AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Several dozen people protested outside a theater Saturday where a 104-year-old singer who once performed for Adolf Hitler took the stage in the Netherlands for the first time in four decades.
Johannes Heesters 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 Wehr-macht, and he earned millions," said Piet Schouten, representative of a committee formed to protest Heesters' performance at De Flint theater in Amersfoort.
In 1964, Heesters was booed off the stage in Amsterdam when he tried to appear as Nazi-hating retired naval Capt. Georg von Trapp in "The Sound of Music."
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No disturbances were reported during Saturday's concert in Amersfoort, where Heesters was born in 1903.
On Saturday, he performed "The Merry Widow," the German song that made him famous, and "There by the Windmill," a Dutch classic, among others.
