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May 18,2022 Judgment
of the District Court of the Northern Netherlands
regarding Hitler's diamonds. Is Aspekt
Publisher Perry Pierik Co-Author of Anti-Semitic
book? Introduction | main page Hitler's diamonds
A brief history. In 2020 Aspekt publishers presented with great fanfare the book Hitler's diamonds (521 pages), supposedly written by the 'Enigma collective'. Theo Beenen, a former city council member of Eindhoven, calls himself secretary and spokesperson of this collective – and everything seems to indicate that this is nothing more than a one man collective. According to the publisher, the work, presented as non-fiction (so all real), allegedly contains sensational news about Adolf Hitler. Hitler's mother would have been a witch. Hitler would have spoken fluent Dutch. He would have impregnated Goering's wife. Hitler's body is said to have been interred with Eva Braun amidst gigantic treasures in a booby-trapped crypt under the church of the Austrian village of Fulpmes. And a mysterious piece of sheet music is said to be a treasure map showing the exact position of that crypt.
In the book all this is presented in a mixture of numerological gibberish and pseudo-histories - with one central message: there is supposedly a large Jewish-protestant Masonic conspiracy for world domination. To prove this, the Enigma collective pulls out of the closet the anti-Semitic falsification The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, among others. This is a hate mongering work that was manufactured in the early 20th century by the then Russian secret service in order to justify pogroms. We - Jaap van den Born, Bas Paternotte and
I - reported on it in The
Post
Online (TPO) and Droog Magazine (DM).
This after thoroughly studying the book and the
statements of the publisher and the author. We also
make inquiries with the Netherlands Public Prosecutor's
Office, the Anne Frank House and the Centre for Information and
Documentation on Israel (CIDI, also
specialised in recognising anti-Semitism) before
reporting. The reporting is, with good reason, hard. The title of the first TPO article leaves nothing to guess: 'The book Hitler's diamonds is anti-Semitic raving'. (€, in Dutch) After we continue to report on the book, in both TPO and DM, and other media also report on Hitler's diamonds, Aspekt publishers decide, partly under pressure from the CIDI, to take the book off the shelves. We ask Theo Beenen, the self-proclaimed
spokesman of the Enigma Collective, who refused to
answer earlier questions before publication of the
first TPO-piece, some questions again. His
response:
To top
of page.
Indeed, two weeks later, a 'barking letter' from the Eindhoven 'Advocatenkantoor van de Laar' followed, addressed to me personally. Which is strange, because most TPO and DM articles about the book were written by Van den Born, Paternotte and me. Anyway; after consulting our legal team I decide to ignore the letter, because nothing concrete was stated in it. This kind of 'barking letters' are the order of the day lately. The aim is to intimidate journalists by threatening them with costly legal procedures. To prevent this intimidation, European legislation is currently in the making (for more about this, see a.o.: Ending GAG Lawsuits in Europe Protecting Democracy and Fundamental Rights, whistleblower.org. 2020). Six months pass. Again we receive a 'barking letter'. This time from another Eindhoven law firm, 'Lamers Tielemans Advocaten'. Because this time specific things are stated that are clearly not true, I advise the sender to first check what his client has told him.
On 8 January 2022, Beenen sends an e-mail to a well-known German
documentary maker:
With this e-mail, Beenen also sends a copy
of the e-mail he had sent to the mayor of Fulpmes,
the village where Hitler is supposed to be buried,
as “revealed” at the presentation of Hitler's
diamonds in August 2020. That 2020 e-mail, which
emphatically stated that everything would really be
true, and that he was therefore already claiming a
finder's fee, was surprisingly signed with:
Beenen sent all this to the documentary
maker while the trial in the Netherlands was going
on, in which he explicitly stated to the judges that
his book was a novel. What Beenen does not know,
however, is that Jaap van den Born and I have been
working closely with this German since 2018. He
therefore forwards Beenen's e-mails directly to us. Let's switch back to December 2020 for a moment. On his blog, copywriter René van Maarsseveen recounts how he had been approached about three years earlier "by someone who had used numerology to discover where Hitler buried his diamonds. Whether I wanted to collaborate to write a book about it." It doesn't come to that. Then, a year later, that someone called Van Maarsseveen: "The book , or rather the story, was ready. (...) However, the numerologist was dissatisfied with his co-writer and sought a replacement in me. (...) I declined. From what Van Maarsseveen further writes, it becomes clear that this numerologist was Theo Beenen, and that Beenen, who had never published anything worth mentioning, was looking for a ghostwriter. Apparently, he eventually found one and Hitler's diamonds could be published.
