Protest as 104-year-old singer who performed for Hitler takes Dutch stage

AMERSFOORT, Netherlands-Several dozen protesters gathered outside a theater in the Netherlands Saturday where a singer who once performed for Adolf Hitler was due to take the stage in his native country for the first time in four decades.

Johannes Heesters, 104, has been a popular figure in German-language cabaret since the 1930s, earning him the epithet “the Netherlands’ most durable product.”

He was never accused of being a propagandist or anything other than an actor who was willing to perform for the Nazis, and the Allies allowed him to continue his career after the war. But in his native country he is viewed by some as irredeemable.

“He kept singing for the Nazi regime, for the Wehrmacht, and he earned millions,” said Piet Schouten, representative of a committee formed to protest Heesters’ performance.

“Those are facts and we have a problem with that on behalf of all the victims” he told national broadcaster NOS.

In Heesters’ previous attempt to perform in the Netherlands, in 1964, he was booed off the stage in Amsterdam when he tried to appear as Nazi-hating Captain von Trapp in “The Sound of Music.”

Around 50 demonstrators gathered outside De Flint theater in Amersfoort, where Heesters was born in 1903. A handful of neo-nazis turned up, uninvited, to support Heesters, and several were detained by police after throwing eggs at the demonstrators.

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