Pieter Schaap
|
Pieter Schaap (18 June 1902 - 29 June 1949) was a Dutch collaborator during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. He was an officer of the Sicherheitsdienst secret police and oversaw a network of informers known as V-Leute who betrayed Jews to the SD.
Biography edit
Schaap was a police officer in Amsterdam. When the Netherlands were invaded during World War II, Schaap collaborated with the German occupiers and joined the SD, working at the Amsterdam Bureau of Jewish Affairs. Schaap had a reputation as one of the SD's most fanatical persecutors of Jews and personally arrested thousands, who were then deported to concentration camps. However, he was known among his colleagues for corruption, regularly extorting money from Jewish families and taking advantage of his position to rob those he arrested. He was also accused of having sexual relations with several Jewish women, despite this being illegal.
Schaap was aided in his activities by a network of V-Leute, Jews who agreed to inform on their fellow Jews in return for escaping arrest. One such informant was Ans van Dijk, a Jewish lesbian who was arrested by Schaap and agreed to become an informant to escape deportation, becoming one of Schaap's most valuable informants. The main tactics of these V-Leute was to lure in fellow Jews by offering them false papers which they could use to conceal their identity, at which point Schaap would step in and arrest them. Most of those arrested were sent to Auschwitz Birkenau and Sobibor extermination camp, where they were murdered.
In 1944 Schaap and his superior Abraham Kaper were transferred to Gronigen to assist Robert Lehnhoff's team in apprehending Jews and Resistance members. Schaap and Kaper gained a reputation for their brutality in interrogations, with Kaper asking questions while Schaap inflicted savage beatings on prisoners. Schaap also oversaw the execution of Resistance prisoners, supervising the shootings of Gerrit Boekhoven, Anda Kerkhoven and Dinie Aikema by Harm Bouman in 1945. That same year Schaap shot dead one of the local V-Leute, L. de Jong, in order to continue an affair with his wife.
As the Allies approached Gronigen at the end of the war, Schaap, Kaper, Lehnhoff and Jozef Kindel shot all remaining Resistance prisoners, forcing them to lie down in trenches before executing them. They then fled to Schiermonnikoog, but were betrayed and handed over to Allied forces. Schaap was convicted of treason and war crimes and shot on 29 June 1949, alongside Kaper and Evert Drost.