German government urged not to honor Holocaust rescuer with murky record

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — More than 200 people, including a Dutch chief rabbi, are protesting plans in Germany to honor a Holocaust-era official who is said to have both saved and doomed Jews.

The call came in a letter that the German ambassador to the Netherlands received Thursday from Hans Knoop, a Dutch-Jewish journalist. It concerned the German government’s reported plans to fund a museum named for Hans Calmeyer in Osnabruck.

As a jurist for the Nazi German forces in the Netherlands, Calmeyer was tasked with reviewing ethnicity issues, primarily in appeals by people who were registered as Jews but claimed to be Aryan.