Henneicke Column

The Henneicke Column was a group of Dutch  Nazi collaborators working in the investigative division of the Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung), with headquarters in Amsterdam, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

Between March and October 1943 the group, led by Wim Henneicke and Willem Briedé, was responsible for tracking down Jews in hiding and arresting them. The group arrested and "delivered" to the Nazi authorities 8,000-9,000 Jews. Most of them were deported to Westerbork concentration camp and later shipped to and murdered in Sobibor and other German extermination camps.

The bounty paid to Henneicke Column members for each captured Jew was 7.50 guilders (equivalent to about US$47.50). The group, consisting of 18 core members, ended its work and was disbanded on 1 October1943. However, the Column’s leaders continued working for the Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration tracking down hidden Jewish property.

Before Germany retreated from the Netherlands (May 1945), Wim Henneicke was assassinated by the Dutch resistance in December 1944 in Amsterdam. Willem Briedé escaped the country and settled in Germany. In 1949 he was tried by a Dutch court in absentia and received the death penalty. The sentence was never carried out; Briedé died of natural causes in Germany in January 1962.

The history of the Henneicke Column was researched by Dutch journalist Ad van Liempt, who in 2002 published in the Netherlands A Price on Their Heads, Kopgeld, Dutch bounty hunters in search of Jews, 1943.