Nazi Germany
Aged 31, Heesters permanently moved to Germany with his wife and daughters in 1935. During his time there, he performed for Adolf Hitler and visited the Dachau concentration camp which made him a controversial figure for many Dutch. Joseph Goebbels placed Heesters on the Gottbegnadeten list as an artist considered crucial to Nazi culture.
Heesters is known to have funded the German war machine by donating money to the weapons industry. While he became a very controversial figure in the late 1970s, Heesters always denied these accusations despite reliable evidence.
Heesters befriended several high-ranking Nazi-officials and SS-officers. Mr. "Jopie" also performed regularly for people such as Hitler and Goering, with the former being known to have been an avid admirer of his acting skills. Throughout the war Heesters continued to perform for German soldiers in camps and barracks. He always denied having visited concentration camps, although he did have knowledge of their existence.
According to German author Volker Kühn, Heesters did in fact perform for the SS in Dachau concentration camp. For this claim he uses as evidence the testimony of Dachau inmate Viktor Matejka who worked for the SS and told Kühn he pulled the curtain when Heesters performed in 1941. According to German writer Jürgen Trimborn however, the interview with Matejka may not be reliable as it occurred some fifty years after the performance was said to have taken place. In December 2009, Heesters lost his libel suit against Kühn. While acknowledging having visited the camp, Heesters denied having performed as entertainment for the SS troops. In its ruling, the German court did not find that Kühn's allegations were true, but rather that too much time had passed for an accurate determination of fact to be made.
Heesters' signature tune was Count Danilo Danilovitch's entrance song "Da geh' ich ins Maxim" from Franz Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow). He met Hitler several times and was reportedly Hitler's favorite actor in the role of Danilo.
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