Blau-Aktion” and their dependents by name, date of birth and address, to be transferred to transit camp Westerbork until further deportation. The plan was to send them all to Theresienstadt. The arrest had been preceded by a feverish exchange of letters and memos between the ofLices concerned125. In the confusion, Sommer was at some point even thought to be Jewish himself. Fiebig let Rauter know that he considered Sommer responsible of misleading various departments in the interest of Jews. After the failure of Sommer’s plea to let his Jewish employees and their families leave and the imprisonment of the men on 27. July 1943, Sommer was ordered by the BdS (Security chief Rauter) to leave the Netherlands before 10. September 1943, as mentioned the same day in a letter from Fahrenholtz to Referat IV B 4. The order was aid to come from a high ranking representative, the Generalbevollmächtigte (plenipotentiary) for Finance and Commerce (Hans Fischböck), after consultation with other involved departments. This order was later as told above, prolonged until October 1st. Thereafter Rauter gave Sommer twenty days respite, after which he had to report at the Wehrersatzkommando to be drafted and assigned to a unit. Sommer obviously did not obey. He was consequently arrested at the end of 1943 on orders of colonel Von Müller, chief of staff of the Wehrmacht, after having ignored an order by Harster to leave the Netherlands as well as his family. He was arrested at his home and detained in the military prison of Scheveningen for two weeks. At the beginning of 1944, he was ordered to take active service again in the German marine. He thereupon had his private chauffeur Cor Bokkelkamp drive him to Utrecht, wherefrom he was transferred to Germany. This quite well illustrates his weird ways. Once in the marine in Germany, he was able to persuade his superiors to send him back to the Netherlands to buy spare parts for submarines. But he was unable to do so, as he was taken into custody in april 1944 and sent back to Germany once again. Meanwhile, the Dutch bureau for nonferrous metals and the ministry of Arms and Ammunition (headed by Albert Speer) kept trying to free the metal buyers and their families. On 8. November 1943 Josef Mexner, the German authorized representative of Speer at the Rijksbureau wrote a letter to Vornholt, Fiebig’s assistant in The Hague about their agreement to free three men of the Sommer list and four others, including three purchasers for the bureau (Lichtenstern, Oberländer and Sax). On 14. January 1944, Vornholt pleaded with the Eichmann people of Referat IV B 4 in the Hague to have the seven previously mentioned metal buyers stay in Westerbork of have them released, in order to allow them to continue their work. But this was in the end fruitless. On 21. January 1944, a Linal refusal came from the Referat IV-B-4 of Eichmann in Berlin in a telegram. Vornholt was told the Entjudung (total removal of jews) of the Netherlands did not allow for any exceptions, all were to be sent to Westerbork. But in Westerbork, a list with the names of 12 Jews who were former members of the Veltjens organization who were transferred from the Amstelveenseweg to Westerbork was dispatched to Gemmeker from Rauter’s ofLice, with the inclusion of a note that these Jews were to be treated as inmates with extra rights. Without stating it explicitly, it conLirmed that they would not be sent directly to an extermination camp like Auschwitz or Sobibor, but to a camp like Bergen-Belsen or Theresienstadt, where no systematic extermination took Referat III D , SS Sbf Fahrenholtz; Vierjahresplan, Plümer; Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD; Referat IV B 4 Zoepf, 125 37 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onplace. That was of course, if they had abided by the rules, either before their arrival at Westerbork and since then – a condition which did not need to be stated. 126 In fact a few of them were given an S (Strafe = punishment) status, which meant their privileges were annulled. Justus Nussbaum had been brought to Westerbork on 4. November 1943 (his father on December 1st), Paul Friedrich Jonas followed on 21. January 1944 as did Rudolf Bernhard Joseph, another of the Sommer buyers. A telegram ordering the re-arrest of the three “legal” buyers of the bureau, who had been released from Westerbork with their families on 14. November 1943, was sent from Eichmann’s Berlin Referat IV B 4 on 10. February 1944.127 There were in fact only two left, as Sax had gone into hiding immediately after his release, with the help of Rijksbureau director Egbert de Jong. (He eventually survived the war with his wife Else Carsch, as did his parents-in-law, former owners of the famous Carsch department store). Oberländer and Lichtenstern with their families were returned to the camp. Oberländer was still in the camp with his wife Lilli when the Canadian troops arrived. Lichtenstern had been sent to Theresienstadt with his family and stayed there until liberation. Chances of survival The “privileged treatment” the Jewish Sommer men and their families were granted should have meant they had a better chance to survive. It meant they were kept in Westerbork until a later date. The necessity of keeping a working force present at Westerbork was acknowledged by the decision makers of bureau IV B 4 in The Hague.128 The activities of the group of men and women of the Vierjahresplan also meant that they were in majority not sent to extermination camps, but to the camps of Theresienstadt and Bergen-Belsen, which were at least partly used as camps for prisoners to be exchanged with German prisoners. In fact, Bergen-Belsen turned into an extermination camp, as hunger, duress and illness took care of killing the prisoners. Theresienstadt became a transit camp to extermination, although the process of deportation to Auschwitz had not been completed when it was liberated. Of the list of 29 persons mentioned in Sommer’s letter to Rauter, nine survived. Of the 47 names listed in the Sommer payroll papers (in total, there were more than eighty Jewish persons working for Sommer or with some kind of working relationship with him) of at least 26 died in a camp, either an extermination camp like Auschwitz, or as forced labourers. The fate of eight of them is unknown. The two youngest - Louis Goldwein (born 1922) and Ralph Hamburger (born 1923) – survived in hiding. Louis (Elieser Ludi) Goldwein who was a Wemeta employee was active in the Hechalutz group of Kurt Hannemann and in contact with the resistance group of Joop Westerweel.129 After going into hiding and a few failed escape attempts, he, with a small group, managed to reach Spain with the help of the French resistance. From Cadiz, they were able to emigrate to Palestine where they arrived on 4. November 1944 on the Portuguese ship Guinée. Louis Goldwein died in 2003 in Ramat Gan, Israel. 126 127 128 NIOD arch. 077 HSSPF, nr. 187b The re-arrest order from Eichmann was used as evidence against him at his process. Secret memo by IV-B-4- (L) of 20. September 1943 129 Main leaders of the "Hechalutz (pioneer) Underground" in the Netherlands: Joachim Simon ("Schuschu"), Kurt Hannemann, Norbert Klein, and Max Windmueller ("Cor"). A group of pioneers were on a list to obtain South American passports from Switzerland (with the help of Polish diplomats). Whether they effectively made use of them is unknown. 38 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onRalph Hamburger had become a Disponent (clerk) for Sommer in November 1942. 130 He was a so-called Mischling and did not have to wear a star badge. His biological mother Elisabeth Fischer was a German citizen of Lutheran faith. She had died while Ralph was a child. He had been baptized when he was four. His father Donald David, a banker, had emigrated to the Netherlands already in 1932, with his two sons and his mother Rosa Oppenheimer. Donald Hamburger remarried in 1933 in the Hague with Käthe Klindt, a German non-Jewish woman thirteen years his junior. When the situation got threatening in 1942, he had asked for and obtained an exemption from deportation. He was a war veteran, 70% invalid, decorated with the Iron Cross Lirst class and married in a Mischehe. This was a quite exceptional exemption for a so-called full-blooded Jew131. Had Ralph Hamburger refrained from resistance activities, he could have lived in the open relatively safely (except from the threat of Arbeitseinsatz). That he was able to go into hiding, is thanks to Sommer’s intervention after he had been arrested an kept in custody in Scheveningen. After Liberation, he stayed for some time in the Netherlands and emigrated to the US. He died in 2018. Of the list of eleven metal buyers, only Erich Jonas stayed in camp Westerbork until 1945. He was there with his wife Martha Simons when it was liberated. He and his wife (a daughter of rabbi Simons of Cologne-Deutz) had been in the possession of a ‘120.000’ exemption on 2. October 1943 which allowed them to stay in Amsterdam longer, which also meant that they were among the Westerbork inmates who were not deported for the time being. This ‘120.000’ exemption was one which was subject to the approval of the Referat IV B 4 in the Hague in accordance with Eichmann’s criteria and was the most coveted kind of exemption. Once in Westerbork, Erich Jonas was put to work in the metal shop, while his wife was a help in the camp hospital. Also, they were in and out of the hospital a few times between the end of 1943 and september 1944, when the last deportation train departed from Westerbork. Dr. Fritz Spanier, the Jewish head of the camp hospital, retained a number of detainees in the hospital and thus delayed their departure. 132 After liberation Erich and Martha Jonas stayed shortly in the Netherlands and then moved to the United States, where Erich went to work for Asoma, the parent company of the Dutch Oxyde, where Sommer had been Sonderbeauftragter and Heinz Lichtenstern was one of the directors. Martha Jonas’s brother Ernst Simons had been arrested on 27. July 1943, the fatal round up day. He had been working for the Schwarz brothers Max and Joseph, co-owners of Topy leather goods together with Max Fleischmann, who were also on that arrest list. Ernst Simons was sent to Bergen-Belsen and was totally emaciated when liberated, but returned to the Netherlands and eventually to Cologne in 1950, where he died in 2006. He had become a respected member of the Jewish community and has been honoured by the Cologne municipality in many ways. Of the two Schwarz brothers, only Max survived. In camp Westerbork, they had become heads of one of the smaller units, supervising the production of inner soles for wooden shoes. Their former associate Max Fleischmann also returned from the camps. Subsequently Max Schwarz went to court to oust Fleischmann from their Lirm Topy and won. Prior to that Sommer asked for the necessary travel permits for Ralph Hamburger in a letter on 4. November 1942. NIOD 95-16. He formerly had worked for Hans Tietje whose Lirm Nedeximpo handled clearing affairs for Sommer. Ralph’s brother Harald had already emigrated in December 1938 to South Africa. Rosa Oppenheimer Hamburger died in February 1940. The family moved from The Hague to Amsterdam. After Liberation, Ralph Hamburger left the Netherlands, became a presbyterian minister in the United States, was active in a mission in the GDR and died in September 2018. His father Donald Hamburger stayed in Amsterdam with his wife until their death (respectively 1963 and 1985). 130 131 NIOD BdS 77 -1308 exemption S-Po + SD IV B conLirmed on 14. May 1942 Martha Jonas, Erich Jonas’ wife was able to Lind work in the camp hospital. Hospital head surgeon Spanier was like Erich and Martha Jonas one of the prisoners who stayed in the camp until liberation. He had been in Westerbork since 1939, when he ended up there after the failed voyage of the Saint Louis. His position as the head of the camp hospital, which he had kept after the dutch authority on the camp had been transferred to the SS, gave him a special status. He was regularly in contact with the camp commander and enjoyed privileges. He used these privileges to help resisters in the camp communicate with a group in Amsterdam but was also seen by many prisoners as favouring his friends. 132 39 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onepisode, there had been a case against Fleischmann because of his role in Union. He had not been sentenced to jail but the incriminating facts were reason enough for the judge to rule against him in the case versus Max Schwarz. Fleischmann eventually returned to Essen and established a new business there, apparently living a quiet life. Richard Messow is missing from the arrest list of 27. July 1943. But Richard and Martha Messow’s foster care of the two Goldwasser boys proved fatal. In Westerbork, Martha and Richard cared for both boys. They were deported together to Theresienstadt, wherefrom they were transported to Auschwitz. Richard was sent to Auschwitz separately Lirst. Martha perished together with both boys, murdered on arrival.133 Hermann Wallheimer came back to Amsterdam from deportation to Theresienstadt and to Auschwitz134. He was liberated by the Russian army in Gleiwitz. His wife Hildegard Freund and his mother had been in hiding in Amsterdam under the protection of the resistance group of Bob (Claude Joseph) Uriot at Michelangelostraat 36 and payed for their protection with money Hermann had earned while working with Sommer. His mother died shortly after his return, in september 1945135. Her son had been arrested and interrogated shortly after returning from Auschwitz. Bob Uriot had written a letter to the police accusing him of collaboration. According to him, the money Wallheimer contributed to his resistance cell was only to buy protection after the war. Hermann Wallheimer stayed in the Netherlands until his death. He started a new life and rebuilt his Lirm into a successful scrap metals business, Lirst some 200 meters away from the Wemeta location, later in more spatious premises. Understandably, he gave this Lirm another name than Cufeniag. It turned out that he remained loyal to Sommer, for whom he testiLied twice favourably during Sommer’s Wiedergutmachung case.136 Ludwig Cahn also survived with his wife Edith Jonas, Paul Jonas’ daughter. After coming back, he went to work for Oxyde when it started anew in Amsterdam, had a son there and emigrated later with his family to the United States. He too stayed in the metal business. While Erich Malachowski’s wife and their daughter were hidden in the southern province of Limburg and survived, he died a prisoner in Dachau, as did Gustav Scheiberg another of the purchasers of the Sommer oganization. Justus Nussbaum and his cousin Alfred Gossels died as slave labourers at Stutthoff near Gdansk. The two eldest men in the list of eleven, Philip Nussbaum and Paul Jonas were sent from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz with their wives and murdered on arrival. Erich Katz, who had been sent from Westerbork to Auschwitz, was selected as a prisoner and died in the chaos of the death marches in March 1945. His wife and daughter had been murdered on arrival. Joseph Arieh Magnus, who worked for Sommer under the Cufeniag Llag, had avoided registration as much as possible. His family members were not registered as Jewish. He was still caught in the end, but survived. He started his scrap metals business anew after the war and expanded it successfully, succeeded by his son Leon. According to Leon in an When his parents Lled to Switzerland, Jacques Goldwasser was in the care of Richard and Martha Messow. His brother Fred had for a while been cared for by the Jonas family (Stadsarchief Amsterdam- registrations cards), but does not appear on the list in the letter to Rauter. Abraham Cheskel Goldwasser (born in Oswiecim/Auschwitz on 18 october 1901), had lived in Berlin where he married Liselotte Milter. In the Netherlands, he was in wholesale rags business. They had emigrated to the Netherlands in 1934 . Jacques and Fred were born in Amsterdam. He must have had contacts, if not dealings, with the Sommer group. In 1945, Liselotte and their third son Edward, who was born in Switzerland, traveled to Palestine. She had the hope of Linding the two boys, supposed to have been in a children transport from the camps. She returned empty handed. In 1953 the family emigrated to the US. 133 Wallheimer was sent to Auschwitz from Theresienstadt on September 28th 1944 Arolsen archives item 5126592 (online), on the same transport as Leon Broder, nº Ek. 134 135 There was a rumor that she committed suicide upon learning that her son was suspected of collaboration. 136 Staatsarchiv Hamburg Wiedergutmachungsakte Michael Sommer 40 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass oninterview137, his family’s survival was partly due to ignoring orders to get registered. Being caught late made a difference. Still they had to survive various concentration camps. Also according to Leon Magnus, the group of metal men - as he calls them- knew each other. He does not mention this was the case because they all were under the order of one man, Sommer. There was solidarity within the group. Leon Magnus mentions having received food from Mrs Gossels. Alfred Gossels was married to a non-jewish German woman from his home town, Auguste Minna Thormann, who had already emigrated in the Netherlands in 1923. He had courted her in Osnabrück before his emigration, but both their families were not favorable to a marriage. They had married in Brussels-Schaerbeek in 1939. Belgium was practically the only country where they could ofLicially marry in spite of the Nuremberg laws. Minna, who was still a German citizen though she entered the Netherlands already in 1923, was left free when her husband was taken to the Amstelveenseweg prison with other metal men of the Sommer group in July 1943. She even dared to ask Sommer for two months salary still due to her husband. As an ‘aryan’, even though she was married to a Jew, she was at that point in less danger. But she did more than stay in the background. According to Auguste Nussbaum, Justus’ cousin, she hid Jewish people in her apartment 138. After her husband and Justus Nussbaum were arrested, her apartment was visited by Germans while Sophie Nussbaum, Auguste’s sister, slept there. Minna Thormann blatantly lied and got away with it. She managed to go on living in Amsterdam for a while but in the end got arrested on 7. January 1944 by the Devisenschutzkommando DSK and kept in custody at the Amstelveenseweg prison, on suspicion of preventing Jewish assets from being looted by the German authorities, but probably also for having helped Jewish people. She was then sent to Vught camp, where she worked in the Philips Kommando (the camp factory of Philips corporation manufactering condensators for planes) and then Ravensbrück, wherefrom she was repatriated to Amsterdam in late May 1945. The Dutch authorities were divided between seeing her as an accolyte of Sommer on one hand and on the other hand as a person who helped Jewish people and in some cases made their survival possible. She had to contend with theft and betrayal. It took her years to obtain her non-enemy status while she was still uncertain about the fate of her husband. Sommer did in his way his best to help her. When interrogated by the Dutch political police, he stated he barely knew her and she had nothing to do with his business operation. Her registration card in Amsterdam mentions that the returned to Osnabrück in 1959. In Germany, she had to contend with the German red tape of the Wiedergutmachung and received only a small pension. She died in Osnabrück in 1986. Her husband Alfred never returned. He had died in December 1944 in camp Burggraben, a satellite camp of Stutthof, and is buried in Gdansk. Justus Nussbaum, his cousin, business partner, friend and likewise Sommer employee was sent to Stutthof and like him succumbed. After he was taken to a slave labour camp, Justus’ wife and daughter were sent to the gas chambers of Birkenau from Theresienstadt. Justus Nussbaum had been brought to Westerbork as a penal case on 4. November 1943 after the emprisonment in Amsterdam, probably because he had avoided arrest at Lirst. The red S on his registration card meant more duress and deportation to Auschwitz instead of Theresienstadt, which took place on one of the last trains, on 3. September 1944. Of the Cufeniag dozen or so Jewish employees, at least Live perished. The Cufeniag payroll was used mostly for metal sorters and handymen. They had even less chance to be sent to one of the so-called exchange camps of Theresienstadt of Bergen-Belsen than other people employed by Sommer. So although they stayed outside of Westerbork camp almost as long as holders of “120.000” exemptions, they were less likely to to survive . 