Anna van Dijk, best known as Ans van Dijk (born Amsterdam 24-12-1905 – died Weesperkarspel 14-1-1948)
was a shopkeeper and Jewish treasoner.
Partner Christina "Miep" Stodel, Johanna Maria "Mies" de Regt
Queer Places:
Jodenbreestraat 16, Amsterdam
Nieuwendijk 151,
Amsterdam
Marco Polostraat 192, Amsterdam
Jekerstraat 46, Amsterdam
Anna van Dijk, best known as Ans van Dijk (born Amsterdam 24-12-1905 – died Weesperkarspel 14-1-1948)
was a shopkeeper and Jewish treasoner.
She was the daughter of Aron van Dijk (1879-1939), debt collection agency holder, and Kaatje Bin (1869-1919). Anna van Dijk married Abraham Querido (1899-1944), housekeeper, in 1923 in Amsterdam. This marriage, which was dissolved in 1940, remained childless.
Anna (Ans) van Dijk was born as the eldest of two children of non-religious Jewish parents from the lower middle class. She grew up in a lower house on the Nieuwe Keizersgracht in the Amsterdam Jewish quarter among small entrepreneurs; her father had a debt collection agency since 1904. Ans attended primary school and was 14 when her mother, a mentally unstable woman, died. Her father remarried and the family moved in 1921 to an upstairs apartment (Jodenbreestraat 16), where Ans had two more half-brothers.
At the age of seventeen, Ans van Dijk met the Jewish servant Bram Querido, whom she married in 1927. From 1937 the couple lived at Nieuwendijk 151, also the address of the women's hat shop Maison Evany, of which she was owner and co-owner. In 1939 her father died in the psychiatric hospital Het Apeldoornse Bos; he would have suffered from a delusion of persecution. Shortly afterwards, her marriage broke up, partly because Van Dijk had discovered that she was a lesbian. In 1940 she developed a relationship with her Jewish collaborator Christina "Miep" Stodel (April 20, 1917 – December 23, 1993), who moved in with her. The couple liked to go out in cafes and Van Dijk made numerous friends in the lesbian scene at the time.
Due to the anti-Jewish measures of the occupying forces, Ans van Dijk lost her 'Jewish enterprise' in November 1941. From that moment on, she led an illegal life: she blonded her hair and obtained a fake identity card in the name of Alphonsia Maria (Annie) de Jong. From the spring of 1942 she lived with Miep Stodel on the Noorder Amstellaan (now Churchill avenue), until her friend left for good in July of the same year. Van Dijk traded in goods from Jewish household effects and helped several Jews to safe houses. In January 1943 she herself went into hiding with a family in the Marco Polostraat (no. 192 II). On 26 April 1943, after treason, she fell into the hands of the Jewish Affairs Office of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD).
After a heavy-handed treatment by the notorious Jew hunter Pieter Schaap, Ans van Dijk decided to work for him as a 'V-woman' (collaborator) – so she escaped punishment and deportation. She was used as a celspionne and emerged between May 1943 and September 1944 as a fanatical leader of a group of Jewish traitors, including Branca Simons and Rosalie Roozendaal. As 'the best V-woman of the SD', as she was called by the SD, she played in Amsterdam and the surrounding area in a sophisticated way and for a lot of money gave one Jewish person after another in hiding in the hands of the Germans. In the meantime, Van Dijk had a new relationship with the single mother Johanna Maria "Mies" de Regt (born 1907). From September 1943 they lived on the recommendation of the Jewish Affairs Office in a home of deported Jews in Jekerstraat 46 II in Amsterdam-Zuid. That house acted as a successful 'Jew trap', where people in hiding walked straight into the arms of the SD. Many of the more than 100 victims who had placed their trust in the Jewish Ans van Dijk, including relatives and acquaintances, did not survive.
After Mad Tuesday (5 September 1944), Ans van Dijk moved with Mies de Regt to The Hague, where they lived until April 1945, and then to Rotterdam-Zuid. A series of charges against Van Dijk led to her arrest and imprisonment on 20 June of that year. Faced with her crimes, Van Dijk confessed only to the irrefutable cases – a total of 23. Where possible, she denied and placed the blame on her former colleagues. On 24 February 1947, during her trial before the Special Court in Amsterdam, the twenty witnesses à charge did the same to her: her ex-lover Mies de Regt called Ans van Dijk 'a devil in human beings'. The president of the court characterized her performance as 'monstrous' and demanded the death penalty. She neither confessed nor denied the accusation of the – fatal – betrayal of her own brother and his family, but she knows about her psychotic state of mind. That was also the only defense of her lawyer, who called her diminished and argued for a psychiatric examination. This was rejected and on 10 March 1947 Van Dijk received the death penalty. The verdict was upheld on appeal and pardon requests and attempts to make themselves 'indispensable' as witnesses against other collaborators were to no avail.
In anticipation of her execution, Ans van Dijk had only contact with a cousin and a Dominican. Thanks to the interventions of the headmistress of the Rotterdam Penal Prison, she became Catholic: in a farewell letter (13-1-1948) Van Dijk thanks her and hopes 'that you will want to commemorate me in your prayer from time to time'. On January 14, 1948, at nine o'clock in the morning and after her first holy communion, her life ended before a twelve-headed firing squad at Fort Bijlmer. Ans van Dijk was 42 years old.
Ans van Dijk went down in history as one of the most diligent, most unscrupulous Jewish traitors of the war and the only woman executed for her war crimes. 'Exhausted, very skinny, but remarkably sharp in spirit' Van Dijk had shown remorse for her actions in front of the Dominicans. She said she had been 'completely insane with fear' of the SD. In his biography Koos Groen calls her above average intelligent and a 'survivor' with a great desire for money and an undeniable lack of self-confidence.
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