Amsterdam is refunding Holocaust survivors forced to pay late rent fees

Amsterdam will repay families of Jewish people fined for late rent payments while they were held in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, city officials announced Friday. The average reimbursement would be 1,800 euros, or about $2,000, Agence France Presse reports.

Only 18,000 of the 80,000 Jewish people from Amsterdam sent to concentration camps survived. The Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide reported 240 Holocaust survivors were made to pay late fees upon returning to the Dutch capital.

AFP found that though complaints over the fines have renewed in recent years, there was controversy as early as 1946, when carpenter and businessman J.W. Levending wrote to local authorities: "Is it for us to pay for the broken pots? Those who during the past years have lived in misery, locked away, and from whom the Germans took everything?"

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