137 Video collection of the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam. In Reise mit zwei Koffern. Auguste Nussbaum calls Mrs. Gossels Mia. She was registered under her maiden name as Auguste Minna Thormann. The address was Courbetstraat 28, second Lloor. A stair goes up to the attic, connecting the appartment with a few rooms where guests could stay. 138 41 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onThe leadership of the Union people, the threesome Fleischmann, Bandermann and Heymann made it through the vicissitudes of camps, but people in lower ranks in the Union organisation had less chance of survival. Max Fleischmann who had initially been sent to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg returned to the Netherlands from Bergen-Belsen 139 . He was arrested in 1946, but was released after two months. His case ended without a condemnation. When liberated, he had Lirst left for Switzerland (his wife had the Swiss nationality) and then for Germany where he later returned to for good and started a new wholesale Lirm in Düsseldorf in the shoe business. He stayed there until his death. He kept in touch with his Union acquaintance Hans Goldberg, who had stayed in the Netherlands where his family was kept in the dark about his real activities during the war.. Heinz Bandermann was sent to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg on 3. June 1944 and was in February 1945 sent to Mauthausen, one of the worst forced labour camps, which he also survived. Bandermann proved to be the most agile of all. When Mauthausen was liberated, he was taken into custody by the 11th Armed. Div. (3rd U. S. Army) on suspicion of war crimes. He subsequently was detained at the Dachau camp for prisoners of war. He was still there in January 1947, when the camp was in the process of being closed.140 Apparently, he was extradited and returned to the Netherlands, where he was interrogated by the police in Tilburg. Thereafter he was released, as he had managed to keep a low proLile. After which he quickly found his way to Switzerland. From there he returned to Germany, where he had been hiding painting by old Dutch masters while working for Union. He did even claim Wiedergutmachung in Hamburg where he had moved to, but died at the age of 48 in 1950 in Hamburg before the procedure had been concluded141. Ernst Theodor Heymann is a special case altogether. He was the subject of special attention from Küsel, head of the Überwachungsstelle. After he was taken into custody in July 1943, his wife Johanna Charlotte von Cramon was allowed to return to Germany if she so wished. He was at Lirst imprisoned in Scheveningen (Oranjehotel), then sent to Theresienstadt where he was put on the VIP list. He thus lived in relative comfort and security until the liberation of the camp, but coming back to the Netherlands proved a mistake. Although he had been recognized as a non-enemy alien in July 1945, he was taken into custody in February 1946 on account of collaboration with the enemy, put on trial and condemned to Live years in prison. Before his term ended, he was extradited to Germany where he set up an importexport Lirm. He died in Düsseldorf in 1968. Emil Benjamin had been the metal specialist at Union, although before the war his line of work had been leatherwares. His Lirm had gone bankrupt and when the Netherlands were invaded, he had a modest income from renting rooms on Courbetstraat 21 in Amsterdam. But somehow he found his way into the Union organisation and was given the opportunity to have a subordinate ofLice on Singel 194, next to the Rhodius Koenigs bank. He chartered real metal specialists like Fritz Bernhard Simon and Leon Broder, but he was the one who had the extensive travel permits. And he was the one who was able to gather a substantial income, earning like Sommer up to 5% commission money. When the Blau-Aktion was phased down, he buried jewels and coupons in two places, one of them together with Leon Broder, in Broder’s barber’s garden in Bilthoven. His cash money he stashed at a trusted bank. However, his Devisenschutzkommando informer status did not help him after all. He was arrested on 27. July 1943. He was murdered in Auschwitz on 11. February 1944. His Jewish wife Eva Rosenzweig was according to Sicherheisdienst man Oskar Gerbig, also a 140 NaHa 2.09.16.02 inv. nr. 31514 fold3 -registration card captured in Mauthausen – according L. de Jong what happened to Bandermann after leaving the Netherlands is unknown, (vol. 7 p 233), while we can follow his trace until February 1945 in Mauthausen. De Jong also mistakenly states that Max Fleischmann emigrated to the United States. Fleischmann in fact returned to Essen, his hometown, where he started a wholesale leather Lirm, which is listed in the phone directories of the Lifties. 141 42 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onvalued DSK informer. On the day her husband was arrested, she managed to hide at her husband’s ofLice on Singel 194 and was thereafter hidden by the concierge until Liberation day. After which she proceeded to recover the buried treasure, but not without the Dutch authorities intervening. For a short period in 1947 she rented a room from Minna Thormann, the widow of Alfred Gossels, one of Sommer’s metal men whom she was acquainted with before Minna’s arrest. Minna had also been hospitable to Alfred Freund, Hermann Wallheimer’s father-in-law. Before Eva had to hide, from her front windows at Courbetstraat 21, she had had full view on what happened around Minna’s Llat on the other side of the street, Courbetstraat 28. She might even have spied on her, though there is no evidence about it. Of the extended Benjamin-Rosenzweig-Mittler family, Eva was the only one to survive. Their survival strategy had been to provide the occupiers with conLidential information, which gave them special protection – for the time being. That strategy had not worked out. When interrogated in 1948, Sommer told his interrogators he did not understand why his helpers did not go into hiding after they had been told about Rauter’s refusal. This is forgetting how hard it was to Lind a safe hiding place in late 1943. The addresses of all eleven and their families were well known to the German authorities and they were probably kept under surveillance. Right and wrong Directly after the war, history was written in terms of right and wrong, heroes, victims and vilains. Contemporary historians take a more nuanced stance. But already for Lou de Jong, who shortly after the war was established as the ofLicial historian on the subject of the occupied Netherlands, judgment could be suspended. He was outraged by the treatment of the buyer Ernst Theodor Heymann, who got arrested more or less upon arrival from Theresienstadt. Louis De Jong disapproved of the harsh sentence against Heymann, compared to the leniency towards notorious perpetrators of economic crimes. What had happened during the Blau-Aktion could not even be called looting, he argued142. The goods had been paid for at normal black market rates and the funds came through the cloaking Lirms from the German state, not from the Dutch. This last part of the argument is only partly true. The money paid by the Germans had been taken from the Dutch in the Lirst place as a “contribution to the struggle against Bolshevism” and as payment for the costs of occupation. Moreover, De Jong does not take into account that the Lirm Balta where Heymann was a director since 1938, was founded together with his brother-in-law Hellmuth von Cramon who was a spy, with participation of the German Rhodius & Koenigs bank which was headed by Alfred Flesche, another German spy143. The premises used by Heymann were funded by Rhodius & Koenigs, which was an instrument of nazi looting, and Heymann’s employees were paid with nazi funds. Also, he knew about Flesche’s dealings in Cellastic 144. In November 1941, Veltjens designated Balta as the Lirst cloaked enterprise to start the Blau-Aktion, explicitly specifying it was headed by a Jew. De Jong also did not take into account that Heymann had been a producer of and agent for German weaponry in breach of the Versailles treaty and had sold weapons (including the famed Schmeisser machinegun) to all and sundry, whether Waffen SS or extremist French terror groups (la Cagoule). Although Balta was then operating in the neutral Netherlands, the arms were still produced and traded in breach of the Versailles treaty. Also the letter Veltjens had written in 1943 in favour of Heymann, which explained at large all Heymann had done for the Third Reich could only be detrimental for his defence before the Dutch judges. So all in all, the judge who condemned Heymann might have had a better case than 142 Judgment BG/BS Den Haag 14 october 1948 Heymann was released on 4. April 1949 and sent to Germany – while his family lived in the Netherlands. 143 Flesche had been arrested shortly before the invasion of the Netherlands but was immediately released once the German forces were in control. Cellastic was mentioned in a letter to Hellmuth von Cramon NaHa CABR 64109 . Cellastic was a Lirm used to buy discreetly patents deemed necessary for the German war industry (and to make them unavailable for others). 144 43 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onDe Jong suggests. Still, the punishment of his economic misdemeanors was as severe as that of notorious nazi war criminals with a much heavier charge. As for Michael Sommer, whom Louis de Jong judges harshly, his action in favour of his eleven buyers got back onto him as a boomerang. He was already known for his unorthodox ways, but this was the last straw. His superiors considered him an unreliable element and he was sacked. It seems there was some truth to this. He had already left Oxyde after a quarrel with its trustee Strasburger. According to some witnesses, he put unwilling suppliers under pressure to deliver goods by threatening to have their stocks preempted. There was also the suspicion that some goods had been retained by his organisation to be resold on the black market. According to Fiebig, this kind of behaviour was a reason for Veltjens to get rid of Sommer. Fiebig was forewarned by Veltjens and followed Sommer’s steps closely. And then a conLlict arose between Fiebig and Sommer about the payment of furniture for a casino Fiebig had wanted to set up in the Hague, which meant he could not count on Fiebig’s protection either. In Amsterdam, Sommer had adopted a luxurious lifestyle and he commuted between his home and Hamburg with large sums of money and valuables, or sent his chauffeur when not able to go himself, stashing away his beneLits. Smuggling money was of course forbidden by German law. The nazi morals allowed for looting, but a sin like smuggling came in handy to get rid of a troublesome person like Sommer. With the death of Veltjens in a plane crash in october 1943 on his way to Mussolini, Sommer’s last hope for protection vanished. Veltjens had in effect already disavowed Sommer when he had put him under the orders of Fiebig. After his release from the prison of Scheveningen, Sommer was reintegrated into the German marine and spent time in Wilhelmshaven, Wesermünde and Cuxhaven in a low rank. The SS forced his wife and son leave the comfort of their Amsterdam villa in a hurry to return to Germany. To make things worse, his Amsterdam home was broken into during their absence. While in Germany, Sommer still kept in touch with the Netherlands through his private chauffeur Cor whom he had given power of attorney. He even managed to be sent to Amsterdam by Marine Oberintendant Arend Wulff to buy goods for submarines in the Netherlands and in the process helped a Dutch shipper to smuggle coal into the Netherlands. He had the luck that his superior was Korvettenkapitän Ewald Schmidt (who changed his name later to Schmidt di Simoni) who was unwilling to deliver him to SS investigators when asked to do so145. It appeared that a procedure had been started by the Sicherheitsdienst to strip him off his German citizenship (Ausbürgerung). With protection and luck he managed to stay out of his pursuers’ hands. When the British forces Linally arrived in Hamburg, he was in hospital and unable to handle, while on the outside his possessions were being robbed or looted. He thereafter stayed in Hamburg, where he started a company for recycling the rubbles left by the allied bombing, together with a business partner. Ironically, his own home at Isestrasse 35 in Hamburg had been bombed out. Unfortunately for him, the Dutch authorities had not forgotten him. On 7. May 1947, he was arrested on suspicion of being responsible for the deportation of 15 jews to Auschwitz and the smuggling of jewelry from Holland during occupation. After his arrest, Sommer was detained in camp Neuengamme near Hamburg (previously a nazi camp), transferred to the Netherlands and interrogated, then kept at the Vught camp in 1948. But subsequently on 8. June 1948 he was brought to camp Mariënbosch near Nijmegen and was expelled without trial as an unwanted alien before returning to Hamburg. The expulsion was part of operation Black Tulip, which the Dutch government initiated to rid the Netherlands from Ewald Schmidt di Simoni (1898-1980) had been working for publishers before the war, but had been barred from the Kulturkammer for refusing to join the NSDAP. In 1939 he was drafted again (he had been a navy lieutenant in 1918). In 1946 he became one of the founding publishers of the weekly Die Welt, the Lirst opinion weekly authorised byt the British military government. 145 44 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onenemy aliens 146. The choice for this pragmatic solution did not mean that the Dutch prosecutor considered him innocent, even though in his Wiedergutmachung proceedings Sommer argued this to be the case. He never recovered businesswise. The Lirm he had started, Internationale Sprengkompagnie in Hamburg, could have brought solace but a row with his business partner put an end to this venture. He must have been a bitter man when in 1959 he wrote a letter to a special bureau, accusing Richard Fiebig of having caused or contributed to the deportation of German Jews in the Netherlands. This endeavor Lloundered too147. He died in 1970. With the disappearance of Sommer as a supplier of scrap metals and other goods to Westerbork and the imprisonment of the buyers in the camp, the continuity of supply for the industrial Westerbork project was endangered in the beginning of 1944. On 24. February 1944, Josef Mexner, the German supervisor of the Dutch bureau for nonferrous metals, wrote to Fiebig, the commissioner of the Reichskommissar for the ministry of armament and war production. He gave an exposé of the measures taken for the “Metallmobilisierung” in Westerbork. He reminded Fiebig about Westerbork having been declared by the Berlin headquarters to be the central place for dismantling and recycling shot down planes from France, Belgium, the Netherlands and a part of West Germany and dry batteries. He insisted on the necessity of keeping a part of the Jewish labour force in Westerbork. On 10. March 1944, Fiebig reacted by ascertaining that the necessary measures had been taken. So we can imply that delaying the deportation of a number of Jews from Westerbork was an ofLicial German policy – even though it was at the same time at odds with the policy of removing them: the interests of keeping the German industry on track were at odds with the interests of making a genocidal ideology come true.148 Egbert de Jong, the director of the bureau, had already taken his own measures. In the name of the Dutch state, he created a foundation called Stinonferin, with the purpose of insuring the supply of the Westerbork industry and retaining as many Jewish prisoners in Westerbork for as long as possible. Investing in a large brick hall within the perimeter of Westerbork was part of this policy. The larger the premises, the more prisoners could be kept in Westerbork. The Jewish prisoners Leopold Oberländer and Heinz Lichtenstern, the formerly director of N.V. Oxyde, were employees of Stinonferin and were allowed to travel from and to Westerbork to buy the reserves of scrap metal and other materials still available in the Netherlands. Hans Hermann Beyer, the Jewish detainee who was head of Dienstbereich 12 (the Westerbork industry which after june 1944 was renumbered unit 6) was looking over their shoulders. He was also the one who, before a transport, asked Gemmeker to retain 30 to 40 “S-cases” from the prison barrack to be put to work in the metal industry.149 S-cases who were being punished for having been in hiding and were recognisable by their special uniform, were almost always deported to an extermination camp. After september 1944, when the trains to camps had stopped, Stinonferin no longer served the purpose of keeping prisoners in Westerbork. Stinonferin was liquidated by De Jong almost directly after the end of the war, on 5. October 1945. It had no use anymore. Rijksbureau director Egbert de Jong who was in contact with the Dutch resistance, while seemingly executing the orders of the occupiers, stayed in close contact with Heinz As told by police commissioner H.R. Stoett, Amsterdam , Staatsarchiv Hamburg Wiedergutmachung # 67. Camp Marienbosch was part of the so–called Black Tulip operation started on 11. September 1946 by the Dutch government. It had the purpose of expelling German nationals and their families from the Netherlands. Some 3600 persons were expelled, some of whom had lived in the Netherlands for a long time before 1940 and there was no proof they had engaged in any political activities or looting. The operation was controversial as it targeted Germans indiscriminately and was stopped after political pressure, national as well as international. 146 147 Joggli Meihuizen has reported on this in his book on Richard Fiebig. NIOD 249-070A-12 . J. Presser (Ondergang, 1965) implies that Mexner would have been aware that the work of the Westerbork inmates would not contribute much to the German war effort. 148 149 NIOD 250i -716. 45 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onLichtenstern of Oxyde 150. Together they planned actions to slow the sorting and exporting of metals. One of the methods used in Westerbork, was on arrival of parties of metals, to mix them as much as possible. This would cause a slowing of the sorting operations and as a consequence keep jewish metal sorters longer in Westerbork. While this was the background of the Stinonferin operation, as can be read between the lines in a letter of his to Leopold Oberländer, Stinonferin and the Westerbork recycling activities were nonetheless at the service of the German war effort. In his letter, written largely before the liberation of the camp and meant to give Oberländer protection after the war, De Jong states that the materials for Westerbork were being collected exclusively for the Dutch industry. This was a white lie. It looks as if De Jong had a prescience of the witch hunting that was to come after the defeat of Germany. In fact practically all the wagons full of sorted metals from Westerbork rode directly to Germany to have the metals processed there 151. And in fact, only a small percentage of the metals collected by the bureau between 1940 and 1945 were provided to the Dutch industry. Already in 1941, De Jong had reached an agreement with the German occupiers, following transactions by his superior secretary-general Hirschfeld with Fischböck 152, stipulating with which volumes of metals various industries were to supply the Reich. De Jong managed to reduce the quota the Germans had been imposing at Lirst, for example 210 tons of tin instead of the 610 tons the Germans had asked for 153. But there was still an obligation to deliver metals to the German war industry. The factual difference between the Rijksbureau and the Sommer bureau is not so much whether they worked for the German war effort, which they both did, but that the Rijksbureau was forced to purchase goods for the Germans and did so at a prescribed low price, while Sommer acted willingly, paid much higher prices and made proLits. Hero or villain ? The resistance connecCon One of the most surprising testimonies for Sommer during his Wiedergutmachung case (to be discussed further on) is that of Daniel “Daan” Thomas François d’Angremond, connected to the Guermonprez resistance cell 154. D’Angremond had no business ties with Sommer and could be seen as an unprejudiced witness, unlike another witness like Berthold Joseph, a condemned war criminal who helped deliver fellow Jews to the Sicherheitsdienst, and a notorious liar. Another witness in favour of Sommer was Gerrit A. de Vries, former Treuhänder of Roba, who went sailing with the Rüstungsinspektion supervisors Mexner and Aster during the war on his yacht ‘Ariadne’. De Vries however had made use of his good contacts with the Rüstungsinspektion to help Jewish Roba employees. It is quite clear that he had reason to believe a “Rüstungsinspekteur” was open to accepting favours and make deals. Mexner was not strict in keeping his duties as a civil servant and his private interests separate. He acquired shares of the Lirm Blokmetaal - formerly owned by the German-Jewish industrialist Leon Broder - when it was “aryanized” by a the German H.W.H. Hennings. De Vries is an example of the ambiguity of the Treuhänder role. While he helped the Jewish owners and employees, he had to take on a role within the German occupation system. This Conversation with Ger van den Berg, son in law of Egbert de Jong, Rotterdam 17 march 2016. Before becoming a government ofLicial in 1938, De Jong had been working in the metal trading Lirm W. Van Houten in Rotterdam for some three decades. It is quite possible that Lichtenstern was a business acquaintance before 1939. He returned to the private sector in 1948 after he had been taken into custody and had his war past scrutinised. 