Amsterdam public transport company GVB chased Germany for the cost of taking Jews to the station ahead of their journey to concentration camps long after the war was over, invoices uncovered at war documentation institute NIOD show.

The invoice for the last tram trip, which included Anne Frank and her family, was never paid and the GVB went as far as to employ a debt collection agency to reclaim the money two years after the end of the war.

Author Guus Luijters, who came across the invoices while researching the persecution of the Jews during the war, called the find “astounding”.

“The invoices showed the Germans used the trams a total of 900 times at 10 guilders a ride,” Luijters told broadcaster NOS. “The GVB would invoice the Nazis every month for services rendered and make money that way. The trams were hired by the Germans for the purpose, so they were not part of the ordinary service,” Luijters said.

Luijters also found the invoice for the last tram ride on August 8, 1944. On the list of the people transported from Amsterdam Central Station on that day, he found the names of Anne Frank and her relatives. “They were taken by tram from the former prison at Weteringschans to the station,” Luijters said.

Luijters said the most astounding thing about the invoices was the fact that the GVB continued to chase the Germans for the money after the war had ended.

“A note on that final invoice said the money had not been paid at the time of the Liberation when it was sent. And that a debt collection agency had been hired in 1947 to get the 80 guilders that were outstanding. I found that shocking,” he said.

Former NIOD historian Johannes Houwink ten Cate confirmed the invoices were genuine. “The amounts coincide with the figures in the administration of the GVB at the time. The Gestapo in The Hague paid the bills.”

It is not clear where the GVB sent the post-war invoice.

War crimes

According to Houwink Ten Cate, both the GVB as an organisation and the individual tram drivers have been complicit in Nazi war crimes.

“The drivers could see with their own eyes that the trams were guarded by German police carrying guns. They understood these people were taken against their will, that they were in the power of their deadly enemies. They understood they were being sent to transit camps and then would never be heard from again. It comes down to aiding the enemy,” he said, although he conceded that drivers would have had little choice but to collaborate.

In 2005, Dutch railway company NS apologised for its role in Nazi death camp transports and in 2019 paid out millions of euros in compensation to Holocaust survivors or next of kin.

No apologies have ever been made by the GVB.