In the late 1930s, when Ans van Dijk declared herself a lesbian to her lover, homosexuality was not a criminal offense. There were gay and lesbian bars in Amsterdam. Worldly people knew about homosexuals, while people who were less sophisticated just pretended that homosexuality did not exist. Men who lived together were called confirmed bachelors; women were called spinsters. However, one could certainly not risk being openly gay in public.* Police officers often went out of their way to target homosexuals, outing them with dire social consequences. In Van Dijk’s CABR file, the Cold Case Team found extensive statements in which people expressed their disgust at her lifestyle, including a statement from the daughter of her lover. Van Dijk was an outcast and a pariah.
In 1936, Heinrich Himmler created a division within the Gestapo called the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion (Reichszentrale zur Bek?mpfung der Homosexualit?t und der Abtreibung). Both threatened the growth of the master race. Male homosexuals were imprisoned, often in concentration camps, where they were sometimes used as subjects in scientific experiments, particularly to cure homosexuality. But oddly enough, lesbians were not widely persecuted.5 It seems that female homosexuality was deemed passive and nonthreatening and was, if not tolerated, at least overlooked. That held true in the Netherlands. To her SD handlers, Van Dijk’s sexuality did not seem to be a matter of concern. They were pragmatic and tolerated her lesbianism because she was useful to them.
Two months after being turned by Pieter Schaap, Van Dijk met her new girlfriend, Johanna Maria “Mies” de Regt, in a café and moved into her apartment at Nieuwe Prinsengracht 54-2, among elegant houses along the canal. Both women worked as V-Frauen, and the apartment soon became a Jew trap to which people trying to hide were lured with the promise of safety. De Regt would later testify that she and Van Dijk attended parties at nightclubs with the German elite where the food and the vintage wine flowed freely, even as most people lived on food stamps.6 For the first time Van Dijk was part of the in crowd, and the money she earned so ruthlessly brought her luxury. It clearly wasn’t hard to be seduced by the status she’d gained and to grow indifferent to the price others paid as a result of her actions. Though it does produce heroes, war is never the best context in which to hone one’s conscience.
The cold criminality of the V-Frauen was stark. In her court testimony, Van Dijk described how they found the family of a man named Salomon Stodel by coincidence when they were looking for another family altogether:
Because we had no address from Klepman (about whom they had heard that he had hidden money in his chimney), we inquired about the family in a nearby milk shop. We pretended to be members of the resistance. We were told that the Klepman family had already been arrested by the Germans and that their home was inhabited again. Because we presented ourselves as good Dutchmen, the woman in the milk shop said that Jews lived next to them, who were in difficulty and in need of help.7
The women contacted Schaap to come arrest the Stodel family. Ronnie Goldstein–van Cleef recalled her interaction with Van Dijk. Goldstein–van Cleef was from a very liberal Jewish family in The Hague, and going undercover and joining the resistance was natural: “Certain circumstances and requests from friends forced you to act.” Her family kept a printing press belonging to the resistance under the floor of their house. Her aunt Dora often hid people in her home and also found a perfect hiding place for onderduikers in a condemned apartment nearby. Goldstein–van Cleef remembered meeting Van Dijk there:
I was to take a boy to Twente. Aunt Dora knew Ans van Dijk from the time she was little and considered her to be completely trustworthy. Ans van Dijk asked if I could take another girl along. She gave me a picture of the girl, and I obtained an identity card for her. Later she proposed, “If you are at Central Station at such and such a time with that boy I will be there with the girl, and you can take both of them.” That’s what we agreed to do. At Central Station I gave the boy my purse to hold because I wanted to get tickets at the ticket office. I turned around, I saw that the boy was being arrested, and holding only my change in my hand, I ran out of the station as fast as I could, jumped onto the streetcar, and went back to Aunt Dora’s, where I burst into tears. I was so terribly shocked. Then I said, “That Ans van Dijk is not good; she is no good.” And later that turned out to be the case.8
Goldstein–van Cleef was haunted by that moment. The victim was a child, and she had to abandon him. She herself was finally betrayed in June 1944, ending up in Westerbork, where she met the Frank family. She survived the war.
One strategy Ans van Dijk used to gain information was dubbed “cell espionage.” She would be put into a holding cell together with other prisoners who were suspected of knowing the locations of Jewish people in hiding. After falsely claiming to have been severely tortured during interrogation, she would convince her cellmates that the SD was releasing her and offer to warn any of their friends or relatives to relocate. She said that there was always the risk that the prisoners might be forced to give up information if the torture became too unbearable.9
Like all V-people, Ans van Dijk used a combination of chance, contingency, and betrayal to do her job. Vince recounted an extraordinary story about van Dijk that he had learned from Holocaust survivor Louis de Groot, whom he’d been able to interview at his Washington, DC, apartment in May 2018.10
De Groot said his parents had owned and operated an appliance store in Arnhem. His father, Meijer de Groot, was friendly with the policemen in the area, who promised to warn him of any Nazi raids about to happen. His family went into hiding on November 17, 1942, after they were warned of an upcoming raid. They were split up and placed in different locations in Amsterdam. De Groot and his parents hid in a house at Prinsengracht 825, but in December 1943 he was relocated to the countryside by a Dutch detective whom his father knew. His older sister, Rachel de Groot, was in hiding at a different location in the city.
In the early evening of April 8, 1944, the day before Easter, Ans van Dijk, Branca Simons, and her husband, Wim Houthuijs, were strolling through the Prinsengracht neighborhood, where De Groot’s parents were hiding. Van Dijk recognized Israel de Groot, Louis’s uncle, walking alone on the street. She approached him, mentioning that she could arrange safe passage to Spain. Israel told her that he didn’t need her help and kept walking.
Van Dijk, Simons, and Houthuijs followed Israel and watched him enter the building at Prinsengracht 825. From a nearby bar, Van Dijk made a phone call to the Zentralstelle and relayed the tip to SS Lieutenant Otto Kempin, who ordered Grootendorst and several other Dutch SD detectives to the address. The V-people waited nearby and pointed out the location to the raid team.
Israel de Groot had left the Prinsengracht address just prior to the arrival of the Dutch SD men. Sadly, Louis’s sister Rachel was at that moment visiting her parents, and all three were taken away. While still in hiding, Louis was told that his parents and sister had been captured, but only after the war was over did he learn that they had all perished in the camps. His uncle Israel, who was working with the resistance, was never captured and survived the war.
Louis discovered that his mother, Sophia, and his sister were sent to a jail in The Hague. Though it cannot be proven, he suspects that after the arrest of his family, Van Dijk was put into the cell with his sister to gain information on other Jews in hiding. His father was taken to a jail in Amsterdam where, by chance, his jailer was known to him, and he was able to convince the man to allow him to write a note to his brother Israel recounting the details of the arrest. The jailer passed on the note, which was how Louis eventually learned who was involved in the arrest and betrayal of his family. From the note he also learned that his father, Meijer, knew the arresting officer, Grootendorst; they had played marbles together when they were children.