150 151 NIOD 250i -808 152 NaHa 2.03.06, inv. nr. 61, (64th meeting 1941, agenda item 2) Algemene Zaken: College van Secretarissen-Generaal. Minutes, Decree on metals by Seyss-Inquart .13 june 1941 153 NIOD 039-643 Staatsarchiv Hamburg. Paul Guermonprez was a photographer and graphic designer who had studied shortly at the Bauhaus and married a Jewish co-student. He had refused to adhere to the Kulturkammer and joined the resistance and worked with the cell of Gerrit van der Veen. He was arrested in 1941 and again in 1943. He escaped in july 1943 en started his resistance activities again. He was condemned and executed in 1944. Before the war d’Angremond was a member of a paciList youth organisation. After the war he was one of the founders of the Dutch Humanist Association. 154 46 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onmade him a suspect in the eyes of the Dutch political police which began functioning right after the liberation events. During the liberation events in the Netherlands, De Vries took refuge in Belgium, while he was being throughly investigated and his belongings in the Netherlands were impounded (and his yacht was sold in his absence). However, in March 1948, he submitted an afLidavit signed by an impressive number of heads of Jewish companies (among them Roba and Oxyde), who testiLied to his actions in favour of their Jewish employees155. According to this testimony, de Vries had in 1942 agreed to defend the interests of jewish members of the metal sector, before approaching the German authorities to apply for a trusteeship. Once he had secured the job at Roba, he was able to negotiate an exemption for a list of jewish employees in his and other Lirms he prepared himself. In the following months, in agreement with Mr. J.J. Caron156, director of the Ondervakgroep Groothandel in Oude Non-Ferro Metalen in Amsterdam and Egbert de Jong, he added Jewish persons to the list who were working in another sector. He got the exemption list vetted by the Abwehrstelle Z. l. C in Baarn and the Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung in Amsterdam, after which the exemption stamps in the series coded 50.000, 60.000 and higher were added to the identity documents of the persons concerned. After fall 1942, when these exemptions were voided stepwise by the German authorities, De Vries was frequently involved in freeing arrested persons, negotiating at the Zentralstelle for the necessary papers and talking the guards at the Hollandse Schouwburg into releasing them before they would be transported to camp Westerbork. During the summer of 1943, he went on doing this work at night, but without ofLicial papers, possibly by bribing guards. De Vries had an ofLice in Amsterdam on Rokin, near to Sommer’s ofLice and they had frequent contacts. Also, the sorting of scrap metals from Sommer’s operation was at least in part carried out by Roba under De Vries’ management. They had a few hobbies in common, Sommer was also a sailer. Their exact relationship is not clear, but it was good enough to have De Vries testify in Sommer’s favour during the latter’s attempt to secure Wiedergutmachung. D’Angremond testiLied that Sommer helped release a number of resistants, and in the case of Arie Treurniet, who had already been arrested on 1940 and went onto trial, he is said to have helped reduce Treurniet’s sentence to two and a half years hard labour 157. Sommer also is said to have helped a couple called Van Gelder. He moreover got shoemaker Cornelis F. L. Bakker released from the building of the Sicherheitsdienst on Euterpestraat in Amsterdam where Bakker was being interrogated after incriminating items had been found in his home. Similarly on June 12, 1942, he had bailed out the suspect Gijsbert Cornelis Groen - who ran a bicycle garage and shop - from the police precinct. Groen was possibly one of his suppliers of bicycle parts through Cufeniag, but when arrested had been charged of smuggling textile goods 158. Another time, Sommer helped Jaap van Praag, a friend of d’Angremond, get out of the Haagse Veer Rotterdam prison159. D’Angremond was an NaHa 2.09.16 NBI inv. nr. 34722 Emil Benjamin. The Lirms were Cufeniag, H.J. van der Rijn N.V. ; S. Van der Laar, Utrecht; N.V. Mesametaal, N.V Oxyde; J.W. Cohen, Leeuwarden; Nemerka, Roba. 155 Johannis Jacobus Caron, (16 December 1910 Madjéné (Celebes/Sulawesi)- 10 March 1982, Amsterdam), attorney at Caron & Stevens. FulLilled a number of positions in industry. 156 Arie Treurniet, a good friend of Daan d’Angremond, worked for the internatioanl federation of transport workers ITF. The ITF was operating as an anti-fascist organisation and his members were by deLinition suspect to the nazi regime. Treurniet was arrested at his home in Amsterdam on 25. May 1940. Treurniet was transferred Münster and Düsseldorf and Linally to Berlin Moabit . His trial started on 8 april 1942, 2. Senat Volksgericht Berlin, Bellevuestrasse. He was sentenced to 2,5 years of prison. After a term in prison, he was transferred to Buchenwald in March 1943. in Berlin. He survived and was an important Ligure in the freethinkers movement. In 1946 he related in writing how he was arrested and put on trial, but did not mention Sommer (IIISG, archive collection Arie Treurniet nr. 16). However, Treurniet knew Sommer and about Sommer’s involvement with d’Angremond. (conversation with Kees and Tom d’Angremond, 12 may 2016) 157 158 Stadsarchief Amsterdam/Politierapporten_1940-1945/#EVOPR00183000004 159 Jaap van Praag (Amsterdam, 11 mei 1911 — Utrecht[1], 12 april 1981) was a member of the OnaLhankelijke Socialistische Partij (independent socialist party) an a teacher at a college in Dordrecht. After he was released from the Haagse Veer prison in Rotterdam, he went into hiding in Eindhoven. After the war, he was a co-founder of the Humanistisch Verbond (Humanist Association) and one of its prominent leaders. 47 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onemployee at the shoe department of the men’s wear store Hollenkamp in Amsterdam. He got to know some of his German customers better and Sommer was one of those, possibly on the occasion in 1940 when Sommer ordered uniforms for the German marine from the Hollenkamp tailoring department (probably including a captain’s uniform for himself). The Hollenkamp store was used to bribe members of the German security services. They were supplied suits made of the Linest English fabrics, which the store had hoarded before the war. Sommer was known to wear a captain’s uniform when he needed to impress. Sommer approached Simonis, the Sicherheitsdienst man handling the Van Praag case and invited him to try on expensive English suits and apparel in the Hollenkamp store where d’Angremond worked and they gained his trust. There followed an invitation to a Wehrmacht party which was richly provided in alcoholic beverages and arrangements were made which lead to the release of Van Praag160. It is quite possible that the bribery went further than a few men’s suits. When Van Praag left the prison, he expected to be shot in the back, like a number of resistance members who were said to have been shot while escaping. But nothing happened. Van Praag did not know then to what or whom he had to thank his release, but he was later told about Sommer. And when Erich Malachowski’s Live years old daughter was in extremely bad shape, Sommer drove her in the middle of the night to the emergency hospital on Karel du Jardin street in Amsterdam where Jewish patients were excluded, but managed to have the young poliomyelitis patient treated nevertheless. This was conLirmed in writing by doctor H. Peters, whom Sommer had convinced to admit the child by taking full responsiblity for the consequences.161 After that, Ralph Hamburger, who was a junior clerk at Sommer’s ofLice and had the necessary connections took over to help the child and her mother Lind a hiding place. The Lirst refuge was at the house of dr. J.J. Hacke who Hamburger’s house doctor, then resistance man Map Gnirrep took over. Ralph Hamburger was in contact with the resistance group of Jan de Rek and had left Sommer’s ofLice in early spring 1943. In July 1943 a safer in the province of Limburg the South of the Netherlands was found, possibly with the help of the network lead by the catholic priest Henri Vullinghs, who had already worked together with the Westerweel group and the Palestine pioneers. This group helped Jewish people to Lind a place around Grubbenvorst and Sevenum. Mother and child had a separate hiding place and had to wait until Liberation to be reunited. Erich Malachowski did not come back. Kurt Schmitt, former member of the Sicherheitspolizei in The Hague testiLied about the release of a priest thanks to Sommer. Father Jansen had been held prisoner at St. Michielsgestel and Vught. Sommer had pleaded for Jansen with the Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei Harster and the commander of the Vught camp. D’Angremond also recalls the rescue of a family van Gelder. To these feats, Sommer himself adds having “organised” (wartime slang for stealing) a stamp from the director of the German Arbeitsamt (which could be used to forge documents). Another release obtained by Sommer, had been that of his junior clerk Ralph Hamburger who had been arrested by chance on the Damrak in Amsterdam in 1943 and sent to the Scheveningen military prison, not because he was half Jewish, but because he was suspected of having ties with the resistance – which he had. Hamburger was released after one day and could not imagine any other reason for it than an intervention by Sommer. 162 Sjoerd Wieling, Het Grondsop voor de Goddelozen. According to the d’Angremond family (conversation with Kees and Tom d’Angremond on 12 May 2016), the Sicherheitsdienst man responsible for Van Praag signed his release order while drunk, and the friends of Van Praag (who had german uniforms at their disposal) immediately left in a German car and presented the signed paper at the prison. 160 The hiding of Erich Malachowski’s wife and daughter in Limburg (southern Netherlands) was arranged by Ralph Hamburger, thanks to his contacts with the Dutch underground. Louis/Ludi Goldwein, a youngster who was on the payroll of Wemeta, was also part of a Jewish resistance network. He escaped to Spain in November 1944. 161 Phone conversation with Ralph Hamburger, 4 August 2016. Ralph Hamburger was a courier for the underground paper Het Parool and connected to the resistance group of Jan de Rek. 162 48 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onBut the most spectacular event is the rescue of some Lifteen Jewish people destined for deportation in three cars, one of them driven by Michael Sommer. Not all of them worked for Sommer or were related to one of his helpers. This episode, which is recounted by a number of witnesses, happened during one of the round ups of Jews in Amsterdam, but none of them named a date and neither did Sommer. On that occasion, Sommer is said to have bluffed his way through all the checkpoints and managed to persuade the guards that he had the authority to have the group released. 163 One of the families saved from deportation at the time was Erich Katz, with wife and daughter, as told by former Roba trustee Gerrit de Vries, who called Katz “a friend” in his testimony. De Vries did not add that the Katz family had in the end all been murdered in Auschwitz despite Sommer’s initial success. Auguste Nussbaum, Justus Nussbaum’s cousin, testiLies that Sommer had no problem employing Louis Goldwein at Wemeta, while knowing about his underground activities 164. Goldwein (nickname Ludi, underground alias: Wim, Wilhelm Scheenloop, in Israel Lirst name Eliezer) is already listed in the very Lirst list of names Sommer handed in at the beginning of his operation in Amsterdam to obtain exemptions. According to Auguste Nussbaum, Sommer had Goldwein’s name taken off deportation lists three times, as told to her and her sister by Goldwein himself. She was also told that Sommer donated some 6000 guilders to the underground. She also remembers her cousin Ludi telling about Sommer having Jewish people released from detention in the Hollandsche Schouwburg. Moreover, Goldwein testiLied to Yad Vashem that the German overseeer of his company got him released in July 1943. As Goldwein worked for Wemeta, and the only German overseeer of Wemeta was Sommer, the man who got Goldwein released can only be Sommer.165 This can only be the Amstelveenseweg prison, where Goldwein is listed among those arrested on 27. July 1943. This release meant that instead of being deported, Goldwein could go into hiding and eventually reached Palestine. By his intervention, Sommer saved Goldwein’s life. It was not without risk, as he was already being forced to shut off his Vierjahresplan operation. Sommer’s behaviour concerning Louis Goldwein’s release in Amsterdam is consistent with the case of Ralph Hamburger’s release from Scheveningen prison. In July 1943, Sommer already knew his operation was soon being stopped. Still he made use of whatever authority he had left to free his former employees, taking risks in their, not his (direct) interest. Some more family members of the people put to work by Sommer were involved with the Dutch resistance in one way or another although this does not imply Sommer knew about all of them. Marga Grünberg, the adolescent daughter of Siegfried Grünberg of Filmchemie – one of the Lirms taken over by Sommer - was given forged papers by the resistance and was also a courier 166. But she was not aware of Sommer’s activities. Her brother Manfred was involved in the resistance as well. One thing is certain: there is no evidence whatsoever that any resistance member who had to do with Sommer’s operations directly or indirectly was Berthold Joseph names among those freed by Sommer : Fritz Joseph (Rudolf Bernhard Joseph?) and Löwenthal (Moritz Löwenthal was Rudolf Joseph’s father-in-law) from the Lirm Tilona on Kerkstraat (the Lirm of Moritz Löwenthal and Rudolf Joseph), and in his testimony Gerard de Vries recalls Erich Katz, who had been working at Roba. This event could have been on the occasion of one of the round ups which took place in the Amsterdam-Zuid neighbourhood , on 6 and 9 August 1942. 163 Reise mit zwei Koffern, pp. 98-99. Louis Goldwein was a Palestine pioneer “Wir erfuhren, dass Ludi bei unserem Vetter Justus arbeitete, der immer noch frei war. Ludi erzählte uns, Justus betreibe eine kleine Gießerei. Nur Juden arbeiteten bei ihm. Er bereiste ganz Holland, um jedes Stückchen Metall aufzukaufen, dessen er habhaft wurde. Für ihn lohnte es sich sogar, Silberpapier zu sammeln. Er reiste natürlich ohne gelben Stern, mit Sondergenehmigung - die man normalerweise nicht bekam -‚ weil er für die deutsche Rüstungsindustrie tätig war. Im Rahmen seiner Arbeit empZing er sogar deutsche Gäste in seiner Wohnung. Der von den Deutschen beauftragte Aufseher in Justus’ Fabrik hieß Kapitän Sommer.” Sommer beZleißigte sich keiner großen Treue gegenüber seinen deutschen Auftraggebern. Er hatte Ludi bei Justus angestellt.” 164 Yad Vashem Item ID 3730255 Record Group O.33 - Testimonies, Diaries and Memoirs Collection similar items similar items File Number 5131 165 166 Phone conversation with Marga Grünberg JHM Amsterdam, april 2016 49 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onbetrayed by him. The two children of metal buyer Benno Barmé, Rita and Richard, were active members of the Dutch Resistance and paid their involvement with their life, but their death had nothing to do with Sommer167. All in all, different testimonies independent of each other point to Sommer’s involvement with the Dutch underground. We do not know for sure about Sommer’s motives or the costs involved (including bribes), but whatever they were, even enemies of Sommer did not deny he had helped Jews and resistants. The huge sum Sommer estimated he had spent for his donations to the Dutch resistance cannot be veriLied, but if the testimonies in his favour bear any truth, he must indeed have spent quite a lot, to begin with bribes. All these testimonies are in contrast with the harsh judgment of Sommer’s character by a number of researchers and investigators. While no survivor who had dealings with Sommer qualiLies him as an Jew hater, a damning sentence in a letter by Sommer to Aus der Fünten concerning one of his suppliers has persuaded the Dutch historian B. Sijes of Sommer’s antisemitism: ‘Sie wissen, dass ich in meinem Laden eigentlich die Nase mit den Juden voll haben müsste, aber da ich indirekt aus den Beständen dieses Mannes auch schon gekauft habe und er sehr gute Ware liefert, halte ich es für angebracht , dass man ihm noch 3 Monate Lebensfrist zubilligt.’168 This sounds as outright anti-semitism of the worst possible kind. How can Sommer the helper of Jews rhyme with Sommer the rabid anti-semite? Perhaps the answer lies in deeds versus words. There is enough evidence about Sommer helping Jews and takings risks while doing so. The words on the other hand have to be analysed in context. To stretch the exemption of a Jewish man by three months Sommer needed to get a favour from Aus der Fünten, responsible for organising deportations from the Netherlands, who was a notorious Jew-hater. Sommer had no leverage on him. His best chance to obtain the favour was to pamper Aus der Fünten by going along with his anti-semitic stance. Taken on face value, these words do, as historian Christian Ritz states169, show a despicable inhumanity. It was the inhumanity Sommer knew Aus der Fünten expected from a loyal fellow nazi and it could help as a means to an end. So there is as much reason to read those words as a ply, as there is to take them at face value. The words ‘3 Monate Lebensfrist’ – a three months lease of life – also imply that Sommer knew what would happen after the man was deported, while Fiebig, Sommer’s superior, testiLied repeatedly about not knowing his refusal to let the Sommer Jews would result in their demise. This makes Fiebig’s denial about the fate of the deported even more hollow. Sommer was not the only benefactor of the resistance among the men involved in the Vierjahresplan operation. Bandermann, Heymann, Tietje all contributed in one way or the other, which raises the question whether they did so once they were aware Germany would lose the war and were already preparing their post-war defence. During his post-war interrogation by Dutch policemen, Wallheimer stated he donated money to his cousin’s photography group. Ingeborg Wallheimer was one of the photographers secretly documenting the German occupation in a group later known as the Underground Camera, as did Fritz Kahlenberg, whom she married later. Also, Hermann Wallheimer used to tell his family an anecdote over loads of scrap metal being recycled in a very special way: they would be sold more than once to the Germans without them noticing. In his declaration in favour of Sommer, he stated that whenever he and others of the group of Jewish men working for Sommer noticed goods were to be sent to Germany, they would sabotage them (the German word he used was “demoliert”) and Sommer would just look 167 Eddy de Roever, Richard Barmé. Het korte leven van een scholier, Engelandvaarder, geheim agent en represaille- slachtoffer, 1995. Quoted by J. Meihuizen, in ‘Richard Fiebig’.’You know I should actually be fed up with Jews in my business, but as I have already indirectly bought stuff from this man’s stocks and what he sells is of high quality, I consider it appropriate to give him an additional lease of life for three months.’ 168 169 Ritz, Schreibtischtäter vor Gericht, p. 150. 