More than 1,000 people have applied for new compensation of a one-time payment of $2,700 from Germany for labor performed in Amsterdam’s Jewish ghetto during the Holocaust.

The compensation is offered to people who lived in three districts of the Dutch capital that served as ghettos for the city’s Jewish community during the German occupation and performed voluntary labor there, the ANP Dutch news agency reported.

The distribution of money for the labor was announced this week by the Dutch Union for Holocaust Survivors, which is known in the Netherlands by its Dutch-language acronym, VBV.

Some 1,200 applicants have submitted requests for payment as compensation for labor performed in the so-called Jodenbuurt in central Amsterdam, the Rivierenbuurt area in the capital’s south and Transvaalbuurt, east of the center, according to VBV.

“Dutch Jews were driven out of their professions and forced into ghettos before their deportation to concentration camps,” VBV Chairwoman Flory Neter told ANP. “In the ghettos of Amsterdam they often did random chores such as sewing bags to feed their families. It wasn’t forced labor but they were coerced to live in the ghettos so it wasn’t voluntary either.”

VBV has negotiated for years with the German government to obtain the compensation and lost a lawsuit against Germany, but was able to obtain the payments in further talks.

Among those eligible for payments are Holocaust survivors who worked in the ghettos as children, Neter also said.

By the time they end up at Baba’s Grillroom in central Amsterdam, Israeli tourists tend to be somewhat distracted.

Situated near the famous Rembrandt Square, this popular and veteran falafel eatery is literally surrounded by pot-selling coffee shops that help make Amsterdam one of the top holiday destinations for Israelis — and especially for the young craving a cheap and top-quality high.

Giggly and thoroughly “mastoolim,” Hebrew slang for baked or stoned, they are likely to experience another dope-related phenomenon: The munchies. And that’s a problem for observant Jews in a city that is not exactly famous for its selection of kosher foods.

How fortunate, then, to chance upon the entrance to Baba’s place, with its promising signs in Hebrew and stars of David. Those sober enough to remain skeptical despite the Jewish symbolism are welcome to see Baba’s kosher certificate — a document signed by three rabbis from the United States.

The only problem is that one of the rabbis is deceased and the other two say they never certified any business in Amsterdam, according to a Jan. 9 report by the NIW Dutch Jewish weekly.

Acting on a tip, the paper sent one of its reporters, Jigal Krant, on an undercover mission that involved dressing up like an Israeli tourist and asking (in English) about the kashrut at Baba’s. Staff showed Krant a certificate signed by three rabbis. But the two living rabbis told NIW they had no idea their name was being used by Baba’s.

When NIW confronted the owners — two Egyptian Christians named Hanna Basta Tawadrous, 48, and Nermin Angali, 34 — they denied ever claiming they had a certificate, which NIW had photographed. Apparently, the new owners bought Baba’s approximately a year ago. To NIW they explained that their meat is kosher because it’s halal. (The NIW report did not investigate whether the meat is, in fact, halal.)

This article was written for JTA by Cnaan Liphshiz.

A recent survey conducted by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the University of Amsterdam found that most people tend to avoid lying, and people who do lie usually own up to it.

“The fact that participants who indicated lying often actually did lie more often in the dice test demonstrates that they were honest about their dishonesty,” says Bruno Verschuere of the University of Amsterdam. “It may be that frequent liars show more psychopathic traits and therefore have no trouble admitting to lying frequently.”

There are practical applications to the study.

“It is important to study the conditions leading people to lie, deceive, or engage in unethical conduct more broadly,” said Dr. Shaul Shalvi of Ben Gurion University’s Dept. of Psychology. “Such behaviors are rather costly from a societal perspective. Consider, for example, behaviors like lying when filing an insurance claim, reporting that the TV that was stolen from one’s apartment was just a couple inches larger than it really was. From the individual’s perspective, this seems like a minor lie. Insurance companies however, pay millions of dollars annually for such insurance ‘build-ups’,” Shalvi concludes.

A sapling that came from the tree that stood outside the hiding place of Anne Frank in Amsterdam was cut down and stolen in Frankfurt, German police  said.

Unidentified parties cut down the 8-foot tree outside the Anne Frank School sometime between last week and Monday, according to a report Tuesday by the Dutch public broadcaster NOS. Police have no information or leads on the identity of the thieves or their motives, the report said.

