Bernardus Andreas Dries Riphagen was born on September 7, 1909, in Amsterdam, the eighth child in a troubled family. His mother died when he was six years old, and his father, an alcoholic, remarried but paid little attention to the children. That difficult childhood left a lasting mark on him.
At the age of 14, Riphagen entered Pollux, a merchant navy training center in the harbor of Amsterdam. Between 1923 and 1924 he served as an ordinary seaman, and after completing his training he joined cargo ships traveling across the Atlantic.
He spent roughly two years in the United States, working mainly for Standard Oil, one of the largest American oil companies at the time. During this period he became familiar with American criminal circles and their methods. His flashy lifestyle, love of gambling, and underworld connections would later earn him the nickname the Dutch Al Capone.
After returning to the Netherlands at 18, he quickly became involved in Amsterdam's criminal underworld. Riphagen joined the National Socialist Dutch Workers Party, an extremely anti-Semitic minor party whose goal was to turn the Netherlands into a province of the German Reich.
He worked as a pimp around Rembrandtplein, a nightlife district in central Amsterdam, and traded in jewelry and second-hand cars. He also became involved in black market operations and illegal gambling networks. He was married four times, with a daughter from his first marriage, a son from his fourth, and no children from his second and third.
The Second World War began on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, with paratroopers seizing bridges, airfields, and strategic positions while the Luftwaffe carried out heavy bombing raids.
On May 14, much of the historic center of Rotterdam was destroyed in a devastating aerial bombardment. Faced with the threat of similar attacks against other Dutch cities, the Netherlands surrendered one day later.
Soon after the occupation began, the German authorities introduced anti-Jewish measures designed to isolate Jews from Dutch society and strip them of their rights and property. Jewish businesses were confiscated, and thousands were forced to register with the occupation authorities.
Under the leadership of Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Reichskommissar of the Netherlands, Jews were removed from the civil service and forced to register their businesses and property. In January 1941, all Jews in the Netherlands were ordered to register with the occupation authorities.
The Germans claimed the measure was introduced for their protection, but in reality it made future deportations far easier. More than 159,000 people were registered, including thousands of Jewish refugees who had fled from Germany and Austria.
On April 29, 1942, the German authorities announced that Jews would be required to wear the yellow Star of David. Anyone caught without the badge after the regulation came into effect faced arrest and deportation to Mauthausen concentration camp. In the Netherlands, most people understood that being sent there meant almost certain death.
Deportations from the Netherlands began in July 1942. Trains regularly departed from the transit camps of Westerbork and Vught to Auschwitz and Sobibor in German-occupied Poland. Between 1942 and 1944, more than 107,000 Dutch Jews were deported, and only around 5,200 survived. Tens of thousands went into hiding with the help of the Dutch resistance.
As the persecution intensified, many Dutch Jews went into hiding. Yet survival often depended not only on secrecy but also on avoiding betrayal. Across Amsterdam, criminal gangs, collaborators, and paid informers began hunting Jews in exchange for money, valuables, and protection from the Germans.
Among the most feared of these men was Riphagen. The German occupation created new opportunities for criminals willing to work with the Nazis, and Riphagen was one of them. During the war he not only continued his criminal activities but used the occupation to expand his operations.
Riphagen worked closely with the SD, the intelligence service of the SS and the Nazi Party. Together with other criminals from Amsterdam's underworld, his task was to uncover black market activity and track down Jewish money and valuables hidden from the German authorities. In return, the men received between 5 and 10 percent of the confiscated property, though many also stole valuables for themselves.
Riphagen soon became involved in hunting Jews alongside members of the Olij family, who were feared as Jew hunters. From 1943 onward, he joined the Henneicke Column, a group tasked with hunting Jews in hiding.
The group, founded in 1942 by Wim Henneicke, consisted of around 50 men, many of them professional criminals. Between March 4 and March 31, 1943 alone, the column handed over 3,190 Jewish people to the German authorities, who deported them to extermination camps. The bounty ranged from 7 and a half to 40 guilders per person.
By the end of 1943, Riphagen had amassed a fortune, much of it hidden in bank accounts in Belgium and Switzerland. He also profited directly from the deportation of Jews. After promising a Jewish woman that he would help her escape to England, he took possession of her luxurious house. The moment she was deported, he moved in with his family.
During the German occupation, Riphagen also worked for the Central Agency of Jewish Emigration in Amsterdam, the organization responsible for arranging the deportation of Jewish people from the Netherlands to Germany and Poland from 1941 to 1943. During the final year of the war, he worked for the SD in the city of Assen, where he specialized in tracking down Allied pilots in hiding and monitoring Allied weapons airdrops.
The Second World War in Europe ended on May 8, 1945. After the war, Riphagen was wanted for betraying Jews, and prosecutors believed he was responsible for the deaths of at least 200 people.
Riphagen contacted Willem Eef Houwer Saunders, a former resistance fighter and police chief in the city of Enschede, who agreed to cooperate with him. Instead of being formally arrested, Riphagen was placed under house arrest as a private prisoner in exchange for information about collaborators and Nazi support networks.
In February 1946, he escaped with the help of Frits and Piet Kerkhoven, figures connected to Amsterdam's criminal underworld. Riphagen was smuggled across the Dutch border in a coffin inside a hearse belonging to Kerkhoven's transport company, which also handled funeral services.
After crossing into Belgium, he was assisted by other criminal associates who guided him through Belgium and France before he eventually reached Spain. According to later statements by his son, Rob, Riphagen traveled from Belgium to Spain by bicycle over a period of three months.
In May 1946, Riphagen was stopped in the city of Huesca, in Spain, because he lacked valid identity papers. He was imprisoned there but later released after a Jesuit priest intervened on his behalf, on the condition that he obtained proper documents.
Riphagen subsequently acquired a Nansen passport, an identity document issued to stateless refugees, while Frits Kerkhoven supplied him with clothes and shoes containing diamonds hidden inside them that Riphagen had previously left in his care.
When Dutch authorities eventually tracked him down in Madrid, Riphagen fled to Argentina together with a friend in March 1948. The address he used there belonged to another Jesuit priest, though no direct connection to the Nazi ratlines has ever been proven.
The Dutch ambassador in Buenos Aires, Floris Carcilius Anna Baron van Pallandt, attempted to have Riphagen extradited. The effort failed because the available charges mainly involved older crimes, such as car theft and robbery, while there was too little evidence to continue pursuing him for wartime crimes.
In May 1951, the right-wing Argentine newspaper La Razón reported that the Supreme Court had ruled the remaining charges were too old to prosecute. Riphagen's escape from justice was largely due to his connections with Rodolfo Valenzuela, a member of the Argentine Supreme Court and a close associate of President Juan Perón.
Through Valenzuela, he established close contacts with Perón and his third wife, María Estela Martínez de Perón, known as Isabelita, relationships he maintained for the rest of his life. Riphagen settled in the Belgrano district of Buenos Aires, where he operated a press photo agency.
He also worked at Perón's intelligence service and organized boxing matches at Luna Park for his old associate from Amsterdam, Jan Olij. After the fall of Perón in 1955, Riphagen traveled across Europe, mainly between Spain, Switzerland, and Germany, living as a kind of gigolo, surrounding himself with wealthy women who supported him financially.
Dries Riphagen, considered the worst war criminal in Amsterdam, died of cancer at a private clinic in the Swiss city of Montreux on May 13, 1973. He was 63 years old.