50 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onaway 170. Whether fooling Pimetex and Roges counts as resistance remains to be seen. During his post-war interrogations, Wallheimer insisted he had his employees sabotage some of the goods that were to be delivered to the Germans. He also stated he had been accused of sabotage, consisting in selling substandard bicycle parts to Sommer171. When he returned to Amsterdam in 1945, his Lirst ofLicial address was Michelangelostraat 36, Lirst Lloor, the very same appartment previously occupied by the resistance group of Claude Joseph (Bob) Uriot and Tonny van Renterghem. Before that, the appartment had been occupied by the Jewish Kahlenberg family. The Uriot group helped Hermann’s Lirst wife Hildegard Freund (also called Blacky Wallheimer, later Blacky Broder), together with his mother Hedwig David to Lind a hiding place at Michelangelostraat 36 after they had hidden elsewhere.172 Blacky Wallheimer had found 50.000 guilders stashed away in her husband’s ofLice shortly after his arrest. Part of it was used for the resistance work and to pay for her and her mother-in-law’s subsistance173. After his wife and mother were taken care for by the Uriot group, the Wallheimers managed to provide the group with 2000 guilders monthly. According to Uriot himself, Wallheimer did so in order to keep his mother alive and to counteract his own misdemeanors. Uriot thought it only right that money earned on the black market would be used for resistance purposes. There was plenty left for Wallheimer anyway. But Wallheimer insisted had done more. He listed some Lifteen names of Jewish people who had received donations from him. He hoped they could testify in his favour. Some of them, like Walter Süskind (donation: 13.000 guilders) and Hetty Brandel of the Jewish Council were involved in smuggling children out of the Hollandsche Schouwburg, where rounded up Jews were being registered. 174 The complete story of the Wallheimer involvement has never been written down, he did not leave an ego document. Uriot was not convinced by Wallheimer’s support of the resistance. He wrote a letter to the prosecutor pleading for a harsh sentence against Wallheimer, who paid a substantial Line and could subsequently go on with his life. At his trial, Ernst Heymann, like Wallheimer, put forward that he helped Jewish families as much as he could. He too had made use of Jewish helpers extensively at his Lirm Union. He claimed he was aware of and turned a blind eye to the resistance activities of a Union employee. This must be Bert Pieter Baerends of the Van Dien resistance group, who in July 1945 sent Heymann a letter, thanking him for his help with forged papers and putting a car at the disposal of his group to smuggle arms from a cache in the Wieringermeer. Also a number of persons who were locked up at the Scheveningen prison at the same time as Heymann thanked him for the help he provided to them. But this help also raises questions: how was Heymann able to provide help from within jail, other than by taking advantage of a privileged treatment accorded to him thanks to his previous activities? Heymann did not complete is sentence in prison after the war. He was extradited to Germany in April 1949. He took up his import-export activities in Düsseldorf until his death in 1968. Max Fleischmann, who worked with Heymann at Union is said by one witness, Ernst Simons, to have put a car of Kühne & Nagel at the disposal of Jewish people during round ups, so they could Llee to a safe place. On the other hand, Emile Benjamin, who dealt in metals for Union at the Singel ofLice in Amsterdam, appears on a list of informants of the 170 Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Wiedergutmachung M. Sommer 171 NaHa NBI 2.09.16.16 inv. nr. 187761 The German detectives looking for members of the Sommer network were persuaded that Blacky Wallheimer took her husband’s proLits with her into hiding. She found refuge not far from where she had lived. There is a photograph, taken by Fritz Kahlenberg of the group The Underground Camera, which shows Blacky Wallheimer and her mother–in-law at a Sinterklaas party on Michelangelo street 36, together with allied pilots in hiding. Blacky Wallheimer’s activities for the resistance were acknowledged after the war by the British and American governments. 172 Possibly, she also paid for her father’s hiding place. Her mother Charlotte Sieskind had at that point already been murdered in Auschwitz, where she had arrived on 12. October 1942. 173 Süskind was the subject of a Dutch Lilm in 2012. Other well known names were the entertainers Herbert Nelson and his wife Sylvia Grohs. 174 51 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onSicherheitsdienst, more speciLically the Devisenschutzkommando 175.This combination of contradictory activities in the Union ofLices, required quite a bit of juggling of those involved, certainly if they acted as double agents. It is difLicult to check how much of the alleged activities in favour of the resistance is real. While there is a lot to support the stories about Sommer’s actions in favour of Jews and resistants, the 1953 testimony of Heinz Lichtenstern sketches quite another picture.176 According to Lichtenstern, Sommer wrote a letter to Aus der Fünten on 9. April 1943, requesting the deportation of the whole Lichtenstern family. To strengthen his statement, Lichtenstern referred to the banker Dr. Albert Bühler177. Bühler had during the occupation of the Netherlands, as the highest German manager of the Dutch national bank, handed in a list for the exemption of “economically valuable” Jews with an extended international network and Otto Weil of Lichtenstern’s Lirm Oxyde was one of them. But Bühler, who was by that time pursuing his career at the Landesbank in Frankfurt, could or would not recall an episode with Sommer taking place on 9. April 1943, neither could his former secretary. Sommer, so Lichtenstern told the judges, had been soured by his (Lichtenstern’s) refusal to collaborate in the purchase of metals on the black market. On the other hand, a letter from the Wehrmacht, division industry and commerce, shows that Lichtenstern was included in the list of men of the Vierjahresplan, to be exempted from wearing a yellow star and to be given a travel permit.178 A letter from banker Albert Bühler, written on April 14th 1943 to Willi Lages 179, throws yet another light onto the events. In this letter, Bühler asks Lages on request of the Reichsbankdirektorium to grant a small group of Oxyde people, in particular Heinz Lichtenstern and his wife not to be deported for the time being. Bühler had been conferring with Beauftragte Fiebig, who had no interest in retaining Oxyde people but could live with having all persons listed in Sommer’s protection list to be exempted from deportation until the time limit stated by Rauter (which turned out to be 29. September 1943, when the last privileged Jews were rounded up). The correspondence about the plans for the Oxyde and Vierjahresplan people of Sommer is present in the archives, but there is no sign whatever of the presumed letter by Sommer requiring deportation of the Lichtenstern family. So we can only conclude that while Sommer might have had a serious row with Heinz Lichtenstern and threatened him verbally, he did not pursue. An even more striking case is that of Heinz Bandermann. Like other men involved in the Vierjahresplan he was arrested, but unlike most of them he was not sent to Theresienstadt or Bergen-Belsen. He had survived Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen. At the liberation of Mauthausen, he had been arrested by US marshalls. After being sent to the Netherlands, he was also interrogated by Dutch investigators, but ultimately released. After the war and his stint as a prisoner suspected of serious misdemeanors, he started a new life in Hamburg. In 1948 he instigated a case against art dealer Bernhard Böhmer who had been one of the suppliers of Göring , though Böhmer had committed suicide when the 175 176 Sytze van der Zee ‘Vogelvrij’ Staatsarchiv Hamburg 351-11_16514 Albert Bühler (21 .2. 1895. Spaichingen – 1973) After legal and economic studies in 1924 he found a job at the Reichsbank. After a stay in Nicaragua. where he acted as a currency consultant. Bühler headed several different companies at the end of the thirties and headed smaller Reichsbank ofLices. In May 1940, Buhler was appointed Deputy Assistant to Wohlthat and appointed to the post of Representative at the Dutch Bank. There he headed the Commissioner's ofLice at the Dutch Bank. In April 1994, Bühler took over as successor to Wohlthat as representative of the Dutch Bank and remained in this position until the end of the war. Bühler was promoted to Reichsbank director in November 1942. In May 1945, Buhler was arrested following a claim by the board of the Dutch stock exchange association. As a possible witness in anticipated trials against German banks, he eventually remained interned until 1947. After his internment he continued his career in the Bank Deutscher Länder. At the beginning of the Lifties, Bühler joined the board of the German Cooperative Fund in Frankfurt. 177 NIOD 077-1308 - 196 Letter 28 May 1942. The name Lichtenstern was spelled Lichtenstein (date and place of birth do conLirm Lichtenstern was the person meant. 178 179 NIOD 077-1431-173 52 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onRussian troops approached. Indeed, employees of Union when interrogated after the war could recall Bandermann actively purchasing paintings by old Netherlandish masters alongside Miedl and Tietje and sending them to Germany. He could easily take some if not all paintings with him on the occasion of his multiple trips to Germany in his Llashy and comfortable Lancia Aprilia (which was conLiscated by the Dutch authorities in 1945). The paintings he acquired either for himself or Göring had been looted from Jewish collections. A prime example is a landscape by Jacob van Ruysdael, which had been sold by the German Treuhänder of the Adler and Oppenheimer leather industries, and which was claimed already in 1946 by Ann Luise Oppenheimer, then a US resident. The exact total number of paintings Bandermann was able to acquire is still unknown. One letter from Marshall Göring’s ofLice dated 27. August 1942 addressed to his Llat at Tauenziehenstrasse 18 in Berlin -which he kept throughout the whole war- reveals that not only had he been sending artwork directly to Göring, not always to Göring’s satisfaction, as some of the artwork arrived damaged. 180 But the most surprising is that Bandermann who as one of the directors of Union was a key Ligure in organising the black market purchases for Veltjens and thus Göring, stated he had been arrested by the Gestapo accused of resistance activities (which would the reason he was sent on 3. June 1944 to camp Sachsenhausen, where political prisoners were held). In fact, his superiors had discovered he smuggled money and valuables to private safes in Germany – which does not exclude that he could have donated to the resistance as a kind of insurance in case of nazi defeat. Heinz Bandermann (was) returned only brieLly to the Netherlands and later claimed Wiedergutmachung (compensation) as a victim of the nazi regime in Hamburg.181 There are many shades of resistance and the story of Sommer’s list leaves the door open for some of them. But perhaps one of the oddest turn of events yet to come was Sommer’s application for Wiedergutmachung (compensation) by the Federal Republic of Germany. It is evident that for the sake of his application he kept silent about any activity which could have compromised his success, and one of these might have been that he had been a spy. After all, the celebrated Oskar Schindler, who had just like him employed Jewish workers and protected them, is known to have been an intelligence agent of the Abwehr (nazi intelligence agency) of admiral Canaris. These tactics (employing Jewish people in a real Lirm) might have been devised at a higher decision level of the Abwehr and used in more cases than just Schindler’s or Sommer’s throughout occupied Europe. Heinz Bandermann followed a similar path. There is no written evidence to prove this, but the possibility that Sommer was a double agent is quite real. He was a member of the NSDAP since 1932, had had the abilities and opportunities to spy in the Netherlands in the thirties, was in 1940 operating in Wehrkreis X (Hamburg and surrounding area), which was the home base of the Abwehr branch spying on maritime goals in Belgium and the Netherlands and was able to pass the Dutch border without paperwork. On the other hand, he might also secretly have been siding with antifascists of all shades, including communists, which would explain his actions in favour of Arie Treurniet, resistants and Jews. The socialist and communist unions were very active in the German commercial Lleet and in the harbours. Sommer’s antipathy against them while in Vlissingen might have been a ploy to gain the trust of the nazi party. Putting forward this kind of connections would have been detrimental in his Wiedergutmachung claim case. In 180 An Ecce Homo by Gabriel Metsu has resurfaced, and H. Bandermann appears in the provenance list (after J. Goudstikker- which could have been acquired through Miedl who was a frequent visitor of Bandermann). Stefan Koldehoff names a number of other paintings in his book “Die Bilder sind unter uns”, from a listing from Bandermann’s claim against art dealer Böhmer - Jan Steen, Landscape with Ligures (63 x 87 cm), Antonius & Cleopatra (100 x 60 cm) - Rembrand’s King David (Kopf eines alten Juden) sold to tobacco tycoon Reemtsma - Pieter de Hooch ‘Frau besichtigt Fischkaüfe der Magd’ (provision) - Salomon van Ruysdael ‘Die Fähre’ - The Dutch Art Foundation listed a painting by G. Lundens, Mosseleters (26 x 20 cm) - in addition there is a letter (source: fold3 Ardelia Hall Collection Wiesbaden Administrative Records ) on a double portrait by P. Franchoys and a wooden Ligure of an abt by J. Pfunder 181 Staatsarchiv Hamburg 351-11_25979 Aktenzeichen 091002 53 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onthe Germany of Adenauer, a pre-war anti-fascist past in socialist or communist unions was not something to be used in one’s favour. Communist resistants were excluded from any form of compensation and would not be given a job as public servants, while ex-nazis were populating the public service in great numbers. So the fact that Sommer dit not put forward any such activity in left wing organisations does not exclude him having participated in secret resistance schemes. When reviewing the trajectory of various actors of this story, a pattern emerges from the behaviour of Sommer, Heymann, Bandermann and Wallheimer. They entertained a connection with the Dutch resistance while serving the interests of the German war economy. But whether their motives were inLluenced by the insight that Germany was going to lose the war and they would need witnesses for their defence or by a genuine will to accelerate the demise of the Third Reich will remain unclear. After the war, turning a blind eye or marginally helping the resistance was often put forward by people asked for proofs of their loyal conduct. One example: when he applied for Dutch citizenship in the Lifties, Hans Hermann Beyer, one of the Jewish men of authority in camp Westerbork and former head of its industry sector, insisted that he was the liaison between resistance groups and inmates of Westerbork and that he had helped people escape from Westerbork. The margin for positive action was always narrow. GeUng even Almost immediately after the war, actually already while the south of the Netherlands was liberated, the Dutch authorities began enquiries about Sommer and his network. The military government put in place an intelligence group to start the chase on war criminals and collaborators. And as soon as Hamburg was occupied by the allies, the Dutch investigators established contact with them and started to look out for Michael Sommer. Investigations were started about all main buyers and suppliers of Sommer – only to discover after a while that most of the buyers had been murdered in camps. The Dutch investigators who started their work in the summer of 1945 showed little understanding for the suffering and the trauma of concentration camp survivors. Most of the few German Jews who returned from camps were again considered German citizens by the Dutch authorities and had to apply for a “non-enemy declaration” which for many of them turned into a lengthy and demeaning adventure, which for some lasted until 1950 or even later. And once the non-enemy status had been secured, they had to pay 50 guilders “towards covering the costs incurred”. Already in august 1945 the political police interrogated Sommer’s employee Ruth Reich shortly after her return from Bergen-Belsen. Apart from a description of her work as a secretary and a shortlist of people in the Sommer bureau there was little she could or would contribute to the investigation. Then came the turn of Hermann Wallheimer 182. The investigators knew he had been sent to Auschwitz (spelled as Auswitz at the time). They stated he was the sole survivor of the group of Jewish purchasers for the Sommer bureau.183 In July 1946, Wallheimer was arrested on suspicion of collaboration with the enemy. He was released after one month, but had to stay available for questioning and pay a Line . Wallheimer declared he worked for Sommer in return for protection and that the value of the goods purchased was around 200.000 guilders. But one of Wallheimer’s main suppliers of bicycle parts declared he had delivered goods worth 500.000 guilders. After more pressure by the investigators, Wallheimer revised the Ligure to a total turnover worth 800.000 guilders. And then there was the Wallheimer’s account at the De Bary bank to which cheques amounting totally to some 600.000 guilders had been delivered. In a memo of 12 june 1947, investigator Mulder reached the conclusion that the Jewish purchasers in the Sommer organisation had not acted under duress, but had sought proLit. Wallheimer was to him a prime example: while Wallheimer had already earned 70.000 guilders with his 182 CABR 86804 (PRAC Amsterdam 84055) In fact, Erich Jonas and Ludwig Cahn had also survived and returned to Amsterdam. A few other members of the ofLice like Ruth Reich and Ralph Hamburger (half –Jewish) returned too. 183 54 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onLirst transaction, he had chosen to go on rather than to go into hiding. The reports of the prosecutors all show the same harshness. But then, there is no escape from comments made in secret German memos like the one issued by Margarete Frielingsdorf of Referat IV B 4 on 23 july 1943 who notes that “the Jews, who are for some exempted of wearing a star, have had their merits in the course of the Blau-Aktion“184 At the end of the day, Wallheimer reached a settlement to pay a Line of 10.000 guilders and an even more substantial sum to pay his taxes and was thereafter able to start a new business after Cufeniag had been liquidated. Sommer was eventually tracked down in Hamburg. In August 1946, the Dutch authorities asked for him to be traced and extradited to the Netherlands. On 7. May 1947, Sommer was arrested following the orders of L. V. Montfoort of the Netherlands War Crimes Committee. He was accused of being responsible for deportation of 15 jewish people to Auschwitz concentration camp and the looting of jewelry from Holland during the occupation.185 This was somewhat odd, considering Sommer had tried to help the Jews referred to from being deported and Fiebig was the one who had opposed to it. It is not clear on what evidence this accusation was based. Sommer kept his grudge against Fiebig. The two men had had a falling out about the payment of furniture for a casino Fiebig planned to open. Sommer was also convinced that the refusal of Fiebig to let “his” Jews go had directly lead to the death of most of them and made no secret of it. He did all he could to contribute to a condemnation of Fiebig. He also told the Dutch investigators that he was ordered by Fiebig to destroy his bookkeeping documents. When interrogated about this, Fiebig denied categorically and argued that at the time it happened, he had no interest in destroying the documents. Fiebig had been delivered to the Dutch authorities by the British. Although he was condemned to 12 years imprisonment at Lirst, the judgment was annulled by the highest appeal court186. In the end, after years and years of Fiebig staying in custody in the Netherlands, the whole case was dismissed and on 29. June 1951 he found himself on German soil again. While the investigation against Sommer went on, the Dutch authorities were trying to get their hands onto all of his assets. He had knowingly or unknowingly accumulated tax debts which the Dutch state wished to recover. While his Dutch Lirms had had a cloaking function during German occupation, that did not mean that these Lirms had no taxes to pay or his personal proLits could go tax free. Not surprisingly, Sommer had omitted to declare his huge proLits to the Dutch tax authorities. It took years to partly untangle the complicated Linancial constructions Veltjens and his collaborators had put up to fool the enemy. According to Fiebig, there were irregularities in the Sommer organisation, so Sommer had a few things to hide, but Fiebig had not been able to Lind solid proof for his misdemeanors. The Dutch investigators did their best to uncover Sommer’s deeds but they also had difLiculties Linding enough proof. But his private belongings – or what was left of them - were registered in the smallest details. The Dutch investigators Liled a claim concerning the looting of some of Sommer’s belongings by the US forces in Hamburg. His real estate in the Netherlands was put on sale by the Dutch state to cover his tax debts. His villa was acquired by the US government to house the consul, which settled the claim about the looting by US soldiers in Hamburg, even though the price paid was well below its market value. Those valuables the Dutch government was able to conLiscate were auctioned. And thus little was left of the 3 million guilders Sommer estimated he had earned throughout his Amsterdam venture. Sommer was not the only one of the Vierjahresplan men being targeted by the Dutch justice. Other men with a position of responsibility were held accountable, like Ernst Theodor Heymann, Max Fleischmann, Heinz Bandermann and Hermann Wallheimer. Of those four, CABR 86804 (PRAC Amsterdam 84055) Miss Frielinghof’s memo was part of an ongoing discussion between Referat IV B4 and other departments whether those Jews ought to be awarded the most coveted exemption coded 120.000 or be deported to Theresienstadt by the Lirst transport available. 