Dutch Holocaust survivor ordered to pay taxes on forced labor pension
While the king “gets a tax-free royal salary, this 86-year-old woman needs to pay taxes for her so-called ghetto commendation.”
By JTAa holocaust survivor wears a yellow Star of David on his jacket during a ceremony marking Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem(photo credit: REUTERS)
AMSTERDAM — The Dutch tax authority is seeking payment from an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor for a pension stipend that she is receiving from Germany for her employment as a child in forced labor.The Tax and Customs Administration demanded in summer that Inge Prenzlau pay a portion of her $156 monthly compensation stipend from Germany even though that country exempts other recipients residing in Germany and beyond from paying taxes on that class of payments, Het Financieele Dagblad last week reported.Prenzlau worked at her father’s factory without pay when she was 11 years old. She began working in 1942 after her father fell ill. The family was forced to send her to work to prevent the German occupation forces and local collaborators from taking over the factory. She had to walk to the factory for two hours in each direction from her home because Jews were not allowed to use public transportation.Prenzlau took the Dutch tax authority to court, seeking an injunction against their motion to collect. The court instructed the government to sort out the dispute.Menno Snel, a politician for the liberal D66 party and State Secretary for Finance, is opposed to making an exception for Prenzlau, Het Financieele Dagblad reported. In a letter he sent last year to the tax authority, he warned against making a concession that would set a precedent for “many other stipends rooted in such things as war, for example, disaster, terrorism, hijacking and abuse.”But Prenzlau finds this attitude “impossible to understand, so obtuse,” she told the newspaper. “In the war we were abandoned. So the government can stop being so childish, especially since we’re not talking about large amounts of money here.“Prenzlau’s case angered some of the country’s best-known intellectuals. Leon de Winter, a Jewish celebrated novelist, suggested it undermined the message of unity and altruism in a recent statement by Dutch King Willem-Alexander. In a filmed Christmas address, he said on Dec. 25: “Instead of a broader ‘me,’ let us seek a larger ‘we.’”While the king “gets a tax-free royal salary,” de Winter, the son of Holocaust survivors, wrote on Twitter, “this 86-year-old woman needs to pay taxes for her so-called ghetto commendation.”