The cutting was planted in 2008 outside the school named for the Jewish teenage diarist who was born in Frankfurt in 1929. Anne was killed in 1945 during the Holocaust after her family was caught hiding in the Nazi-occupied Dutch capital, where they had moved to escape persecution in Germany.

“It was, obviously, more than just a tree for us,” a spokesperson for Frankfurt’s Anne Frank School told NOS. “We grew it with the help of a landscape architect and with the loving care of several classes.”

The tree is not easily replaceable, as the original chestnut tree that stood outside Anne’s hiding place, and which is featured in her diary, was cut down in 2010 following a storm.

Amsterdam’s Chabad Rabbi Binyamin Jacobs lit the candles on the first night Hanukkah Wednesday on a 36-foot menorah with a six-ton base that was made with donations by Christian Zionists.

Klaas Zijlstr designed and built the menorah, in the shape of a Star of David, in his metal workshop in the northern tip of the Netherlands. Possibly the largest in all of Europe, the handiwork of a Protestant metal contractor is meant to be a sign of solidarity by Christian Zionists with the Jewish people.

“It’s exactly like the rabbi wanted,” Zijlstra said.

Rabbi Jacobs helped Zijlstra and a group called Christians for Israel design the nine-branch candelabrum so it could be used for the eight-day holiday, which began Wednesday night and which was lit in front of hundreds of Christians and Jews during a public ceremony in Nijkerk, not far from Amsterdam.

Though commonplace in the United States and even in Russia, public Hanukkah events are a recent and revolutionary development in the Netherlands. Here they signify the growing self-confidence and openness of a Jewish community whose near annihilation in the Holocaust left a deeply entrenched tendency to keep a low profile.

“Twenty years ago, this wouldn’t‎‎ have been possible,” said Arjen Lont, the Christian Zionist businessman who donated $40,000 to build and transport the menorah. “It requires a lot of openness.”

Lont says the purpose of the giant menorah, which can be used either with electric bulbs or oil lamps, is to send a message.

“After unspeakable suffering, the horrors of the Holocaust and most recently the attacks on Israel, Jews may feel they are alone,” Lont told JTA. “This is our way of saying you are not alone; we are behind you.”

The first public Hanukkah lighting ceremony in the country was organized in 1989 in Buitenveldert, near Amsterdam, by the wife of a Chabad rabbi, according to Bart Wallet, a historian of Dutch Jewry at the University of Amsterdam.

Today, such events are held annually in 19 municipalities, from the northern city of Leeuwarden, near Berlikum, to the southern border city of Maastricht, according to Rabbi Jacobs.

He said that public menorah lightings in the country signify the Jewish community’s confidence in asserting its place in Dutch society.

“Nowadays it’s also saying we are here; we are also a part of the fabric of religious communities and society,” he explained.

Dutch Jewish reticence toward public displays of faith dates back at least to the 19th century, according to Wallet, when Dutch rabbis decreed that no Jewish rituals should be held in the public domain. At the time, Dutch Jews were keen on integrating into a democratic society as equal citizens, and they considered it counterproductive to showcase religious customs that set them apart from their compatriots.

The tendency was greatly reinforced after the Holocaust, when three-quarters of Holland’s population of 140,000 Jews perished — a higher percentage than anywhere else in occupied Western Europe. Today, about 40,000 Jews live in the Netherlands.

Wallet says things began to change in the 1970s, when Dutch Jews began displaying greater activism around anti-Semitism and Israel.

Even today, however, many Dutch Jews retain a sense of reticence when it comes to public displays of religion.

“There’s nothing wrong with these Hanukkah events, but to me they don’t seem familiar,” said Jaap Hartog, chairman of the umbrella group of Dutch Jewry, called the Dutch Israelite Religious Community, or NIK. “To me, Hanukkah is more a holiday that you celebrate at home with your family. The public candle lightings are more of an American thing.

“On a personal level, I’m not too keen on participating.”

Initially, Chabad rabbis organized candle lighting ceremonies as part of their efforts to reach lapsed Jews, but today the menorah lightings are not organized exclusively by Chabad. Nathan Bouscher, a Jewish activist who is not himself religious, has co-organized candle lightings at the Dam, Amsterdam’s best-known square.

“It’s a way to build bridges between Jews and the non-Jewish environment, but also within the community and between Dutch-born Jews and the thousands of Israelis who live here and the tourists from Israel,” Bouscher said.