184 185 CABR 209.09; 107773/11088 186 The ins and out of this trial are clariLied by J. Meihuizen in his book on Richard Fiebig. 55 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onwho all of them had been inmates of German camps, only Heymann was condemned to a substantial term in prison. Fiebig’s release from a Dutch jail was not the end of the Sommer-Fiebig feud. Shortly before the term of limitation for nazi crimes (except those concerning murder and manslaughter) 187, a date which could be called the formal end of denaziLication, Sommer took action. In December 1959, as already mentioned, he brought forward serious accusations which were relayed by the ‘Zentralverband der durch die Nürnberger Gesetze Betroffenen’ in Hamburg to the tribunal in Ludwigsburg concerned with nazi crimes. Fiebig was accused of having directly or indirectly contributed to the death of a large number of German Jewish refugees and Dutch Jews in the Netherlands. The accusation was based on the categorical refusal by Fiebig to let the Blau-Aktion Jews mentioned in Sommer’s letter of June 1943 emigrate to Portugal. There was also the incident when Sommer lent a large sum of money to Fiebig, according to Sommer under pressure. All in all, Sommer had attached twenty-nine documents to his Lirst letter, followed by a few more in February 1960, accompanying a letter to the Bavarian state prosecutor, who had been put in charge with the investigation188. In April 1960, Sommer testiLied against Fiebig, stating forcefully that Fiebig knew pretty well what fate was awaiting the Jews whose emigration to Portugal he vetoed, thus de facto condemning them to death. He saw Fiebig as a crony of Harster. Fiebig’s case was appended to that of Harster. Fiebig who by that time was a businessman whose past was no hinder to success in the booming German economy, interrupted a business trip in the United States to defend himself in Germany. When interrogated, he denied having been a close collaborator of Harster and having heard what fate was awaiting the Jews sent to the East. His refusal to let them emigrate, he said, had nothing to do with them being Jewish. It was purely and simply to prevent sensitive information about shortages of supplies for the German army falling into the hands of the Allies. But how could Sommer be aware of the fate of deportees, as his words ‘a 3 months lease of life’ imply, and Fiebig -who was at the core of the circle of power - not know what consequences his veto would have? But there was more. Sommer insisted he was blackmailed into lending 25.000 guilders to Fiebig, a sum meant to turn three houses on Wassenaarseweg in The Hague into safehouses for Fiebig’s Dienststelle. The loan was according to Sommer a condition for Fiebig agreeing to let the Jews of Sommer’s list escape to Portugal. Fiebig denied, saying that Sommer had lent him the money willingly and had been reimbursed the same year. The trial went on for six years before the case was closed, while Fiebig was able to pursue his career. Fiebig came out the winner. He survived Sommer by thirteen years and lived in comfort until his death on February 13th 1983. Wiedergutmachung, “making things good again” ? After Sommer was sent back to Germany in 1948, the Dutch authorities closed the books of his enterprises in 1952 with a negative balance. He found himself with only memories of his past luxury. In the meantime, Germany had become a federal republic and had issued laws for compensation of war damages. Sommer applied for Wiedergutmachung as a victim of nazi terror. Michael Sommer deemed his activities in favour of “his jews” reason enough to be recognized as worthy of compensation and applied for compensation shortly after his return, as soon as the Lirst step for a compensation legislation had been set . To this purpose, he had to Lind witnesses who would help his case. Walter Messow, his Lirst contact with the Jewish refugees in Amsterdam, whose brother had been murdered by the nazis, already Polizeipräsidium Essen, Beschuldigten-Vernehmung Richard Fiebig, 11.04.1960. Staatsarchiv München, Staatsanwaltschaften, 34879/1; 2 J. Meihuizen, Richard Fiebig, pp. 312-316 187 see J. Meihuizen ‘Richard Fiebig’ p. 312, source Staatsarchiv München, Staatsanwaltschaften 34879/1. The Bavarian Justice was by request of the Dutch state already investigating the cases of Zoepf, Harster , Gertrud Slottke, Herbert Aust, Albert Gemmeker and Karl Wörlein. 188 56 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass ontestiLied for Sommer in 1948 189. “Sommer was the man who got me out of the prison of Fuhlsbüttel after being taken into custody in November 1942, as a result of his relations and doing so doing saved me from dying in Auschwitz. “ In the same vein, a Peter Wiethüchter testiLied in favour of Sommer, stating that he was Paul Jonas’ nephew (his sister’s son) and a half-jew190. Sommer had made it possible for his family to phone freely with his uncle Paul Jonas, even though they were under surveillance by the SS police. In the course of the Wiedergutmachung proceedings, Sommer appealed to a series of witnesses, some of them more reliable than others, and not all of them testiLied 191. One of those who did, Berthold Joseph, was then a detainee at the Amstelveenseweg prison in Amsterdam and was later to be condemned to 18 years of prison (reduced in appeal to 15 years) for having betrayed a large number of Jews to the German authorities, causing the death of most of them192. But Daan d’Angremond was deLinitely a credible witness and had been involved with Sommer in helping resistance activities. So was Gerard A. de Vries, the trustee of Roba, who by the time he testiLied for Sommer, had been cleared from the accusation of being a collaborator, with the help of the Jewish entrepreneur who had asked him to take on the task. Those favourable testimonies were however not sufLicient to convince the authorities. After the social services of Hamburg refused to recognise his claims in a Lirst decision on 7. October 1949, he appealed against the decision. When his appeal was denied by the same services on 31. November 1949, he started a legal procedure against the city of Hamburg which was to go on for years. On 12. July 1950, the Landesverwaltungsgericht reversed the decision, recognised he was entitled to Lile a claim and condemned the city of Hamburg to pay the legal costs. The court accepted Sommer’s claim that although he had been a party member since 1932, he had been forced to leave Germany for Holland in 1940 and the Reichstatthalter Kaufmann had called him – and rightly so, the court stated – an “absolute enemy of the Party and a so-called defeatist”, and was about to put him on trial. During that Lirst phase, Sommer had denied having ever worked for the Vierjahresplan (a fact he did admit later on). The city of Hamburg, his opponent, had not carried out a thorough research in the Netherlands, which would have proven otherwise. As a result of the judgment, the social services were then forced to revise their Lirst refusal, but assessed his claim minimally, against which he again appealed. Then came another decision by the Landesverwaltungsgericht, which Sommer did not consider satisfying, upon which followed an appeal. On 11 November 1950, the “Hamburgisches Oberverwaltungsgericht” recognized his claim and reversed the previous decision, establishing the amount of his claim to 2000 Deutsche Mark. This covered compensation for nine days of detention. It was a Pyrrhus victory. There followed a period during which the whole process of compensation was Lluid while the new Federal Compensation Law (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz) was being prepared and the new bureaus (Ämter für Wiedergutmachung) were being put into place. In 1953 the Bundesergänzungsgesetz speciLied in detail the groups of persons to be compensated, the injuries to be considered, the satisfaction of the compensation claims, and the responsible authorities and procedural formalities. Three years later, it was replaced by the new Bundesentschädigungsgesetz which expanded the groups entitled to Lile claims, including corporations, artists and scientists, surviving dependants of murder victims, persons who were erroneously persecuted and persons who were persecuted because they were close to a victim of persecution. 189 NL NaHa NBI 162486 190 Peter Wiethüchter was probably the son of Wilhelm Wiethüchter and Else Jonas. Staatsarchiv Hamburg – The witnesses Sommer wanted to testify were: Walter Nagler, Hamburg; Henry Jonas, Traunstein; Karl Heinz Jacob, Bremen; Hermann Wallheimer, Amsterdam; Bernard Matthiessen, Hamburg-Groß Flottbeck; Paul Christophersen, Hamburg; Dr. H. Peters, Amsterdam; Paul Loeb van Zuilenburg, Heemstede; W.N. van der Mey, Amsterdam; Daniel Th. F, d’Angremont, Amstelveen; W.H.M. Blaisse, Amsterdam; G.A. de Vries, Amsterdam; Berthold Joseph, Amsterdam; and further Max Kehr, Hermann Kühn, Hamburg (ex Gestapo); Dr. Josef Kreuzer; Ewald Schmidt di Simoni; Dr. KlafLke; Hans Lindemann, Hamburg; Wulff (ex- Marine Intendant). Not all of them testiLied. 191 192 Sytze van der Zee, Vogelvrij 57 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onAt that time, the judicial apparatus of Germany was largely populated by men with a nazi past. The denaziLication had been very superLicial and victims of the nazi regime claiming compensation had to face judges and lawyers with a dubious background. Sommer still felt he had not been treated fairly and that the new law gave him the opportunity to be fully recognized as an opponent of the nazi regime and a victim of persecution. He went on to challenge his previous compensation. This time, his plea got thoroughly challenged and Dutch sources were studied to bring up new facts. But in the end, the ground of denial was based on the fact that, even though Sommer had helped Jewish people and possibly given some of them a chance to survive, and even though he had been arrested several times in the thirties, he had been cleared each and every time. He had not only been just a nominal party member as he claimed, but after having been ousted from the party by his foe Kaufmann, he had lobbied to recover his party membership and succeeded. He had never given up his party membership willingly. He had actively participated to furthering the nazi goals, in particular while working for the Vierjahresplan. The Linal ruling on 8 February 1961 denied his claim and apart of being exempted from payment of the legal court costs, he would get no compensation for any other costs he had incumbed. The judgment was conLirmed in appeal. This must have meant that the last nine years of his life, while he was involved in the trial against Fiebig, Sommer had to live on a very modest income, possibly even in poverty. Conclusion Athough various authors have written about the looting of the Netherlands and the BlauAktion in particular, they have not analysed the networks and the mechanisms which Michael Sommer put in place. Neither have they made clear how many people were involved. L. De Jong spoke of at least eleven jewish buyers, but there were also Jewish secretaries, scrap metal sorters and other workers. All in all, more than sixty Jewish people in Amsterdam and a handful in the province are named in the various Liles on Sommer. All these people earned an income and supported families. The funds for Michael Sommer’s operation and thus also their salaries or commissions were furnished by the Vierjahresplan of Göring via Roges and ultimately came from the so-called “contribution of the Netherlands to the war on Bolshevism”, the Dutch payments of the occupation costs. The volume of the operation was important. Sommer estimated it all in all to amount to some 38 million guilders. Post-war investigators had even higher estimates. Although Sommer might be truthful in stating he was not able to Lind sufLicient non-jewish people to roam the black market and process the scrap metals and other goods, it is very likely that taking advantage of their precarious situation, their family and business networks, their knowledge and abilities was the most efLicient way to insure a quick start of the operation. And not to forget, to count on the discretion that was asked for, considering that black marketeering was ofLicially banned by the Third Reich and severely punished. It would certainly have upset the German citizens to know that their government, which was so keen on purity, was getting its hands quite dirty behind the scenes. This would have been very detrimental for the loyalty of the German public and the image of the national-socialist government at all levels. Secrecy was a prerequisite for Sommer. Having Jewish employees and dealing with Jewish Lirms was practically a guarantee for discretion. For the Jews involved and their families and intimate friends it was a small miracle that they could earn a living and have their safety ensured for as long as Sommer’s operation was in place. They had every reason to keep what was going on for themselves. There thus was in a bizarre way a loyalty and secrecy bond between Sommer and “his” Jewish people. The loyalty within the Jewish group was instrumental to cement their loyalty to Sommer and he made fully use of it. That he was a party member is certain and that he was an opportunist seems rather evident. That being said, he at times seriously antagonised the nazi authorities – for example by ignoring directives from his superiors when helping persons involved in black marketing to be released from custody. If all the facts reported by witnesses and himself about his actions in favour of Jews and resistants are true, he could be seen as an equivalent of Schindler in the Netherlands. Unlike Rauter and others instrumental in the extermination of Jews from the Netherlands, there is no indication that he was an anti-semite during the period 1941-1944, although the Vlissingen incident in 1936 shows another side of his political position and the above mentioned letter to Aus der Fünten could raise serious doubts. But then, if he really 58 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onwas a double agent, he would have had to persuade the nazis of his loyalty. He seems to have treated his main Jewish suppliers as a paternalistic boss would, expecting blind loyalty but also readily helping them when needed. For the industrial project of Gemmeker, the commander of camp Westerbork, Michael Sommer and his group were an important asset. They made it possible to put in place all the infrastructure, equipment and supplies needed for the metals section of the camp industry within a few months, under the auspices of the Rijksbureau voor non-ferro metalen. On the other hand, Gemmeker had to juggle with the demands of Eichmann and deliver the weekly quota for deportation. Filling the trains headed for the camps in the East meant regularly depleting the work force of his industrial operation. For the Rijksbureau, keeping a really signiLicant amount of Jewish prisoners from being deported proved a mission impossible. In the end, their departure was only delayed for a few months. But for the few who were allowed to stay in Westerbork after September 1944, it meant their salvation. For the ministries of Göring and later for the ministry of armament and ammunition of Speer, there was also every reason to keep the supply of scarce metals and other important goods from drying up. To them it was upsetting that the targets set at the Wannsee conference for the extermination of jews, including those persons who had contributed to the war effort, were jeopardising their goal: keeping the German war production aLloat. At the end of the day, Sommer had supplied millions and millions of Reichsmark worth of goods to the German war economy with the reluctant help of “his” Jews. But he also had made a real effort to help 29 Jewish persons escape to a safehaven and got punished for it. Not only that, but he had effectively saved the lives of a few Jewish protégés and even some with whom he had no business relationship whatsoever. There is reason to Lind that he has not earned a place among the Yad Vashem righteous, even though there is reason to believe he helped Jews and resistants on a number of occasions and spent a considerable amount of the money he earned on bribes and such. Dutch historians have given Sommer no credit for his actions in favour of “his” jews and did not say a word about any possible involvement with the resistance. But then, were the Righteous Friedrich Carl von Oppenheim, Berthold Beitz or Oskar Schindler unequivocally righteous, and were they any less than Sommer, businessmen exchanging the protection of cornered Jews against their acceptance to work for the enemy? And was the much celebrated Schindler not a member of the nazi intelligence Abwehr? It is precisely in its details that the Michael Sommer episode uncovers some mechanisms and contradictions in the German occupation of foreign countries and the clash between the pragmatic and the ideological goals that the nazi top imposed upon itself. On a personal level, his real motives remain a mystery. Consulted archives and literature ? = to be consulted NIOD 001 Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber in den Niederlanden ? inv. nr. 8 circulaires OKW en Vierjahresplan 014 Reichskommissar für die besetzten niederländischen Gebieten ? inv. nr. 99 Besluit van de Generalbevollmächtigte für Rüstungsaufgaben im Vierjahresplan betreffende een planmatige aanpak van de produktiekracht van het bezette westgebied voor de Duitse oorlogsindustrie in plaats van een vrijwillige aanpak, 1943. inv. nr. 474 Josef Mexner 039 Generalkommissar für Finanz und Wirtschaft ?inv. nr 128-129 handel in lompen, oude en nieuwe metalen, inv. nr 648 zwarte handel; inv. nr 643 Export naar Duitsland inv. nr 625 Personeel inv.nr. 937 Stukken betreffende de activiteiten van de firma Navigation Joseph Veltjens Kommanditgesellschaft ten aanzien van overname van diamantslijperijen, 1940-1942 inv. nr 1041 Vierjahresplan inv. nr 1045 Aankoop van metalen door H. Strassburger (sic) van de firma Otto Wolf te Keulen ?inv. Nr. 1770 Non-ferro metalen 59 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass on077 Generalkommissariat für das Sicherheitswesen (Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer Nord-West) inv. nr. 187 b (old nrs) ? inv. nr. 187 d (old nrs) ? inv. nr. 187 e (old nrs) ? inv. nr. 189 g (old nrs) ? inv. nr. 190 f (old nrs) inv. nr. 985 vermerk BdS III C4 (H.J. Fahrenholtz?) 14.11.1942 ?inv. nr. 1001 vordering v. Ijzer en andere metalen ?inv. nr. 1305 Rüstungsjuden inv. nr. 1308 Vrijstellingen (exemptions) inv. nr. 1317 a and b inv nr. 1318 arrests - Aufkauforganisationen; inv. nr. 1320 stukken betreffende het al dan niet voorlopig ontslaan uit gevangenschap van zeven joodse metaalopkopers met de bedoeling hen de in het land verborgen metale op te kopen 1943-1944 inv. nr. 1431 inv. nr. 1436 verzoeken om en verlening van een Sperr-stempel, het zogenaamde 120.000 stempel (A- und B-liste), ten name van joden, 1943. (request for exemptions) 094 f Omnia inv. nr. 555 Cufeniag inv. nr. 2399 Union & Co, Agentuur- en Commissiehandel inv. nr. 1373 Wemeta 095 Michael Sommer & Firma Union inv. nr 16 Correspondentie van M. Sommer in zijn functies van inkoper en van Treuhänder betreffende personeelszaken, 1942 - 1944. inv. nr 48 Brief van de Beauftragte für den Vierjahresplan Veltjens aan het Reichssicherheitshauptamt te Berlijn betreffende een verzoek tot vrijlating uit gevangenschap van een inkoper van de Lirma Union, de joodse man Ernst Heymann, 11 september 1943 ? 