Hendrik Koot

His death was seized by the German authorities to start raids in the Jodenbuurt, the Amsterdam Jewish quarters, which in turn led to the February strike.

[4] The Koot family had a winning lottery ticket in 1932 and, combined with savings, that allowed them to buy a store that sold equipment and supplies for textile manufactures to which moved on the Vijzelstraat (no.

[5] At the same time, though, Hans Böhmcker [de], the representative in Amsterdam for Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Reichskommissar for the Netherlands, had forbidden WA members from entering Jewish neighbourhoods.

[7] After Koot's death, Rauter himself wrote an op-ed in the NSB paper Volk en Vaderland that salaciously described the act: "a Jew had ripped open the victim's artery with his teeth and sucked his blood out",[5] in "an obvious allusion to ritual murder".

[8] Protests broke out, and the raid on an ice cream parlor, a known hangout for a Jewish knokploeg, saw German police forces being attacked in retaliation and possibly sprayed with acid.

The Germans decided to round up a large number of Jewish men, which gave the local communist resistance groups an opportunity to agitate the population enough to start a strike.