Pieter Menten

The "Dutchman"

Pieter Nicloas Menten was born on the 26 May 1899, in Amsterdam into a wealthy Amsterdam family. He claimed descent from the founders of Van den Bergh’s (Unilever) and that his father had been in Royal Dutch Petroleum, but broke away after the Shell take-over.

In truth and this was not to become apparent until well after the war, in 1980 at the conclusion of a protracted War Crimes Trial, it was disclosed that his predecessors had never had anything to do with Shell or Unilever.

His father had been a dealer in rags and waste paper, the company was named Menten and Stark and his grandfather had been a butcher’s assistant. Pieter had a brother Dirk who was two years younger, had joined the family’s waste paper business, but lived most of his life in the shadow of his elder brother.

On his father’s death in 1922 Menten broke away from the family empire and established a business in Danzig under the name “Menten and Stark.” With his business activities and deals of a dubious nature, he became a millionaire overnight, and the largest timber trader between Holland and Eastern Europe.

Most of his acquired wealth in Danzig was the result of fraudulent activities and as a result he fled with his wife to Lvov where they occupied a small flat. Dirk took over the family business in Amsterdam, and was to pay regular visits to his elder brother on his country estates in Poland.

Read the full Peter Menten story here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/economics/menten.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org