174 Verslag van een bij het Rijksbureau gehouden vergadering met verschillende Nederlandse en Duitse instanties inzake non-ferro metalen, 25 oktober 1940. inv. nr. 179. Verslag van besprekingen met de Reichsstelle für Metalle en met de Duitsche walswerken en naar aanleiding van dit verslag een nota voor het College van Handel en Nijverheid inzake de organisatie van de afvoer van non-ferro metalen naar Duitsland, 18 maart - 23 april 1943. ?180a Handelstrust West inv. Nrs 44. Correspondentie met onder meer de Reichskommissar für die besetzten niederländischen Gebiete, Hotstoffwerke Fulda Muth & Co en NV Tweede Maatschappij Hoedhaar betreffende de arisering van de NV Hoedhaar en emigratie van de joodse familie Van Daelen, eigenaar van NV Hoedhaar. Kopieën, 18 oktober 1940 - 12 november 1946. inv. nr. 93. Overzicht met vermelding van de omzet en het saldo van verschillende personen en instanties, onder meer van plaatsvervanger van de Bevollmächtiger für Sonderaufgaben der Beauftragten für den Vierjahresplan H.H.E. Plümer en het Hauptwirtschaftslager der Waffen SS. Fotokopie, 9 februari 1942. ? inv. nr. 181 Brieven van de directeur van het Rijksbureau aan dhr. Oberländer inzake de oprichting en werkzaamheden van de Stichting Non-Ferro Inkoop (Stinonferin), 2 december 1943 - 20 april 1944. ? Inv. nr. 181 c, Bestand J. J. Weismann, 2 jj ? inv. nr. 187 Rapport over de ontwikkeling van het bureau tijdens de bezetting, [1945]. ? 197f BBV inv. nr. 2 Map, bevattende enkele na-oorlogse rapporten en verhoren, die betrekking hebben op de contacten van H.W.C. Tietje (koopman en industrieel te Amsterdam), met Alois Miedl, beheerder van de kunsthandel v.h. J. Goudstikker N.V., in verband met vermogensvlucht naar Duitsland door de verkoop van schilderijen; voorts o.m. een lijst met namen van Joden, die door Tietje geholpen zijn (Bijlage A bij een rapport dd. 25 juli 1945); een levensloop van Tietje uit 1938 en enkele andere stukken daterend van vóór en uit de oorlog, 5 augustus 1931 - 30 september 1945. 216 f 60 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass oninv. nr 304 rapport Rijksbureau voor non-ferro metalen1945-1946 249 Roges inv.nr. 0194a ? inv. nr 0683 Roges, Rohstoff-Handelsgesellschaft mbH Een bundel fotokopieën van stukken, aLkomstig van de Beauftragte für den Vierjahresplan, voor een deel bestemd voor de Roges. De stukken hebben voornamelijk betrekking op de Duitse maatregelen met betrekking tot de zwarte markt in de bezette gebieden en tot de Duitse inkopen op die markt. Aanwezig is o.m. een verslag van door Oberst Veltjens in mei 1942 met verschillende Duitse autoriteiten gevoerde besprekingen over deze materie en een verhandeling van Veltjens betreffende de zwarte markt en de Duitse inkopen, zonder datum. ? inv. nr. 0194b Rapport van O.K. Gerbig? inv. nr. - 627 (Fahrenholtz) Ing. nr. 0643 a4 Een bundel fotokopieën van stukken, aLkomstig van de Beauftragte für den Vierjahresplan, voor een deel bestemd voor de Roges. De stukken hebben voornamelijk betrekking op de Duitse maatregelen met betrekking tot de zwarte markt in de bezette gebieden en tot de Duitse inkopen op die markt. Aanwezig is o.m. een verslag van door Oberst Veltjens in mei 1942 met verschillende Duitse autoriteiten gevoerde besprekingen over deze materie en een verhandeling van Veltjens betreffende de zwarte markt en de Duitse inkopen, zonder datum. inv. nr. 0707A – 12 Correspondentie van de Deutsche Bevolmächtigte beim Reichsbüro für Nichteisenmetalle met Beauftragte Fiebig van het Ministerium für Rüstungs- und Kriegsproduktion over de arbeidsinzet van joden bij de metaalopslag in kamp Westerbork, 1944. (Mexner-Fiebig) inv. nr. 0948 Dossier - Joden - deportatie – Sperren inv. nr. 2 Bundel afschriften van brieven van het Devisenschutzkommando, Abwehrstelle Niederlande, de ÜberwachungsstelleNiederlande en andere Duitse instanties, gericht aan de Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung resp. de Sicherheitsdienst, over vrijstelling van bepaalde Joden van deportatie, alsmede afschriften van een aantal beknopte rapporten hierover, enkele lijsten van Joden, die in aanmerking kwamen voor een stempel "120.000" en enige correspondentie over de toekenning van deze stempels, 23 juli 1942 27 sept.1943. inv. nr. 1014 a1 letter 17 March 1942 HSSP- SD 250i Westerbork 266 OfLice of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes (Berlin Documentation Center) BBT 102 (NG 049) Seyss-Inquarts economische politiek t.o.v Nederland: Eingliederung; instemming van de Führer, in rondschrijven van Lammers aan Vierjahresplan, OKW, RWM en RErnM, oktober 1941. BBT 1644 (NG 1492) Aanvullend decreet van Hitler 19 mei 1940, waarbij Goering als superieur boven Seyss-Inquart gesteld wordt in zaken van het Vierjahrenplan. Kennisgeving van Lammers aan de Ministers, mei 1940. ? 270c Proces Eichmann inv. nr. 592 Werner over Mischlinge Vierjahresplan ? 270g inv. nr 8 letter by B. Sijes to B. Huber on Sommer, 30.11.1964 281 inv. nr 293 (interrogation Hans Plümer) inv. nr.273 v.d. Leeuw/Plümer HSSuPF‚ 69 B-d H.J. Fahrenholtz: ‘Wirtschaftstruktur, Wirtschaftsprobleme und SS- mässige Arbeit wirtschaftlichem Gebiet in den Niederlanden’ (zomer 1941) ? Doc. I - 250 B, Walter Büchi ? DOC I, 457, a-2 B N V : Rapport betr. ondervragingen van H. J. Fahrenholtz (april 1946) ? DOC 1-476, C proces-verbaal van C. Walder en P. Van Aalst inz. Fiebig, deel III, 19.01.1949, #5, #10 ? DOC 1- 693, a5 Kurt Hanke ? DOC I - 1608 Proces-verbaal PRAC Amsterdam inz. M. Sommer ? DOC I - 1852, PRAC Amsterdam, résumé inzake H. Wallheimer, 27.09.1946 Stadsarchief Amsterdam : persoonskaarten, woningkaarten, gemeentelijke politie Noord Hollands Archief, Haarlem Kamer van Koophandel, Wemeta 61 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onNational Archives, The Hague NaHa 2.03.06 inv. nr. 60, Algemene Zaken: College van Secretarissen-Generaal vergaderstukken 1940 2.03.06 inv. nr. 61, Algemene Zaken: College van Secretarissen-Generaal vergaderstukken 1941 ? 2.05.117 inv. nr. 6119 Buitenlandse Zaken Restitutie M. Sommer 2.06.076.09 /46 Stinonferin 2.09.08 Justitie / DG Bijzondere Rechtspleging ?inv. nr. 838 Deutsche Golddiskontbank te Berlijn Sonderkonto Blauaktion ?inv. Nr 839 Deutsche Golddiskontbank te Berlijn Sonderkonto Oberst Veltjens 2.14.08-249 (Sommer, 22.1. 1948) RIOD 2.14.08 inv. Nr 949 (Sommer processen-verbaal) CABR inv. nr. 86804 (PRAC Amsterdam 84055) inv. nr. 104946 (PRA Den Haag 3366/IV-’48) inv. nr. 104900 (PRA Den Haag 2730-IV-’48) inv. nr. 103313 (PRA Den Haag 2314/IIb-’46) inv. nr. 107773 (PF Amsterdam G11088) inv. nr. 64109 I, II, IIII (Ernst Theodor Heymann) inv. nr. 86746 (PRAC Amsterdam, Lile 87366 Max Fleischmann) inv. nr. 91035 (PRAC Amsterdam, Lile 40748 Max Fleischmann) inv. nr. 102941 (PRA Den Haag, Lile 78711b’45) (Heinz Bandermann) inv. nr. 106385 (PF Amsterdam, Lile T41077 Max Fleischmann) inv. nr. 107631 (Jacob Clarenburg) ? CABR 107773 Letter Fiebig to Rauter 23.06.1943 Letter BdS III D (Fahrenholtz) to BdS IV B 4 (Frielingsdorf), 27.08.1943; letter BdS IIID (Fahrenholtz) to BdS B 4 (Frielingsdorf), 09.090.1943 ? 2.09.06 Min. Jus. London 19841 E. Malachowski [MM92] 1943 NBI 2.09.16 inv.nr 31514 (Heinz Bandermann) inv.nr 34722 (Emil Benjamin) inv.nr 130069 (Josef Mexner) inv.nr 121726 (M. Malachowski-Grünebaum) inv.nr 5649 (WFV 2499) (Michael Sommer) inv.nr 73073 (Max Fleischmann, Topy) inv.nr 162485 (Michael Sommer) inv.nr 162486 (Michael Sommer) inv. nr. 167217 Vries, G.A. de inv. nr. 167224 Vries, G.A. de ---- Vries, G.A. de [PE67 3164] ?2.09.46 Min. Jus. Inv. Nr. 20167 “NEDEXIMPO” Onderzoeksarchief Frans Kluiters, nr. 2.21.424, inv. 181 (Abwehr) COOM 2552 Wallheimer IISG Dossier Arie Treurniet ? Bayerisches Landeskriminalamt, Strafsache g. R. Fiebig: Polizeiprasidium Hamburg, Vernehmungsniederschrift Michael Sommer 04.04.1960, Staatsarchiv München, Staatsanwaltschaften 34879/1, 34879/2 Polizeipräsidium Essen, Beschuldigten-Vernehmung Richard Fiebig, 11.04.1960. Bundesarchiv R 2/19558 Finanzierung und Abwicklung der Dienststelle des Bevollmächtigten Generalinspektors für Sonderaufgaben im Vierjahresplan, Dr. Ing. Todt (später: Oberst Veltjens)(not yet consulted) R 58/9279; R 3101/18956 R 121/828 Korrespondenz mit dem Beauftragten fur den Vierjahresplan 62 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onR 121/1462 Industriebeteiligungsgesellschaft mbH Pimetex R 121/964 Kupfer Mangelmetall RM 15/140 Gewinnung von 13 holländischen Küstenmotorschiffen für das sog. Sonderunternehmen "Veltjen" [sic] (nicht näher beschriebene Aktion des Reichsmarschalles Göring) (not yet consulted) RM 7/2510 Sonderstab für Handelskrieg und wirtschaftliche Kampfmaßnahmen (not yet consulted) ? Sonderarchiv Moskau, Fond 700: Beauftragter für den Vierjahresplan 1914-1945 Findbücher 1-2, 122 Akten 72. Verfügungen Görings an die Leitung der Waffen-SS, an Besatzungsbehörden in Frankreich, Belgien, den Niederlanden, Norwegen und anderen Ländern über das Verbot des Kaufs von Rohstoffen und Waren auf Schwarzmärkten. 1943, 7 Bl. 75. Vortrag von Paul Körner über den Export von Diamanten. Aufzeichnung von Treffen des Obersten Weltiens [sic, =Veltjens] mit Plümmer [sich, = Plümer], Hahnemann, Bosenhard, Pfeffer und anderen über den Export niederländischer und belgischer Diamanten. Informationen aus Spanien über Maßnahmen Görings zur Beschlagnahme von Wertgegenständen für den Erwerb von Devisen, über den Kauf amerikanischer Diamanten in London u. a. 1943-1945, 79 Bl. ? R 9361-I/37278 Sommer, Michael , Berlin Document Center (BDC): Personenbezogene Unterlagen der NSDAP Aktenzeichen V-45/1937 Geburtsdatum 18.3.1894 Sachakte Alte Signatur VBS 253 / 3408003731 Berlin-Lichterfelde )(not yet consulted) ? R 9361-II/41813 Bandermann, Heinz Sachakte Alte Signatur VBS 1 / 1000039941 BerlinLichterfelde ? R 9361-II/712059 Miedl, Alois Sammlung Berlin Document Center (BDC): Personenbezogene Unterlagen der NSDAP / Parteikorrespondenz Geburtsdatum 6.2.1908 Sachakte Alte Signatur VBS 1 / 1080015841 Berlin-Lichterfelde ? R 9361-II/144908 Cramon, Hellmuth von , Berlin Document Center (BDC): Personenbezogene Unterlagen der NSDAP / Parteikorrespondenz Geburtsdatum 6.10.1892 Sachakte Alte Signatur VBS 1 / 1010045262 Berlin-Lichterfelde Staatsarchiv Hamburg Entschädigungsverfahren Michael Sommer Wiedergutmachungsakte 351-11_16514 221-5_142 Erfolgreiche Klage auf Anerkennung der Wiedergutmachungsansprüche als politisch Verfolgter Urteil Vb VG 3881/49 Entschädigungsverfahren Heinz Bandermann Wiedergutmachungsakte 351-11 (not yet consulted) Entschädigungsverfahren Richard Messow 351-11_10227 (not yet consulted) ? Ernst Theodor Heymann Bijzonder Gerechtshof / Bijzondere StraLkamer Den Haag 481014 OMGUS "https://www.fold3.com/image/269912219/" https://www.fold3.com/image/269912219/ Dresdner Bank Exhibits 31-45 › Page 113 (on Roges and Pimetex) Interrogation of Hellmuth von Cramon, 20 March 1946https://www.fold3.com/image/231991115 and following Fold3 OMGUS –External Assets Investigation- Otto Wolff- Report regarding the Vierjahresplan Yad Vashem Item ID 3730255 Record Group O.33 - Testimonies, Diaries and Memoirs Collection similar items similar items File Number 5131 -Testimony of Elieser Ludi Goldwein, born in Meimbressen, Germany, 1922, regarding his experiences and the activities of the Zionist and underground movements in the Netherlands and France, 1938-1944 -Replies to the questionnaire, issued by the Itzhak Katzenelson Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heritage Museum and Study Center, 1958 and 1961 ?? Institut für Zeitgeschichte-Archiv- Staatliche und parteiamtliche Akten bis 1945-Deutsches Reich (bis 1945) –Militär – Zentrale Einrichtingen der Reichswehr und Wehrmacht- Spitzenbehörden – OKW.Wehrmachtsführungsstab - (Sd. St. HWK Sonderstab für Handelskrieg und wirtschaftliche Kampfmassnahmen (Special Staff for Economic Warfare) L. Eiber‚ Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung in der Hansestadt Hamburg in den Jahren 1929 bis 1939. Werftarbeiter, Hafenarbeiter und Seeleute: Konformität, Opposition, Widerstand Frankfurt am Main 2000. R. Hamburger, Eternally Grateful: Memoirs of a Christian Pilgrim, the autobiographical sketch of Ralph Hamburger (typescript). Pasadena, 2001 63 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onK. Happe, M. Mayer and J.-M. Dreyfus, Red. 2012. West- und Nordeuropa, 1940-Juni 1942. Vol 5. Oldenbourg, München. L. de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, vol. 7 H. Klemann, Dutch Industrial companies and the German occupation, 1940-1945, Erasmus University, 2005 S. Koldehoff, Die Bilder sind unter uns. Das Geschäft mit der NS-Raubkunst Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurtam-Main 2009 E. Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich : wer war was vor und nach 1945, Fischer, Frankfurt a. Main, 2003 J. Koll, Arthur Seyss-Inquart und die deutsche Besatzungspolitiek in den Niederlanden (1940-1945), Böhlau Verlag, Wien-Köln-Weimar, 2015 E. Laureys, Meesters van het diamant De Belgische diamantsector tijdens het nazibewind, Lannoo, Tielt 2005 W. Lindwer, A. Pennewaard: De treinreis. De miraculauze ontsnapping van Hongaars-Neerlandse Joden tijdens de bezetting, Amsterdam 2018. J. Meihuizen, Richard Fiebig en de uitbuiting van de Nederlandse industrie 1940-1945, Boom, Amsterdam, 2018. A. Moses-Nussbaum, Reise mit zwei Koffern Lebenserinnerungen edited by J. Kaumkötter \C. Rass Comments by F.Wolff, Jannis Panagiotidis Transl. from hebrew by R. Achlama Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2017 J. Presser, Ondergang. De vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse jodendom 1940-1945, Staatsuitgeverij, Den Haag 1985 C. Ritz, Schreibtischtäter vor Gericht. Das Verfahren vor dem Münchner Landgericht wegen der Deportation der niederländischen Juden (1959–1967). Schöningh, Paderborn/München/Wien, 2012 R. Schütz, Vermoedelijk op transport https://www.academia.edu/602303/Vermoedelijk_op_transport G. Teichmann The Journal of Holocaust Education, Vol.7, Nos.1&2, Summer/Autumn 1998, pp.67-88 – quote of interview Alfred Brünell R. H. Whealey, Hitler And Spain: The Nazi Role in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, The University of Kentucky, Lexingto 1989 S. Wieling, Het Grondsop voor de Goddelozen, thesis S. van der Zee Vogelvrij, Amsterdam 2010 B. Zeugin, T. Sandkühler: Die Schweiz und die deutschen Lösegelderpressungen in den besetzten Niederlanden. Vermögensentziehung, Freikauf, Austausch 1940–1945. Beitrag zur Forschung, Zürich 2001 (Veröffentlichungen der Unabhängigen Expertenkommission Schweiz – Zweiter Weltkrieg, Bd. 24). "http://bevrijdingsportretten.nl/portret/erich-martha-jonas/"http://bevrijdingsportretten.nl/portret/erichmartha-jonas/) Erich Jonas papers from Jonas family archive Erich Jonas cards from Joodse Raad (Red Cross Archives) and Stadsarchief Amsterdam interview Leon Magnus JHM (Joods Historisch Museum) 2000 getuigen Interview of Leon Magnus JHM Interview of Marga Grünberg, JHM Interview of Ger van den Berg, 17 march 2016, Rotterdam-Hillegersberg Phone conversation with Ralph Hamburger 4 August 2016 Phone conversation with Yvonne Malachowski December 2016 64 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onAppendix Schreiben (Durch Vierjahresplan, Abt. Wi.) von Michael Sommer (Beeidigter Sachverständiger der Industrie- und Handelskammer Hamburg, Amsterdam C., Rokin 84. an den Höheren SS- und Polizeiführer SS-Gruppenührer und Generalleutnant der Polizei W Rauter, Den Haag, vom 16. 6. 1943 Betr.: Auswanderung von Juden. Sehr geehrter Gruppenführer! Nach Rücksprache mit Herrn Hans Plümer vom Vierjahresplan gestatte ich mir, Ihnen folgendes zu unterbreiten:Vor circa 2 1/2 Jahren wurde ich durch den Vierjahresplan (Herrn Oberst Veltgens [sic] und Herrn Plümer) beauftragt, hochwertige Metalle, Pioniergeräte und dergleichen für die deutsche Wirtschaft und die Wehrmacht im Osten anzuschaffen. Es wurde mir damals die Auflage erteilt, die Käufe mit allen Mitteln zu forcieren. Hierzu benötigte ich in erster Linie Spezialkräfte, die aus der Branche kamen. Als ich dann versuchte, die Käufe mit Ariern durchzuführen. mißlang die Auftreibung fast sämtlicher Waren, so daß ich gezwungen war, auf Juden zurückzugreifen. Der Vierjahresplan war mit dieser meiner Einstellung von Juden einverstanden, und hat dieser dieselben durch den B. d. S. sicherstellen lassen. Das jüdische Personal hat in der ganzen Zeit ausgezeichnet gearbeitet, und wurde mir wiederholt über Berlin durch das RWM (Ministerialrat Dr. Joseph Drexl eine Anerkennung für meine Leistung ausgesprochen. Als dann die Sternfrage für Juden auftauchte, besprach ich diese Angelegenheit mit Herrn Ministerialrat Dr. Joseph Drex'l [sic], und erwähnte dieser hierbei, daß für die wichtigsten Juden unbedingt etwas getan werden müßte, damit meine Einkäufe, insbesondere Metalle, nicht zum Stillstand kämen. Darüber hinaus sprach ich mit dem Vierjahresplan, und wurde auch von dieser Seite aus ein stillschweigendes Übereinkommen getroffen, daß nach Ablauf unserer Aktion für die obenerwähnten Juden etwas getan werden müßte. Da z. Zt. die Judenfrage sehr akut ist, habe ich unter den bei mir beschäftigten Juden eine Umfrage gehalten, ob sie in der Lage wären, durch irgendwelche Kanäle etwas Geld aufzutreiben, um ihre Ausreise zu erleichtern. Das jüdische Personal hat mir die Versicherung gegeben, daß es pro Familie s. 5000,- in Bons zur Verfügung stellen könnte. Hinzu kommt noch die persönliche Leistung der Juden für das Reich, denn wenn diese nicht gewesen wären, wäre ich nicht in der Lage gewesen. ca. 7000 Tonnen hochwertige Metalle im Werte von ca. Fl. 10 000 000,- aufzutreiben. Es muß hierbei noch erwähnt werden, daß diese Juden Tausende von Tonnen Eisen und Stahl für den Festungs- und Panzergrabenbau für den Befehlshaber der Waffen-SS und für die OT unter den schwierigsten Umständen angeschafft haben. Die vielen anderen Artikel, die in die Millionenbeträge gehen, will ich hierbei gar nicht erwähnen. Ich behaupte daher mit ruhigem Gewissen, daß die bei mir beschäftigten Juden die wertvollsten von allen Juden in Holland waren und auch jetzt 65 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onnoch sind. Ich bin überzeugt davon, daß diese meine Stellungnahme von dem Vertreter des Herrn Reichsministers für Bewaffnung und Munition, Herrn Richard Fiebig, für den ich in dem letzten 3/4 Jahr fast alle Einkäufe tätigte, und auch vom Vierjahresplan (Herrn Hans Plümer) geteilt wird. Die zur Auswanderung vorgesehenen Juden sind: 1. Richard Messow, geb. 6. 2.88 in Berlin. wohnhaft Amsterdam,Watteaustraat 20 II, Personalausweis Nr. A 35/10909, Sperrstempel Nr. 40062. Martha Messow geb. Ernst,geb. 16. 1.01 in Witten am Rh., wohnhaft Amsterdam,Watteaustraat 20 II Personalausweis Nr. A 35/00348, Sperrstempel Nr. 40068. Jacques Goldwasser,geb. 6.3.38 in Amsterdam, wohnhaft Amsterdam,Watteaustraat 20 II, Pflegekind und Mündel von Richard Messow. Aufenthalt der Eltern des Kindes ist unbekannt 2. Paul Friedrich Jonas, Rosa Jonas geb. Isaak, 3. Erich Malachowski geb. 30.4.89 in Kiel, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Deurloostraat 90 I, Personalausweis Nr. O 54/0026, Sperrstempel Nr. 40057; geb. 9.1.91 in Köln, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Deurloostraat 90 I, Personalausweis Nr. O 4/00023, Sperrstempel Nr. 40059. geb. ı8. 12.99 in Hindenburg OIS, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Uiterwaardenstr. 284 I. Personalausweis Nr. A 35/10661, Sperrstempel Nr. 40055. Milli Malachowski geb. Grünebaum, geb. 5. 1. 07 in Holzheim, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Uiterwaardenstr. 284 I, Personalausweis Nr. A 35l/7939 Sperrstempel Nr. 40064. Yvonne Vera Malachowski,geb. 3. 6.38 in Amsterdam, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Uiterwaardenstr. 284 I. David Malachowski, 4. Hermann Wallheimer, geb. 3.1.64 in Borek, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Uiterwaardenstr. 284 Personalausweis Nr A 35/10660, Sperrstempel Nr. 41142. geb. 2.12.09 in Oldenburg, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Olympiaplein 121 III, Personalausweis Nr. A 35/ 14204, Sperrstempel Nr. 41133. Hildegard Wallheimer geb. Freund geb. 8.10.13 in Berlin, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Olympiaplein 121 III, Personalausweis N12 A 35/071O8, 66 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onSperrstempel Nr. 41134. Hedwig Wallheimer geb. David, geb. 27. 6.89 in Krefeld, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Olympiaplein 121 III, Personalausweis Nr: A 35/06202, Sperrstempel Nr. 41127. 5. Gustav Scheiberg geb. 13. 10. 93 in Münster/Westf., wohnhaft Amsterdam. Jan Willem Brouwersplein 29, Personalausweis Nr. A 35/604876, Sperrstempel Nr. 40291. Vera Scheiberg geb. van Esso,geb. 13. 8.06 in Meppel, wohnhaft Amsterdam, I. W Brouwersplein 29, Personalausweis Nr. A 35/526993, Sperrstempel Nr. 40292. Dorothea Scheiberg, 6. Alfred Gossels Emma Gossels 7. Justus Nussbaum Hertha Nussbaum Marianne Nussbaum, 8. Erich ]onas, geb. 27. 12. 