During the hearing in the Northern Netherlands (Groningen) District Court, Beenen makes such remarkable statements and it appears that his lawyer Lamers has prepared himself so badly that my lawyers and I look forward to the verdict with even more confidence. The statement by Beenen that he has also reported the matter to the police, but that the Public Prosecution Service does not want to deal with it and that he has therefore instituted Article 12 SV proceedings against the Public Prosecution Service (to force it to prosecute me), strengthens that confidence even more. A report of the hearing can be read here. The verdict of the Groningen judges is
devastating for Beenen. All his claims are
dismissed. They also order him to pay the legal
costs. But more important than that is that the
court writes:
Shortly after the verdict, Beenen told the Eindhovens Dagblad that he will not appeal: "The whole legal process has already cost me enough money. But at the same time he says he will persist in his complaint against the Public Prosecution's decision not to prosecute yours truly. And: "The worst thing I find is that years of work on my part were destroyed by Droog in a short time." The latter is too much honour: without Jaap van den Born's know-how with regard to all kinds of circulating conspiracy theories and pseudo-scientific abacadabra, it would not have been possible to skilfully dismiss in a relatively short time both Hitler's diamonds and Pierik's speech at the book launch as the humbug that they are. To top
of page.
"Unfortunate fragments"? The book floats on the existence of the so-called Jewish-Protestant Masonic conspiracy. Just the combination of "Jewish", "Freemasons" and "conspiracy" rings alarm bells with every right-minded person. If this does not happen to a historian cum book editor, this can only mean one thing: he obviously finds it such a normal combination that these alarm bells do not go off for him. Which, with today's knowledge, is not
surprising. In recent years, Perry Pierik has been
drifting more and more in the direction of the
conspiracy thinking of the Dutch political party Forum for Demo-cracy and its
associated idiots. Perry Pierik co-authored Hitler's diamonds? But there is more: the letter to the mayor of Fulpmes is signed with: "the authors of the book Hitler's diamonds (...) P. Pierik and Th. Beenen". When asked, Pierik denied having been the co-author of the book. But Beenen does not deny that Pierik was a co-author. "I am only the secretary of a writers' research collective and am therefore allowed to speak on behalf of the collective or to sign something," Beenen told us in an e-mail dated May 16, 2022. Be that as it may - the case of Hitler's diamonds seems to have come to an end with the verdict of the District Court of North Netherlands. With the emphasis on seems: Beenen still litigates to silence a critical journalist. And Aspekt publishers? There are many complaints about both the publisher and its publishing policy. It gives one pause for thought that publisher Perry Pierik has 'hired' influencer 'Sherry' - also used to promote Hitler's diamonds - for a hagiographic interview on 'Beauty & Books. The blog about beauty, books, food, fashion and medical matters!' Anyone who studies that blog will see that it consists of nothing but advertorials - certainly not the place for credible interviews. Not for nothing did legendary journalist
Jan Blokker say in 2007 in Vrij Nederland magazine:
"that strange publisher Aspekt, they have nothing
better to do than to think up all kinds of
conspiracy theories. I am absolutely not in favour of banning books, no matter how reprehensible the content. My colleagues and I have reported on the book critically. Given our findings, we expected one or more persons or organisations to report the author and publisher for spreading anti-Semitic propaganda. It would then be up to the judiciary to determine whether and how action should be taken. The publisher withdrew Hitler's diamonds himself. This is a pity, because it deprives the interested reader of the possibility to form an opinion and possibly report the matter. It also deprives educational organizations of the possibility of using the book in lessons as an example of how insane anti-Semitic propaganda is.
Originally published as: Vonnis Rechtbank Noord-Nederland inzake Hitlers diamanten. Is Aspekt-uitgever Perry Pierik co-auteur van antisemitisch schotschrift? Reporters Online, Haarlem, 16-05-2022. https://reportersonline.nl/vonnis-rechtbank-noord-nederland-inzake-hitlers-diamenten-is-aspekt-uitgever-perry-pierik-co-auteur-van-antisemitisch-schotschrift/ . To top of page.
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