She Betrayed 50 People to Nazis—Then Her Own Sister Betrayed Her 

 She Betrayed 50 People to Nazis—Then Her Own Sister Betrayed Her 

10 May 1940. The Second World War reaches the   Netherlands as Nazi Germany invades the country  without a formal declaration. After only five   days of fighting, the Dutch army surrenders,  and the country falls under German occupation.   Over the following months, the Nazis introduce  increasingly restrictive anti-Jewish measures.  

Jewish businesses are confiscated, civil  rights are stripped away, and from July 1942,   tens of thousands of Dutch Jews are deported  to concentration and extermination camps.  Across the Netherlands, many ordinary citizens  risk their own lives to hide Jewish families,   forge identity documents, and organize escape  routes. But not everyone chooses to resist.  

Some exploit the persecution for personal gain,   pretending to help those fleeing Nazi  persecution while secretly working with   the occupiers. Among the most notorious is a  Dutch brothel owner and prostitute who becomes   one of the country’s most feared Jewish  betrayers. Her name is Adriana Valkenburg.

Adriana ‘Jeanne’ Valkenburg was born on  10 June 1894 in the city of Schiedam,   in the Netherlands. She was the 4th of 14  children born to Jacob Valkenburg, a butcher,   and his wife Adriana Cornelia de Ligt. Her  childhood was marked by constant conflict.   Her father was a strict and often violent  man, while her mother neglected the children.  

Hatred, jealousy, and frequent quarrels among  family members became a part of everyday life.  Valkenburg attended primary school until the  age of 13 before spending 1 year at a domestic   science school. She then helped her mother run  the household, but she also began attracting the   attention of the police.

 In 1911, she was reported  for public indecency, and the following year she   was accused of stealing a gold ring. Around the  same time, her parents divorced, adding to the   instability of her already troubled childhood. At the age of 18, Valkenburg found work as a   costume seamstress at the Gerzon fashion store in  Rotterdam. In 1916, she began a relationship with   the wealthy shipbuilder Jan Pot, who provided  her with financial support and a place to live.  

Later that same year, she unexpectedly  married the Jewish businessman Jacob Stibbe,   whom she had met only a short time earlier. The  marriage lasted just a few weeks before Stibbe   disappeared without a trace. After spending  several months with one of her sisters,   she settled in Amsterdam in 1918, where  she resumed her affair with Jan Pot.

By the early 1920s, Valkenburg had built a second  source of income alongside her arrangement with   Jan Pot. She worked as a prostitute and later  became the owner of several brothels in Amsterdam   and The Hague. During this period, she became  involved with the waiter Arnoldus “Nol” van   Leersum, who soon began living off her earnings.

  Valkenburg repeatedly tried to have him prosecuted   for pimping, but her efforts failed. After years  of legal disputes, she finally succeeded in ending   the relationship in 1933, although the lengthy  court battles consumed much of her fortune.  Despite these setbacks, Valkenburg became  a well-known figure in Amsterdam’s criminal   underworld.

 Former police commissioner  Hendrik Voordewind later described her   as “a striking beauty: tall, blonde, with a  very handsome face and the bearing of a queen.”  Both the police and the criminal  underworld knew her by the nickname   “Jeanne the Liar,” a reflection of  her reputation for manipulation,   deception, and intrigue.

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 Over the years, she  accumulated 21 police reports for prostitution,   drunkenness, fighting, and other offences. By the mid-1930s, Valkenburg had also begun   performing illegal abortions alongside  running her brothels. In December 1938,   she was sentenced to 9 months in prison for these  activities. When she was released in June 1939,   her circumstances had changed dramatically.

  Jan Pot had withdrawn his financial support,   her brothels had been closed, and she was left  virtually penniless. Forced to seek assistance   from social services, Valkenburg returned to  working as a street prostitute to survive. This is where the work of our team of historians,   researchers and editors  becomes the story you hear. I’m Marchand Steenkamp and since 2022,  I’ve had the privilege of being the voice   behind World History.

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Now, let’s get into today’s story. The Second World War started on 1 September  1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. For 8 months, the Netherlands remained  neutral, hoping to stay out of the conflict.   But that hope ended on 10 May 1940, when  Adolf Hitler launched a surprise attack on   the country without a declaration of war.

 German  paratroopers seized key bridges and airfields,   while the Luftwaffe, the German air force,  bombed Rotterdam, killing hundreds of civilians   and destroying the city’s historic centre. Faced  with the threat of similar devastation elsewhere,   the Dutch army surrendered after just 5  days. Queen Wilhelmina and the government   fled to London, and the Nazi occupation began.

 On 22 and 23 February 1941, German forces raided   the Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam, arresting  and deporting more than 400 Jewish men to   the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration  camps. The Dutch people’s reaction was unique   among the Nazi-occupied Europe: they organized  the February Strike, a two-day general strike,   which started on 25 February 1941. German  officials brutally suppressed it.

 This action   was followed by a hardening in Nazi policy. The  German authorities as well as collaborating Dutch   authorities and civil services segregated  Jews from the general Dutch population and   incarcerated 15,000 of them in German-administered  forced-labour camps. The Germans then ordered the   concentration of Jews in Amsterdam and sent  foreign and stateless Jews to the Westerbork   transit camp in the northeast part of the country.