30 in Rotterdam, wohnhaft Amsterdam, J. W Brouwersplein 29. geb. 17. 7. O7 in Osnabrück, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Courbetstraat 28, Personalausweis Nr. A 35/07720, Sperrstempel Nr. 40007. geb. Heilbrunn geb. 3. 3. 74 in Mühlhausen, Th. wohnhalt Amsterdam, Courbetstraat 28, Personalausweis Nr. A 35/0852, Sperrstempel Nr. 41128. geb. 1.3.01 in Osnabrück wohnhaft Amsterdam, Noorder Amstellaan 168 II, Personalausweis Nr. A 35/11518. Sperrstempel Nr. 40050. geb. Bein, geb. 7.1. I0 in Oberhausen, wohnhaft Amsterdam. Nr. Amstellaan 168 II. Personalausweis Nr. A 35I04487, Sperrstempel Nr. 40051. geb. 6. 4. 35 in Osnabrück. wohnhaft Amsterdam. Nr. Amstellaan 168 II geb. 14.3. I5 in Köln-Deutz, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Deurloostraat 90 I, Personalausweis Nr. O 54/00025, Sperrstempel Nr. 40067 Martha Jonas geb. Simons, geb. 7.12.20 in Köln-Deutz, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Deurloostraat 90 I, Personalausweis Nr. A 3S/ 13334, Sperrstempel Nr. 40076. 9. Ludwig Cahn, geb. 24. 3. 14 in Köln, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Deurloostraat 90 I, Personalausweis Nr. O 54/00015, Sperrstempel Nr. 40054. 67 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onEdith Cahn geb. Jonas. geb. 27. 8. I3 in Köln. wohnhaft Amsterdam, Deurloostraat 90 I, Personalausweis Nr. O 54/00024, Sperrstempel Nr. 40070. 10. Erich Katz, geb. 11.3. 03 in Duisburg, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Noorder Amstellaan 190. Personalausweis Nr. A 35/09676, Sperrstempel Nr. 40065. Margarete Katz geb. Meyer, geb. 4. 1. 1915 in Königshütte, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Nr. Amstellaan 198 I Personalausweis Nr. A 35/11070, Sperrstempel Nr. 40066. Mirjam Lisette Katz,geb. 30. 4. 37 in Essen, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Nr. Amstellaan 198 I 11. Philipp Nussbaum=, geb. 22. 8. 72 in Emden, wohnhaft Amsterdam, Legmeerstraat 60 hs Personalausweis Nr. A 35/11524 Sperrstempel Nr. 4115 Rachel Nussbaum geb. van Dijk geb. 14.3.73 in Bunde (Ostfriesland), wohnhaft Amsterdam, Legmeerstraat 60 hs Personalausweis Nr. A 35/06516 Sperrstempel Nr. 41116. Heil Hitler 68 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onFrom the Sommer papers Omnia Archives at NIOD, a provisional list of Jewish employees (or payed on commission) working for Sommer and/or Union or another purchasing organisation and various other sources Given name Name Birth Death Function Survived? Marius Bamberger ? ? Paper, Union ? Heinz Bandermann 09-10-1902 24-11-1950 Union yes Siegfried Barmé 22-05-1891 ? Iron, Union no Emil Benjamin 28-06-1881 11-02-1944 Union no ? Blumhof ? ? Union? Jacob Boas 01-02-1894 30-09-1942 ? no Alfred Boas 16-01-1923 28-08-1942 ? no Leon Broder 26-03-1906 Metal purchaser yes Abraham Broekman 08-02-1912 31-01-1943 ? no Ludwig Cahn 24-03-1914 21-06-2005 Wemeta yes Jacob Clarenburg 10-05-1892 after 1958 Metal purchaser; business partner of Sol van Laar yes Kurt Cohn 24-04-1902 18-11-1943 N.A.K. Einkäufe der Rohstoffe no Salomon Cracau 02-12-1911 20-01-1993 Metal purchaser yes Frieda Deutsch-Wasserzug 27-12-1897 25-02-1945 Union no Joachim Elte 10-12-1893 28-02-1945 Union accountant no Artur Josef Einhorn 13-04-1884 26-12-1944 Union/ Veland no Emil Ernst 22-06-1892 28-05-1943 Metal sorter no Max Fleischmann 22-04-1905 after 1970 Union yes Heinz Joachim Fürth 14-08-1911 07-12-1944 Union no Hans Goldberg 06-06-1910 After 1996 Raw hides Union yes Louis Goldwein 14-10-1922 18-02-2003 Wemeta yes Alfred Gossels 17-07-1907 12-1944 Wemeta no Salomon Goudsmit 10-04-1915 ? Old metals yes Siegfried F. Grünberg 27-07-1899 04-06-1972 Filmchemie yes Martha Pauline Kahn-Haber 04-04-1909 ? Secretary Union yes Lion Hamburger 08-12-1881 04-12-1944 Metals no Ralph Hamburger 1923 02-09-2018 Disponent, purchaser Blaue Aktion yes Ernst Theodor Heymann 03-03-1892 15-05-1968 Dir. Union yes Emil Jacob 13-04-1884 11-10-1944 Einkäufer f. allgemeine Güter no Paul Friedrich Jonas 30-04-1889 10-10-1944 Wemeta no Erich Jonas 14-03-1915 1973 Wemeta yes 69 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onHenri Meyer Jonas 03-09-1882 ? (wood trader) yes ? Berthold Joseph 27-08-1895 ? Textil (Union) yes Fritz Joseph 10-07-1893 At 1947 ? yes Rudolf Bernhard Joseph 16-01-1917 31-01-1944 Leather goods, various goods no Erich Katz 11-03-1903 15-03-1945 Metal purchaser no Felix Meijer Keizer 10-06-1884 1973 Metal purchaser yes David Idel Kremer 12-08-1903 30-09-1942 ? no Nathan Izaak Kropveld 27-11-1921 21-01-1945 ? no Salomon van Laar 17-10-1879 25-11-1958 Various goods, business partner of J. Clarenburg yes Henri De Leeuw 04-02-1904 09-08-1988 Metal ? yes Heinz Levy 29-04-1904 31-03-1944 ? Metal sorter no ? Chiel Liebermann 09-08-1891 1-01-1945 Union no Moritz B. Loewenthal 24-12-1886 05-03-1943 Textile , Union no Kurt M. Loewenthal ? ? Arthur Löwenthal 27-09-1906 21-07-1960 ? Yes Ruth Loszynski-Reich 26-08-1916 15-03-2011 Sachbearbeiterin fuer Metalle u. algemeine Güter, Stenotypistin yes David Malachowski 03-01-1864 23-03-1944 Einkäufer f. allgemeine Güter -Nebengruppe no Erich Malachowski 18-12-1899 03-03-1945 EMA Eisen und Stahl no Richard Messow 06-02-1888 03-10-1944 Purchaser no Erwin Mittler 01-02-1905 31-01-1945 Metal, Union no Philipp Nussbaum 22-08-1872 11-02-1944 Metal purchaser no Justus Nussbaum 01-03-1901 31-12-1944 Wemeta no Julius Philipp 01-03-1878 15-03-1944 Metal no Szaja Reiner 20-07-1897 07-02-1945 Leather? Union no Julius David Reisner 08-02-1899 31-12-1944 Metal purchaser no Salomo Samas 01-05-1918 29-02-1944 ? no Eliazer Schaap 2-01-1879 0-01-1945 Metal broker no Sally Gustav Scheiberg 13-10-1893 24-01-1945 Pelts + hides no Moses Schönbach 10-03-1893 24 11 1955 Metal purchaser yes Bernhard Schott 14-12-1884 7 July 1944 Union Den Haag no Josef Schwarz 31-10-1903 20-01-1945 Lederwaren, Union no Max Schwarz 04-04-1901 04-10-1965 Lederwaren, Union yes Fritz Bernhard Simon 11-04-1888 Aft 1969 Union yes Ernst Simons -08-1919 29-01-2008 Union yes 70 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onMartha Stein 27-01-1896 09-12-1992 Secretary Union yes David Stern 20-01-1897 24-10-1971 Leather Union yes Samuel Swart 03-09-1911 ? Metal sorter, Wemeta yes Jonas Swart 19-04-1919 28-02-1945 Metal sorter+ com. und Ablieferer Steenen Hoofd, Wemeta no Benjamin De Vries 29-07-1908 15-02-1945 Metal purchaser no Gerson Vroomen 20-06-1885 25-10-1944 Metal purchaser no Levie Vuisje 10-05-1915 30-11-1943 Metal sorter no Hermann Wallheimer 02-12-1909 08-12-1979 Metal purchaser yes Josef Julian Zucker 03-06-1892 15-02-1964 Metal purchaser yes ? Maurits Van Zwanenberg 05-03-1896 13-08-1942 food ?? no Note: the allies found looted goods belonging to Gustav en Vera Scheiberg. They were part of the restitution project of the Offenbach Archival Depot. Gustav and Vera Scheiberg were both murdered(see OMGUS archives).Sally Gustav Scheiberg was murdered in Dachau in 1945, his wife and thirteen years old daughter in Auschwitz in 1944. Jewish CUFENIAG (Wallheimer) employees or associates Hartog Cousin 02-10-1908 07-05-1943 no Salomon Cracau 02-12-1911 20 -01 01993 Aaron van Emrik 28-02-1891 31-08-1944 no Samuel Heide 16-11-1911 24-07-1982 yes Joseph Korper 31-03-1891 09-07-1943 no Markus Abraham Korper 08-02-1923 28-05-1943 no Norbert Loeb 01-10-1905 07-10-1990 Robert Joseph Löw 18-01-1910 07-08-1980 Joseph Arieh Magnus 12-01-1897 18-04-1966 Salomon Menist 29-04-1907 16-07-1943 no Max Umanski 26-11-1890 ? yes Scrap metals Metal sorter, metal purchaser yes yes yes Metal purchaser yes Protokoll Über die Abteilungsbesprechung vom 3. 11. 1941, an welcher vom Vierjahresplan Herr Oberstleutnant Veltjens und Herr Plümer teilnahmen. __ Nach einleitende Worten des Herrn Overregierungsrates Dr. Heinemann berichtete Jerr Oberstleutnant Veltjens über einzuführende Massnahmen zur Beseitigung des Schwarzhandels. In Zukunft sollen alle privaten und behördlichen Organisationen aus dem Schwarzhandel ausgeschaltet werden. Zu diesem Zweck sollen bestimmte Firmen ermächtigt werden, alle auf dem schwarzen Markt vorkommende, bewirtschafteten Waren, und zwar sowohl Rohstoffen wie Halb- und Fertigfabrikate, für die jeweils in Frage kommenden Reichsstellen aufzukaufen. Diesen Firmen sollen durch die Reichsstellen deutsche Firmen angeschlossen werden. Zunächst soll mit dieser 71 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onErmächtigung nur eine Firma, nämlich die Firma N.V. Balta aus Amsterdam, deren Inhaber ein Jude ist, ausgestattet werden. Die Abteilung GeWi. soll bei diesen Aufkäufen in der Weise mitwirken dass sie vor jedem Ankauf Herrn Plümer gegenüber bezüglich der fachlichen und preislichen Seite Stellung nimmt. Um nun gegebenenfalls schnell zugreifen zu können, wird Herr Oberstleutnant Veltjens bei den Reichsstellen anfragen, welche Waren aufgekauft werden sollen, welchen die deutschen Richtpreise für diese Waren sind, welche Ueberpreise für die Waren gezahlt werden können und bei welchen Waren bei den Reichsstellen im Falle eines Angebotes erst rückgefragt werden soll. Die ganze Aktion soll unter allen Umständen getarnt durchgeführt werden. Insbesonders darf sie bei den Reichsbüros nicht bekannt werden. Wenn den Reichsbüros ein Fall von Schwarzhandel bekannt word, wird der Schwarzhändler seitens der Abt. GeWi. nicht gedeckt werden; eine etwa gegen ihn erstattete Strafanzeige muss dann weiter laufen. Die Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem Vierjahresplan und der Abt. GeWi. soll, wie folgt, vor sich gehen. Werden dem Vierjahresplan Angebote gemacht, so gibt dieser sie an die Abt. GeWi. weiter. Bei der Abt. GeWi. werden diese Angebote dann von Gruppe 17 zusammen mit den einschlägigen Gruppen bearbeitet. Werden den Gruppen der Abt. GeWi. Von Schwarzhändlern Angebote gemacht, so zeigen sich die Gruppen gegenüber den Anbietenden uninteressiert, machen sich aber über etwaige Angebote genaue Aufzeichnungen und leiten diese mit ihrer Stellungnahme sofort an Gruppe 17 weiter, die sie dann mit dem Vierjahresplan in Verbindung setzt. Auf die Frage des Herrn Oberregierungsrates Dr. Heinemann, was mit den Waren geschehe, die in Wirklichkeit keine Schwarzbestände seien, sondern aus den zugeteilten Warenbeständen stammten, da diese wenn sie nicht auf das holländischen Kontingent angerechnet werden würden, der niederländischen Bedarfsdeckung verloren gingen, erklärte Oberstleutnant Veltjens, das sämtliche Warenbestände aus Schwarzverkäufen den Reichsstellen mit dem Vorbehalt angeboten werden sollen, dass es sich bei diesen Waren nicht um Waren aus dem holländischen Kontingent handle. Wenn dagegen Waren aufgekauft würden, welche nicht aus dem holländischen Kontingent stammen, sollen diese den Reichsstellen auch zusätzlich angeboten werden. In allen Fällen soll der Versuch gemacht werden, die Schwarzverkäufer zu fassen, damit diese nicht einen besonderen Anreiz erhalten, nur noch auf dem schwarzen Markt zu handeln. Herr Oberstleutnant Veltjens erklärte abschliessend, dass er den Sicherheitsdienst, die Abwehr und den Generalstaatsanwalt entsprechend informieren werde. Oi Source NIOD 039 inv. Nr. 1041 Oi= Oidtmann ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Wehrmachtsbefehlhaber Abt. Wi Adriaan Goekooplaan 7 F/Tr 28 Mai 1942 An den Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD Abteilung IV B4 DEN HAAG Geheim Nr 75181/429 Betrifft : Juden Aktion Unter Bezugnahme auf Ihren Anruf gebe ich Ihnen nachstehend eine Aufstellung der 14 in der Blauaktion tätigen Juden, für die Freistellung vom Tragen des Sternes sowie Reisegenehmigung erbeten wird: 72 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass on1. Richard Messow, Watteaustr. 20 Amsterdam geb. 6.2.88 in Berlin 2. M. Van Zwanenberg, v. Breestr. 284 Amsterdam geb. 5.3.96 in Oss 3. E. Malachowski, Uiterwaardenstr. 28 Amsterdam geb. 18.12.99 in Hindenburg 4. Paul Fr. Jonas, Plataanstr, 5 Duivendrecht geb. 20.4.89 in Kiel 5. Alfred Gossels, Courbetstr. 28 II Amsterdam geb. 17.7.08 in Osnabrück 6. Justus Nussbaum, Noorder Amstell. 168 Amsterdam geb. 1.3.01 in Osnabrück 7. Erich Jonas, Plataanstr. 5 Duivendrecht geb. 14.3.15 in Köln 8. Ludwig Cahn, Plataanstr. 5 Duivendrecht geb. 24.3.14 in Köln 9. Jac. Clarenburg, Katharijnens. 85 Utrecht geb. 10.5.92 in Utrecht 10. Salomon v. Laar, Weerdsingel O.Z. 59 Utrecht geb. 17.10.79 in Utrecht 11. Heinz Lichtenstein, De Lairessestr. 4 Amsterdam geb. 14.4.07 in Thorn 12. Max Fleischmann, Merwedepl. 11 Amsterdam geb. 22.4.02 in Dertingen 13. Emil Benjamin, Courbetstr. 21 Amsterdam geb. 28.6.81 in Salzwedel 14. Bernhard Schott, Ruichrocklaan 145 Den Haag geb. 14.12.84 in Frankfurt 8.7.42 Falkenberg Sonderführer Abt. Wi. i.A. Source: NIOD 077-1308-196 Note: Heinz Lichtenstein is in fact a misspelling of Heinz Lichtenstern whose birth date and place are mentioned correctly. Bernhard Schott does not appear on staff lists of Sommer in the archive collection NIOD 095 He was linked to the Heymann group in The Hague office. Schott had been a director of IG Farben corporation (Leopold Cassella & co in Frankfurt a. Main). The Schott family (Bernhard, his wife Margarethe and sons Hans Peter and and Ernst Walter) was deported on 5. April 1944 to Theresienstadt (Transport XXIV/5), in a group of seven jews ‘mit Verdiensten um das Reich und sonstigen Zivildiensten’. On 18. May 1944 Bernhard Schott was sent to Auschwitz(Transport Eb). His official death date is 7. July 1944) Of the 14 mentioned, Richard Messow, Paul Jonas, Max Fleischmann and Emil Benjamin obtained the right not to wear a star and to travel freely, as mentioned in a list of 28 persons, NIOD 077-1308 - 124 of 12 June 1942. The others at that point of time got more limited privileges. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Excerpt of the Nuremberg Trials - Goering and Veltjens 21 Jan. 46 The different German organisations in the occupied countries fell Into the habit of making clandestine purchases that became increasingly important in volume. Indeed, they began to compete among themselves for this merchandise, the chief result of which was to increase the prices, thus threatening to bring about inLlation. The Germans, while they continued to proLit by the clandestine purchases, were anxious that the money which they used should,, maintain as high a value as possible. To obviate such a situation, the rulers of the Reich decided in June 1942 to organise purchases on the black market methodically. Thus the Defendant Goering, the Delegate of the Four Year Plan, gave to Colonel Veltjens, on 13 June 1942, the mission of centralizing the structure of the black market in the occupied countries. This fact emerges from several documents discovered by the Army of the United States, of which I submit the Lirst to you as Document Number RF-109. It is the nomination of Colonel Veltjens, signed by the Defendant Goering himself. I do not want to take up the time of the Tribunal in giving a complete reading of these documents. I think that they cannot be contested, but if this should occur later, I will reserve for myself the privilege of reading them later, unless the Tribunal would prefer me to read them immediately. 73 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass on15 March 46 DR. STAHMER: What reasons made you put Colonel Veltjens in charge of centralizing the black market in France? Goering: Colonel Veltjens was a retired colonel. He was a Llier in the Lirst World War. He then had entered business. Therefore, he was not sent there in his capacity as colonel, but as an economist. He was not only in charge of the black market in France, but also of that in Holland and Belgium. It came about in the following manner: After a certain period during the occupation, it was reported to me that various items, in which I was particularly interested for reasons of war economy, could be obtained only in the black market. It was then, for the Lirst time, that I became familiar with the black market, that is that copper, tin, and other vital materials were still available, but that some of them lay buried in the canals of Holland, and had also been carefully hidden in other countries. However, if the necessary money were paid, these articles would come out of hiding, while, on the basis of the conLiscation order, we would receive only very little of the raw materials necessary for the conduct of the war. At that time, as during the entire war, I was guided only by intentions and ideas leading toward the ultimate war aim, the winning of victory. It was more important to me to procure copper and tin, just to cite one example, to get them in any case, no matter how high the price might be than not to get them merely because I did not consider such high prices justiLied. I therefore told Veltjens in rather general terms, "You know in what things German war economy is interested. Where and how you get these things is immaterial to me. If you get them by means of conLiscation, that is all the better. If we have to pay a great deal of money to get them, then we shall have to do that too." The unpleasant thing was that other departments, Lirst without my knowing it -- as the French Prosecution has shown here quite correctly -- also tried in the same way to get the same things, in which they also were interested. The thought of now having internal competition as well was too much for me. So, then I gave Veltjens the sole authority to be the one and only ofLice in control as far as the civilian dealers were concerned who insisted they could procure these things only in that other way, and to be the only purchasing ofLice for these articles and, with my authority, to eliminate other ofLices. The difLiculty of combating the black market is the result of many factors. Afterwards, at the special request of Premier Laval, I absolutely prohibited the black market for Veltjens and his organization as well. But in spite of this it was not thereby eliminated, and the statement of the French Prosecution conLirms my opinion that the black market lasted even beyond the war. And as far as I know it is again Llourishing here in Germany today to the widest extent. These are symptoms which always arise during and after a war when there is on the one hand a tremendous scarcity and holding back and hiding of merchandise and on the other hand the desire to procure these things. -----------------------------------------------------------------------Abschrift Michael Sommer Amsterdam, den 23. Juni 1942 -------Betr.: Gewinnung von Zinn- und Kupfermetallen aus alten Gassmessern Mit nachstehenden Ausführungen erlaube ich mir‚ Sie der: aufmerksam zu machen, dass beträchtliche Mengen wertvoller Zinnlegierungen und anderer Metalle‚ die aus der Verarbeitung von alten Gassmessern gewonnen werden, im Augenblick keiner Verwertung zugeführt werden und somit der Kriegswirtschaft vollkommen verloren gehen. Da grosse Mengen Altmetalle, wie Sie aus nachfolgendem Beispiel ersehen werden, vollkommen brach liegen, bin ich der Ansicht. dass diese Metalle unbedingt erfasst werden müssen. Ganz besonders wichtig für die Kriegsindustrie sind die in den Gassmessern erhaltenen grossen Mengen Zinnmaterial. Die Rückgewinnung von wertvollen Metallen aus alten Gasmessern ist bisher noch sehr wenig bekannt. Auf diesem Gebiete hat sich bislang lediglich die Firma Wemeta Company spezialisiert. Es wurden durch die Inhaber in langjähriger Erfahrung Spezialwerkzeuge für die Entzinnnng und Zerlegung der Gassmessern erfunden, sowie Arbeiter herangebildet. Nur so war es möglich‚ wie anhand der folgenden Beispiels erleuchtet wird, die restlose Gewinnung von Lötzinn, Britanniezinn, Weissmetall, Bronze und Messing zu ermöglichen. Aus der Verarbeitung ergehen sich ferner noch Weissblechabfälle, welche für die Zinngewinnung geeignet eind. In den Vorkriegsjahren wurden von der vorerwähnten Firma jährlich fast 40.000 Gasmesser bezogen und verarbeitet; in der Hauptsache kamen diese kamen diese Gasmesser aus Holland, Belgien, Frankreich und den skandinavischen Ländern. Aus der Zerlegung dieser Gasmesser wurden etwa folgende Mengen Metalle gewonnen: 88 - 100.000 kg. Zinnmaterial 20 - 30.000 " Messing 5.000 " Bronze G.B.Z. 18 % Zinn. Bemerkenswert is noch dass die alten Gasmesser, und somit die nach der Zerlegung der Gasmesser gewonnenen Metalle, wesentlich billiger eingekauft werden können als die Metalle, welche auf dem schwarzen Markt gekauft werden. Es scheint mir unerlässlich, dass in Anbetracht dieser grossen Mengen billiger Metalle, welche, wie eingangs erwähnt, bis 74 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass on- 2 heute der Kriegswirtschaft entzogen, dieses Objekt unverzüglich in Angriff genommen wird, und unterbreite ich daher folgende Vorschläge: Die Firma Wemeta Company kann sowohl in Amsterdam wie in Brüssel sofort an den Ankauf und der Zerlegung der Gasmesser beginnen; geschulte Arbeitskräfte sind hier und dort vorhanden. Um die sofortigen Aufkaufsarbeiten vornehmen zu können, sind vorerst drei Reisegenehmigungen nach Belgien und Frankreich erforderlich. Betr. : Eisenschrott. In Kürze erlaube ich mir, mit einem seiteren Vorschlag . zur Eisenschrott an Sie heranzutreten. Kurz gesagt, stossen meine Leute fast jeden Tag bei ihren Rundreisen auf grosse Mengen hochwertigen Eisenschrott, der bisher noch gänzlich unerfasst ist. Heil Hitler ! gez. : M. Sommer Source: NIOD 039-648 Abschrift N.V. Oxyde Maatschappij voor Ertsen en Metalen Amsterdam 26. Feb. 1951 Gebouw Hirsch HL/Hs An das Deutsche Generalkonsulat Amsterdam Unter Bezugnahme auf den Besuch de Unterzeichneten erlauben wir uns Ihnen nachstehend ein Expose über unsere bereits mündlich gemachte Ausführungen zu überreichen. Im Zusammenhang mit der Tatsache, daß wir Kenntnis davon erhalten haben, daß Herr Michael Sommer von dem Landesverwaltungsgericht Hamburg aufgrund seiner in Holland ausgeübten Tätigkeit als “politisch verfolgt und Wiedergutmachungsberechtigt” zu betrachten ist, haben wir folgen Erklärung abzugeben: Unsere Firma wurde am 22. Oktober 1940 gezwungen in Liquidation zu gehen und ihre Tätigkeit einzustellen; dies mit Rücksicht auf die gegen Juden seinerzeit entlassenen Maßnahmen. Im Juli des Jahres 1941 erhielt sie sodann einen deutschen Verwalter namens Heinrich Strassburger aus Köln. Unter dessen Leitung wurde der Betrieb dann wieder aufgenommen. Am 3. Dezember des Jahres 1941 wurde plötzlich ohne Rücksicht darauf, daß bereits seit Juli ein Verwalter bestand, vonseiten des S.D. Dienstes in Den Haag Herr Michael Sommer als Sonderbeauftragter des Treuhänders in unserer Firma benannt. Diese Tatsache ist außergewöhnlich und wohl einzig dastehende und deutet auch bereits darauf hin, daß Herrn Michael Sommer zu dieser Zeit über ausgezeichneten Beziehungen beim SD Dienst in Den Haag verfügte. Herr Michael Sommer gedachte unsere Firma für den Einkauf von Schwarzmetallen (solche die versteckt worden waren und die man versuchen wollte durch Zahlung von schwarzen Preisen aus den Händen der Besitzer zu locken) zu benutzen, was jedoch nicht in Einklang zu bringen war mit den Aufgaben einer legalen Metallhandelfirma die sich bei ihren Ein- und Verkäufen strikt an die seinerzeit bestehenden Verordnungen zu richten hatte. Herr Sommer übernahm sodann zur Durchführung seiner Tätigkeit eine noch nicht unter Verwaltung stehende jüdische Firma, deren Verwalter er wurde und auf deren 75 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onNamen er seine Tätigkeit in Holland unbehindert betrieb. Trotz dieser Tatsache, blieb er Sonderbeauftragter des Treuhänders unserer Firma und hat in dieser Eigenschaft vom 1. Dezember des Jahres 1941 bis zum 31. Dezember de Jahres 1943 ein Gehalt von fl. 1000.