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Personal Identification Card Centre

In late 1941, people who were under threat went into hiding. That is when people also started forging personal identification cards. Jews, resistance fighter, people who refused to report for forced labour were at great risk if they carried their own personal identification cards. Dozens of groups forged documents. The largest organisation was the Personal Identification Card Centre, which was established in 1942. Members of the group were involved in the attack on the Amsterdam Register of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. This attack was an attempt to destroy the personal details index of the Jews in Amsterdam.

Personal story: van der Veen
Personal story: Rubinstein and Littmann
Personal story: Westerweel

1. After the attack on the Register of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Amsterdam, 27 March 1943.
   Under leadership of Gerrit van der Veen and Willem Arondeus a group of resistance fighters attacked the Register of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. The German police succeeded in arresting most of the members of the group within two weeks.
   Unknown photographer, NIOD Collection, Amsterdam
2. The Municipal Register (of Births, Deaths, and Marriages) in Jisp, a small rural village in the north of the country. The register was stolen by resistance fighters during the war and hidden behind a cemented hollow space.
   Unknown photographer, NIOD Collection, Amsterdam
3. Nathan (Notto) Notowicz (1911-1968), who went into hiding in Amsterdam in the home of the photographer Cas Oorthuys.
   Notowicz was born in Tyczyn, Poland. In 1937, he came to Amsterdam from Düsseldorf.
   He was a musician and started playing in the Die Pfeffermühle cabaret group. Notowicz was the leading figure in the Tehuis Oosteinde, which was established in 1937 as a refugee centre for Jewish refugees from Germany. During the war a resistance group gathered in this facility and Dutch Jews joined it. From the start of the deportations the group provided hiding addresses and personal identification cards and helped Jews escape from the Hollandsche Schouwburg.
   Photo by Cas Oorthuys, NFM Collection, Rotterdam