  Some of the remaining provincial Jews were sent to   the Vught camp. The sign ‘Forbidden for Jews’  appeared on the doors and gates of cafes,   swimming pools, sports fields, museums,  zoos, libraries, theatres, markets and many   other public places. Jews had to hand over their  valuables, and their businesses were confiscated.   Regulations which forced Jews to wear a yellow  Star of David on their clothing as a means of   identification were announced in the Netherlands  on 29 April 1942.

 Those caught without the badge   after 5 May, when they came into effect, were  arrested, and detained for a six-week period   to serve at Mauthausen. In the Netherlands  everyone knew that this was a death sentence. Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands began  in July 1942. The last train left Westerbork for   Auschwitz on 3 September 1944.

 During these two  years, the Germans and their Dutch collaborators   deported some 107,000 Jews, mostly to Auschwitz  and Sobibor in German-occupied Poland,   where they were murdered. Only 5,200 survived.  In addition, 25,000-30,000 Jews went into hiding,   assisted by the Dutch underground and  two-thirds of those managed to survive. For Adriana Valkenburg, the Second World War  reached a turning point in 1942.

 By then, she was   living on Van Ostadestraat in Amsterdam with Jacob  Acohen, a Jewish market trader whom she had first   met in 1931. Their relationship had begun as that  of prostitute and client, but over the years it   developed into a romantic partnership.

 Valkenburg  planned to marry Acohen on 2 April 1942 in the   hope that a mixed marriage might protect him from  deportation. Before the marriage could take place,   however, he was arrested by the German  authorities and deported to the Mauthausen   concentration camp, where he later died. Following his arrest, Valkenburg began   presenting herself as someone willing to help  persecuted Jews.

 She arranged hiding places,   helped organize escape routes, and quickly  gained the trust of many desperate people   seeking to avoid deportation. However, she also  demanded large sums of money for her assistance,   exploiting those who had few other options. By the spring of 1943, these activities had   attracted the attention of the Sicherheitsdienst,  better known as the SD, the intelligence service   of the SS.

 Facing the threat of arrest herself,  Valkenburg agreed to work with the Jewish Affairs   Office, the German-controlled organization  responsible for identifying and arresting Jews   in the occupied Netherlands. From that  moment on, the woman who had presented   herself as a rescuer became a kind of Nazi  poison within Amsterdam’s Jewish community.   Using the confidence she had built among Jewish  families, she directed many of them to fictitious   hiding places or addresses under her control.

  These so-called “Jew traps” allowed German   authorities to arrest victims who believed they  were being rescued. In return, Valkenburg received   financial rewards as well as payments linked to  property confiscated from those she betrayed. As Valkenburg’s collaboration with the  German occupation authorities intensified,   she established close contacts with some of  the most notorious Jewish hunters operating   in the Netherlands. Among them was Pieter Schaap,  one of the country’s most feared collaborators.  

She also had a brief affair with Otto Kempin,  the German officer who headed the Jewish Affairs   Office in Amsterdam. Through payments for  each successful arrest and rewards linked to   confiscated Jewish property, Valkenburg earned  substantial sums of money from her activities.  In the summer of 1943, after another Dutch  collaborator had been assassinated by the   resistance, Valkenburg moved to a new address on  Zuider Amstellaan in Amsterdam.

 During the move,   she met the handyman Joop Bom.  The two soon became partners,   both personally and professionally, and continued  operating the so-called “Jew traps” together.   On 16 November 1943, Valkenburg and Bom married. As the Allied advance through Western Europe  accelerated during 1944, the German occupation   of the Netherlands began to collapse.

 On 5  September 1944, a day that became known in   the Netherlands as Dolle Dinsdag, or “Mad  Tuesday,” false reports spread that Allied   forces had already crossed the Dutch border.  Panic erupted among many Dutch collaborators,   who feared immediate retribution. Valkenburg  and Bom fled south and found temporary refuge   with one of her sisters in the city of Bergen op  Zoom. Their escape proved short-lived.

 Acting on   information provided by Valkenburg’s own sister,  Dutch authorities arrested the couple on 31 March   1945, and they were transferred to the Meilust  internment camp in the city of Bergen op Zoom. The Second World War in Europe  ended on 8 May 1945. By that time,   it is estimated that Valkenburg had betrayed  around 50 Jews, including relatives of one of   her former lovers. At least 33 of the people  she betrayed perished during the Holocaust. 

On 3 July 1947, the Special Court of Justice in  Amsterdam sentenced Valkenburg to death for her   wartime crimes. Two years later, in 1949, the  Special Court of Cassation upheld the verdict.   Nevertheless, later that same year,  she received clemency, and her death   sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

  In 1959, her sentence was reduced to 22 years,   and in January 1960 she was released  after serving nearly 15 years in prison.  After her release, Valkenburg lived a largely  isolated life in Amsterdam and later in the   border village of Putte. Apart from occasional  contact with her half-brother Jules de Ligt, she   had little contact with her family.

 During the  1960s, extreme obesity left her confined to a   wheelchair. When Adriana Valkenburg died in Bergen  op Zoom on 19 February 1968, she was 73 years old. Thanks for watching the World History  Channel. Be sure to like and subscribe   and click the bell notification  icon so you don’t miss our next   episodes. We thank you and we’ll  see you next time on the channel.