Back at Zijlstra’s metal workshop, his menorah is attracting attention from neighbors. During the test run last week, a few of them stopped by to admire his handiwork and congratulate him.

One of Western Europe’s largest Hebrew bookstores has closed down in Amsterdam as its former owners prepare to move to Israel.

The Samech bookstore has been supplying Hebrew-language books to members of Holland’s Jewish community for nearly 40 years and possessed a stock of 100,000 books, according to the website of the Dutch Israelite Religious Community, or NIK.

The store, which used to be the largest of its kind in the Netherlands, belonged to Daan and Shulamit Daniel, who are planning to move to Israel. All their children had already moved out of the Netherlands in favor of “places with richer Jewish lives than Amsterdam,” according to NIK.

The store’s entire stock was sold or given away last month, the report by NIK said. Holland has a Jewish population of 41,000 -45,000, the European Jewish Congress reported.

An anti-Zionist rabbi said he was attacked in Amsterdam because of Israel, but police maintain that the incident simply was an argument over an “almost” traffic accident.”

The facts of the story are clear, but it takes a very open mind, if not a deranged one, to understand the interpretation.

A car almost hit a pedestrian, who was so angry at the near mishap that he snapped a picture of the driver who had supposedly stopped his car in order to threaten to do to him what he didn’t do by hitting him with his car.

The motorist then supposedly ran after the man and attacked him, who apparently was not happy with the idea that he already had escaped injury by not being run over by the car. The victim was a rabbi and dressed in traditional Haredi gear. For that reason or for another, the driver, a Muslim, reportedly hurled hate insults at him and then attacked him after a chase..

The police said the whole affair was not an anti-Semitic attack, while the rabbi drew the obvious conclusion that Israel is to blame for the attack.

Israel?

Of course, but you have to understand Neturei Karta to follow the reasoning.

The rabbi is named Joseph Antebi, and just to make the story stranger than fiction, he is an Israel living in Holland, where he is not contaminated by a Zionist state. He prefers anti-Zionists like himself.

And perhaps like the Muslim who attacked him.

The driver-attacker “had relatively dark skin and didn’t look very Dutch, or at least didn’t look like his family has been living in Holland for centuries,” Antebi told the JTA.

He claimed that the driver, according to the rabbi, stopped the car and threatened to hit him. Antebi pulled out his cell phone to photograph the Muslim, perhaps for nostalgia to remember he is not the only one who hates others because of their race, religion or citizenship.

The good rabbi calls himself a “Palestinian Jew,” JTA reported.

But he really loves his brethren. He said that the attacker “shouted negative things about my religion and about my people.”

And that is why Israel is to blame.

You see, people hate Jews because Israel is such an awful country.

“People hear about the atrocities, the way the Zionist state is treating the nations around them, and they are angry about it,” Antebi told JTA. “I’m not surprised he did what he did, it’s human behavior. The one to blame is the Zionist state, which is doing a lot of bad things to people.”

Now we know that Antebi sympathizes with his attacker, apparently a fellow anti-Zionist.

His account of the incident is a bit much to believe. First of all, if the driver almost hit him, maybe, just maybe, Antebi was crossing the street without looking past his cell phone?

Not only did the driver supposedly stop his car, get out and shout at Antebi, the rabbi also claims the “dark-skinned” driver then ran after him when he asked a fishmonger to call the police. While the fishmonger refused, the driver attacked Antebi, who ended up in the hospital, where he was released after being treated for minor injuries.

Can you see this scene? A driver leaves his car in the street to run after an innocent Jew in order to attack him?

A spokesperson for the Amsterdam police told JTA police are investigating but are not certain the attack was anti-Semitic. “Currently, we are assuming it is an argument about traffic that got out of hand,” she said.

Neturei Karta blamed the attack on the “Zionist evil, which causes anti-Semitism all around the world, until even those who are truly observant and faithful Jews are liable to fall victim, and pay a high price for the Zionists’ sins.”

Antebi and his anti-Zionist cult know God’s system for reward and punishment.

But did it ever come to their minds, what is left of them, that maybe God is trying to tell something else to an anti-Zionist Israeli who is attacked by a Muslim who hates Jews?

Jewish Press blogger Paula Stern wrote, “The Muslim was being honest enough to know that there is no real difference between a Zionist and a Jew. The rabbi, however, remains stupidly blind to this simple fact.”