- pro Monat bezogen, ohne daß er je unsere Firma betreten hat. Bei seiner Tätigkeit – dem Einkauf von schwarzen Metallen und einer Reihe von anderen Produkten für die deutsche Wehrmacht bzw. Vierjahresplan – hat sich Herr Sommer hauptsächlich der Vermittlung von jüdischen Personen bedient, denen er als Gegenleistung hierfür Erleichterung im Zusammenhang mit den damaligen Maßnahmen gegen die Juden versprach. Es ist unbestritten, daß Herr Sommer für “seine” Juden im Zusammenhang mit den Millionengewinnen, die er in Verbindung mit seiner Transaktionen gemacht hat, solange etwas geleistet hat, wie es für ihn möglich war. Es unterliegt jedoch auch ebenso keinen Zweifel, daß Herr Sommer diesen Schutz nur aus selbstsüchtigen Motiven, um weiter ungestört seinen Millionengeschäften nachgehen zu können, gewährt hat. Als Beweis dafür, daß er nur solche Personen Schutz hat zukommen lassen, die ihm Geschäfte zutrugen und nicht solchen, an denen er keinen finanziellen Vorteil hatte, diene folgendes: Am 9. April des Jahres 1943 hat Herr Michael Sommer einen Brief an die Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung gerichtet, in welchem er den Abtransport einer unseren Direktoren, des Herrn Heinz Lichtenstern gefordert hat. Er hat in diesem Brief vermerkt, dass sofern es diesem Herrn gelingen sollte, sich auf andere Weise eine Freistellung vom Abtransport zu beschaffen, dies unbedingt verhindert werden müsste. Sowohl der damalige Deutsche Beauftragte bei der Ned. Bank, Herr Reichsbankdirektor Dr. Bühler, der heute soweit wir wissen bei der Deutschen Länderbank in Frankfurt tätig ist, als auch deren Sekretärin, Frau Borneleit, die sich mit dem Fall seinerzeit eingehend beschäftigt hatte, kann die obigen Angaben bestätigen. Neben diesen Zeugen, ist dieser Vorfall einer Reihe von Herren in unserer Firma in allen Details bekannt. Mit diesem einzigen Vorfall soll lediglich zum Ausdruck gebracht werden, daß Herren Sommer zwr unbestritten einer Reihe von jüdischen Personen, die er zum Werkzeug seiner Tätigkeit dringen gebrauchte, Schutz hat angeleihen lassen, während er in Fällen, bei denen für ihn keine geldlichen Vorteile damit verbunden waren, die Leute rücksichtlos hat fallen lassen, resp. Hat beseitigen wollen. Diese Tatsachen stehen im strikten Gegensatz zu dem Urteil des Landesverwaltungsgerichts Hamburg in dem wiederholt davon gesprochen wird, dass Herr Sommer selbstlos und unter Gefährdung seiner eigenen Person Juden gerettet hat. Im übrigen ist Herr Sommer in Holland eine sehr bekannte und berüchtigte Person, die den politischen Polizeistellen hinreichend bekannt ist. Herr Sommer wurde auf Verlangen der holländischen Stellen nach Holland ausgeliefert und hat sich hier einige Zeit im Gefängnis befunden. Wenn Herr Sommer tatsächlich so selbstlos gehandelt hätte, so würde ihm nicht sein gesamtes Vermögen in Holland beschlagnahmt bzw. enteignet worden sein. Es bestehen in Holland eine Unzahl von Privatpersonen, die Aussagen über Herrn Sommer machen können. An amtlichen Organen kann in erster Linie das holländische Reichsbureau für Metalle, dessen seinerzeitiger Direktor, Herr E. De Jong, Schiebroek bei Rotterdam, Adrianalaan 174, über Herrn Sommer Auskunft erteilen. Sofern Sie irgendwelche weiteren Angaben von uns benötigen, stehen wir hiermit gern zu ihrer Verfügung. Hochachtungsvoll, OXYDE Mij voor Ertsen en Metalen NV Source:Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Wiedergutmachung 16514 Der Reichskommissar fur die Besetzten Nied. Gebiete Der Beauftragte für die Niederländische Bank Amsterdam Den 14.4.43 76 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass on- KNB 11 35/43 Bü/Bo Betrifft: jüdische Angestellte der N.V.“Oxyde”, Amsterdam Das Reichsbankdirektorium hat mich gebeten, mich für das Verbleiben der jüdischen Angestellten der N.V. “Oxyde” unter der Voraussetzung einzusetzen, dass der Nachweis gebracht werden kann, das Verbleiben dieser Personen für die Durchführung der ordnungsgemässen Geschäftsbetriebe erforderlich ist. Ich habe mich zu diesem Zweck mit dem Beauftragten für die Niederlande in Verbindung gesetzt, der mir mitteilte dass an sich von Seiten der Rüstung her kein besonderes Interesse an dem Verbleiben der Juden bestehe. Dagegen sei er damit einverstanden die Juden die auf der Schutzliste von Kapitän Sommer stehen bis zu den mit Herrn Generalkommissar Rauter getroffenen Termin beizuhalten. In Frage kommen die in der Anlage aufgeführte jüdische Angestellten. Bezüglich des Dr. Weil darf ich auf unsere persönliche Unterhaltung von gestern Abend Bezug nehmen und darauf hinweisen, dass er bereits aufgerufen ist und sein Abtransport unmittelbar bevorsteht. Ich wäre dankbar, wenn Sie bezüglich in der Liste aufgeführten Personen Massnahmen treffen würden um einen Abtransport vorläufig zu unterbinden. Herrn SS-Sturmbannführer Lages Unterschrift unleserlich Aussenstelle Amsterdam (Albert Bühler) Source NIOD 077 inv. nr. 1431 -173 __________________________________________________________________________________________ Hermann Wallheimer Beethovenstr. 142, Amsterdam 20.12.1951 Erklaerung Herr Kapitaen Sommer, Hamburg, Hochst. 21 der frueher in Amsterdam Z. Apollolaan 178 wohnte, bat mich eine kurze Erklaerung ueber seine Taetikeit in Amsterdam abezugeben. Diesem Wunsch komme ich gerne nach, denn auch ich gehoere zu den Juden, die von Herrn Sommer geschuetzt wurden. Herr Sommer hatte waehrend des Krieges ein eigenes Buero in Amsterdam C. Rokin 84. Er handelte mit Waren aller Art, die unbewirtschaftet waren. Im Anfang hatte er nur 2-3 juedische Herren beschaeftigt. Spaeter jedoch hatte er auf Wunsch von Herren Rich. Messow und Paul Jonas noch mehrere Juden aufgenommen. Zur damaligen Zeit unterstanden alle in Holland beschaeftigten Juden Herrn Oberst Veltgen (sic) vom VierJahresplan und dem SD. Wenn nun Herr Sommer mehr juedische Herren anstellen wollte, musste er natur gemaess zunaechst mit dem Vier-Jahresplan Fuehlung nehmen. Erst dann wurden die Juden beim SD auf einer besonderen Liste im Auftrage des Vier-Jahresplan gefuehrt. Jedem von uns Juden war es klar, dass Herr Sommer auch Hollaender, die sich sogar um eine Position bei ihm rissen, haette einstellen koennen. Wenn heute behauptet wird, Sommer haette dies aus schnoeder Berechnung getan, dann ist dies eine bewusste Unwahrheit. Herr Sommer hat jedem hilfsbeduerftigen geholfen, egal ob er Jude war oder nicht. Auch hat er sich niemals fuer eine Hilfsleistung bezahlen lassen. Ich gestatte mich einige Beispiele zu geben. Eines Nachts wurde ein grosser Transport von Juden auf dem Centralbahnhof zusammengestellt. Herr Sommer wurde telf. benachrichtigt und kurz bevor der Zug abging, holte Sommer drei Autos voll Juden aus diesem Transport. Es steht fest, dass nicht einer der damals geretteten, es waren auch Frauen und Kinder darunter, bei Herrn Sommer beschaeftigt waren. Ganz Amsterdam hat sich damals zu dem gewagten Streich dem SD gegenueber gefreut. Niemals hat Sommer fuer eine solche Handlung auch nur andeutungsweise einen Cent verlangt. Er riskierte dem SD gegenueber Kopf und Kragen, sodass wir Juden ihn oftmals warnen mussten. Ein anderer Fall: Eines Nachts wurde ein kleines 5-6 jaehriges Maedchen ernsthaft krank. Sommer wurde um 2 Uhr telf. Benachrichtigt. Er setzte sich daraufhin mit dem besten holl. Krankenhaus in Verbindung und bat den Chefarzt diese Kind sofort bei sich zu unterbringen. Der Arzt machte zunaechst Schwiereigkeiten, weil das Kind nicht in einem arischen Krankenhaus unterbracht werden durfte. S. Setzte es durch, dass dieses Kind dennoch in dem 77 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onKrankenhaus untergebracht wurde und zwar auf eigene Verantwortung. Das Kind wurde durch das sofortige Eingreifen von Sommer gerettet. Es hatte Kinderlaehmung und bekam direkt nach der Einlieferung eine Serumspritze. Das Kind lebt heute noch in Amsterdam. Dieser Fall war einmalig in Amsterdam und erregte damals grosses Aufsehen. Ein weiterer Fall: in der Wemeta Co. Waren nur Juden beschaeftigt. Herr Jonas, Nusbaum [sic] und Herr Gossels waren die Inhaber. Ich werde nie vergessen, da trat Herr Jonas eines Nachmittags in meiner eigenen Wohnung an Herrn Sommer heran und bat ihm seine Firma als Treuhaender zu uebernehmen. Auf die Frage warum, sagte Herr Jonas zu Sommer “dann koennen wir doch meine juedischen Arbeiter retten”. Sommer sagte:”es ist in Ordnung” und er fuhr am naechsten Tag nach Den Haag. Als er zurückkam, legte er seine Bestellung als Treuhaender vor. Die Freude war gross unter uns. Sein sogenanntes Gehalt in hoehe von Hfl 40mm.- hat er Herrn Jonas zur Verteilung seiner Angestellten ueberlassen. Er hat diese Firma als Treuhaender niemals betreten noch gesehen. Es war eine voellig selbstlose und rein menschliche Handlungsweise von Herrn Sommer. Wenn heute behauptet wird wir Juden, die bei Sommer geschutetzt wurden, haetten fuer die Wehrmacht und nie Nazis gearbeitet, dann ist dies eine Unwahrheit und eine grosse Unverschaemtheit. Das Gegenteil war der Fall. Wenn wir dahinter kamen, dass von Sommer gekauften Waren etwas nach Deutschland gehen sollte, dann wurden diese Waren schon bei der Verladung so demoliert, dass sie in Deutschland nicht mehr zu gebrauchen waren. Sommer wusste dies und hat stets beide Augen zugedrueckt. Vor etwa einem Jahr habe ich in Hamburg den Richter, Herrn Wagner vom Landesverwaltungsgericht erklaert: wenn es jemals einen Orden fuer Menschenhilfe geben wuerde, dann muesste Sommer den hoechsten Orden haben, denn er hat sich nicht nur fuer uns Juden, sondern auch fuer jeden anderen Verfolgten und Hilfsbeduerftigen Menschen 100%ig eingesetzt. Er stand genau so wie wir Juden unter steter Lebensgefahr. Diese meine Worte halte ich auch heute noch aufrecht. Amsterdam Z. Den 20. Dezember 1951 gez. Hermann Wallheimer Source: Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Wiedergutmachung 16514 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Vermerk des Befehlshabers der Sicherheitspolizei, 1V B 4, gez. Zoepf, Den Haag, vom 22. 6.1943 (2) Betr: Verwertung der im Besitz von jüdischen Diamanten-Händlern befindlichen Diamanten. Bezug: Besprechung mit Herrn Plümer (3) und Oberregierungsrat Dr. Schüssler. Der Reichsmarschall (4) legt nach dem Vortrag von Dr. Schüssler größten Wert darauf, durch Verkauf von Diamanten, die in den besetzten Gebieten noch aufzutreiben sind, aus dem Ausland Devisen für die deutsche Kriegsführung hereinzubekommen. Zu diesem Zweck sollen in unauffälliger Form durch eine Firma die für die verschiedenen Diamantäre der Niederlande registrierten Diamanten) und in Arnheim liegenden Diamanten im Wege des Kaufvertrages erworben werden. Diese deutschen Mittelsfirmen sollen dann versuchen, im Ausland die Diamanten gegen Devisen zu verkaufen (5) Um die Feindmächte nicht vorzeitig über dieses Verfahren aufzuklären, sollen die Diamanten nicht durch eine Behörde beschlagnahmt werden, sondern ausdrücklich durch Kaufvertrag erworben und die jüdischen Diamantäre als Verkäufer deshalb vorderhand in Freiheit belassen werden. Z. Teil besitzen die auf dieser Diamantär-Liste Aufgeführten bereits den AB-Stempel. (6) Zum anderen Teil soll ihnen nach einer noch vom 4-Jahresplan vorzuliegenden Angabe dieser Stempel erteilt werden. Ein Rest dieser Diamantäre soll vorderhand noch in Freiheit belassen werden, kann dann aber nach Abgabe der Diamanten abgeschoben werden. Von hier aus wurde in Aussicht gestellt, daß vorerst keine weitere Judenerfassungsaktion in Amsterdam stattfindet, so daß diese Juden bis zur Erledigung des Geschäftes auch ohne Stempel unbehelligt bleiben. Soweit von diesen Diamantären bei der letzten Großaktion in Amsterdam einzelne erfaßt und nach Westerbork transportiert worden sein sollten, wird eine alsbaldige Freilassung vorgenommen werden.(7) Die Freistellung der Diamantäre ist im Sinne des RSHA, nachdem SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann (8) bei meiner kürzlichen Besprechung in Berlin sein Einverständnis geäußert hat. Eine Auswanderung von Diamantären ist im allgemeinen nicht erwünscht, da sie als Fachkenner nicht dazu beitragen sollen, im Ausland später eine Diamant Industrie aufzubauen. Dementsprechend wäre die Weiterbehandlung aufgrund eines allenfalls erteilten AB-Stempels nur mit Einschränkung angebracht. 1 NIOD. 077/1317. 2 In original handschriftl. Bearbeitungsvermerke und die Anma. Fr. Slottke . 78 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass on3 Hans Plümer. 4 Hermann Göring. 5 Diese Geschäfte wurden über den Diamanthandel der Hamburger Brüder Bozenhardt abgewickelt; dabei erhielten die jüdischen Diamantenhändler insgesamt fl. 9,4 Mio. 6 Zur AB-Liste siehe Dok. 118 vom 5.5.1943. Anm. 19. 7 Der Beauftragte beim Zentralamt für Diamanten, Karl Hanemann, veranlasste die Rückkehr der Diamanthändler aus Westerbork, forderte jedoch als „Belohnung“ einen weiteren Teil der Diamanten. Insgesamt erhielt er ca. fl. 600 000 in Diamanten, die er bei der Behörde für den Vierjahresplan abgab. Das sog. “HanemannGeschenk” brachte den jüdischen Diamanthändlern jedoch nur einen kurzen Aufschub, die meisten von ihnen wurden im Sept. 1943 emeut verhaftet und deportiert. 8 Adolf Eichmann. Source: West- und Nordeuropa Juni 1942 – 1945 DOK. 133 Wilhelm Zoepf vermerkt am 22. Juni 1943, wie mit Diamanten in jüdischem Besitz umgegangen werden soll Source:Yad Vashem Item ID 3730255 Record Group O.33 - Testimonies, Diaries and Memoirs Collection similar items similar items; File Number 5131 Testimony of Elieser Ludi Goldwein, born in Meimbressen, Germany, 1922, regarding his experiences and the activities of the Zionist and underground movements in the Netherlands and France, 1938-1944 Replies to the questionnaire, issued by the Itzhak Katzenelson Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Heritage Museum and Study Center, 1958 and 1961: - Chaver (member) of Maccabi Hatzair, 1937-38, Hechalutz, 1939, Deventer Vereeniging (Association); - Move from Germany to Belgium with a Kindertransport, 1938; move to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1939; - Aliya training in Amsterdam, living at Beth Chalutz; work in a furniture factory, later for a Jewish company in scrap metal collection (for the Germans); exemption stamp (protection from deportation) based on his work; - Detention of all the male residents of Beth Chalutz, 11 June 1942; release; deportation of the other members (with the exception of Gideon Drach) to Schoorl camp, the Netherlands, and later to Mauthausen, where they all perished; - Underground activities of Hechaluz under the leadership of Kurt Hannemann; visits by Dutch helpers and Jewish activists (Ans Roos, Joop Westerweel, Norbert Klein, "Schuschu") and Elieser Goldwein's assistance in the underground movement; - Dissolution of Beit Chaluz due to the betrayal of an employee who worked for the Gestapo; move to other addresses; - Call for deportation, July 1943, release by the German overseer of his company; move to another apartment following a raid and detentions; - Beginning of a life in hiding, with the help of a forged identity card; - Illegal crossing of the border to Belgium together with four Zionist activists (discovery and capture of two of them by Germans), - 22 October 1943; illegal crossing of the border into France and stay in various locations; work for the German Air Force in Auflag; - Two unsuccessful escape attempts to Spain, one organized by the Zionist underground and the other by the French Resistance, return to France each time, January and May 1944; final escape to Spain via Andorra, led by Rotspanier ( Red Spaniards), July 1943; cared for by the JDC in Andorra; continuation of the journey to Lerida, Spain; - Emigration to Eretz Israel and arrival in Haifa, 05 November 1944. Source: Frank Wolff, Jannis Panagiotidis, Auguste Moses-Nussbaum Reise mit zwei Koffern, Lebenserinnerungen – 79 © Myriam Daru- Sommer’s list- draft text 2020-10-04 please do not quote or pass onp. 104 Eines Abends kam Ludi Goldwein‚ der junge Mann aus dem Haus der Pioniere, uns besuchen — ich begriff nicht, woher er die Adresse hatte Ludi hatte den Stern von der Kleidung abgetrennt und trug — kaum zu glauben — unsere beiden Koffer in Händen! Als die Frau in dem großen Haus uns weggejagt hatte, waren wir ja so hastig geflohen, dass wir die Koffer mit all unseren Sachen zurückgelassen hatten. Wir freuten uns so, sie wiederzusehen. Wir erfuhren, dass Ludi bei unserem Vetter Justus arbeitete, der immer noch frei war. Ludi erzählte uns, Justus betreibe eine kleine Gießerei. Nur Juden arbeiteten bei ihm. Er bereiste ganz Holland, um jedes Stückchen Metall aufzukaufen, dessen er habhaft wurde. Für ihn lohnte es sich sogar, Silberpapier zu sammeln. Er reiste natürlich ohne gelben Stern, mit Sondergenehmigung - die man normalerweise nicht bekam -‚ weil er für die deutsche Rüstungsindustrie tätig war. Im Rahmen seiner Arbeit empfing er sogar deutsche Gäste in seiner Wohnung. Der von den Deutschen beauftragte Aufseher in Justus’ Fabrik hieß Kapitän Sommer. Sommer befleißigte sich keiner großen Treue gegenüber seinen deutschen Auftraggebern. Er hatte Ludi bei Justus angestellt. Wir hörten, dass es Kapitän Sommer wiederholt gelungen war, jüdische Bekannte vor dem Abtransport zu bewahren: Er holte sie geradewegs aus der Schouwburg - aus den Reihen der Juden, die man zur Deportation im jüdischen Theater Amsterdams zusammengetrieben hatte -, mit der Begründung, er brauche sie in der Fabrik, „zum Nutzen der deutschen Streitkräften”. Ludi Goldwein selbst hatte er dreimal aus der Transportliste gestrichen - weil er für die Wehrmacht arbeitete. ……….. p.105 Aus Ludis Bericht erfuhren wir, dass unser Vetter Justus die Untergrundtätigkeit nicht ablehnte — er schickte uns ja sogar Geld und ein paar Süßigkeiten. Mit dem Geld konnten wir nichts anfangen, aber wir behielten es für alle Fälle. Justus trug auch weiter die Kosten für unser Versteck. Kapitän Sommer selbst überbrachte dem Untergrund eine großzügige Spende, um die sechstausend Gulden. Wir baten Ludi, uns Lebensmittelkarten zu besorgen, weil die Breurs nicht genug Essen für uns hatten. p. 102 note 74 Ludi Goldwein‚ oder auch Luis (Ludi) Elieser Goldwein, geboren am 14. Oktober 1923 in Meimbressen; Lloh 1938 mit einem Kindertransport nach Belgien; ging im juni 1939 nach Holland zur »Deventer Vereeniging« ; arbeitete ab Juli 1942 in einer jüdischen Firma, die von deutschen Treuhändern geführt wurde; erhielt einen besonderen Ausweis und konnte sich frei bewegen; hatte Kontakt zu Joop Westerweel; konnte im November 1944 nach Palästina entkommen.