Eight decades after the defeat of the Nazis, a debate in the Netherlands asks how much of the largest Dutch war archive should be made available online.
World War II may have ended 80 years ago, but its painful legacy has been brought to the surface once more in the Netherlands, after a large archive on suspected Nazi collaborators was made public for the first time.
A Dutch law restricting public access to the Central Archives of the Special Jurisdiction (CABR) — which contains information on about 425,000 people accused of collaboration during the German occupation of the Netherlands — expired at the start of this year.
Despite the lifting of the restriction last week, critics complain that the archive is still not truly open, as only the physical version in the Hague can be accessed.
Online publication had been planned, but the process has been stalled because of concerns it would breach the data privacy of living people who appear in the files. As such, only a list of the names of deceased suspected collaborators has been made digitally available.
The developments have sparked a nationwide debate in the Netherlands, pitting the right to privacy against the need for transparency about the country’s wartime past.
In interviews with L’Observatoire de l’Europe, historians, archivists and descendants of suspected Nazi collaborators spoke about the case’s complexity and the breadth of opinion it has generated.
Some of the children of the accused, for example, fear potential repercussions if the CABR is made fully searchable online. They recall their struggles during the post-war years, when they were often ignored and discriminated against by their compatriots.
However, others believe that privacy concerns are less important than the public’s ability to scrutinise all of the available evidence and to reckon, more fully, with the past.
This desire can be personal, including for the descendants of Jewish victims, who might want to see if their relatives’ plight is recorded in the archive. More than 102,000 Dutch Jews — three-quarters of the country’s Jewish population — were killed by the Nazis, following collaboration from the state and individuals.
Martijn Eickhoff, the director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, told L’Observatoire de l’Europe that both views in the debate should be taken seriously.
« On the one hand, historical transparency is very important. But so, on the other hand, is the privacy of citizens. At the moment, we are looking for the right balance between these two ideals and that’s an important ethical discussion, » he said.
“I expect that legislation in the end will follow these social debates on morality,” he added.
Although Eickhoff urged caution, he mentioned that digitisation would allow the country to gain « an additional layer of knowledge about the past ». It would help future research into Dutch citizens’ behaviour and experiences during World War II, he added.
The Netherlands’ understanding of its own World War II history is now much more nuanced than in the past, when the heroism of the resistance was given more attention than collaboration with the Nazis. The CABR can further improve Dutch society’s knowledge of the period, Eickhoff said.
« We expect that this digitised archive will allow us to develop new insights. That amid all the mass of information, you can ask questions about the role of gender, class, and region in the country, » he added.
Complex historical context
NIOD is part of a collaborative project called Oorlog voor de Rechter (War in Court), which seeks to make the complete CABR widely accessible.
« The reason why we supported the (War in Court) project is because we want to keep the memory of the Second World War alive, with new digital research tools, » Eickhoff explained.
The National Archives, one of NIOD’s partners in the War in Court consortium, aims to digitise the CABR in its entirety by 2027.
The process will take that long because, at 30 million pages, the CABR is the country’s largest archive on what took place during the German occupation from May 1940 to May 1945. The files vary from single pieces of paper to extremely large dossiers, and feature material such as witness accounts, photographs and diaries.
Now, it remains uncertain when this trove of information might be shared online.
In an intervention last year, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) warned that publishing the archive’s contents online would fall foul of privacy laws, which pertain to the living but not the dead.
« The problem is that in this big archive there are not only the accused and the investigated, but also in the larger files hundreds of names that appear, » said Charles Jeurgens, a professor of archival studies at the University of Amsterdam.
« And those people can be family members, witnesses, doctors. And we don’t know which of these people are still alive and which aren’t. »
So far, only the names of deceased suspects from the CABR have been made digitally available. But their files have not, as it would be impossible to check the living status of everyone named in them.
The possibility for wider digital publication is made by Recital 158 of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Jeurgens said.
It allows members states to provide for the processing of archival data relating to information on « the political behaviour under former totalitarian state regimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, in particular the Holocaust, or war crimes. »
To take advantage of this possibility, Recital 158 would have to be anchored in the Netherland’s national legislation, something which is not currently the case.
Jeurgens said that if the CABR is opened up more fully, it is critical that people understand the complexity of its historical context.
« The archive is very problematic and difficult. It’s not easy to understand, » he noted. That is because the CABR consists of records made by more than 200 local police departments, political investigation units, tribunals and courts.
The files were consolidated in the early 1950s at the end of the « special jurisdiction », the legal system through which alleged Nazi collaborators were investigated.
Some of the original records are missing and the files are not all well ordered and well documented, owing to the chaos that followed the end of World War II, Jeurgens said.
Wide range of collaboration charges
Jeurgens and Eickhoff also stressed that the majority of the archive’s suspects were not found guilty of wrongdoing. Some would have been groundlessly accused in the months and years after the end of the German occupation.
Of the roughly 425,000 people accused in the CABR, only 66,000 were brought to court. About 35,000 suspects were given prison sentences from the 50,000 who faced a tribunal, while most of the 16,000 people whose cases were heard by the Special Courts of Justice were also sent to jail, according to the War in Court project.
In total, 40 of the 152 people given the death penalty were killed by the state for their crimes. The rest had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.
Michael Schuling, the chairman of Stichting Werkgroep Herkenning, a group that supports 300 descendants of the accused, said there is a real spectrum of collaboration charges within the CABR.
« There were people who did really bad things, who, for example, chose to betray the Jewish people, » he said.
« And there were also those who were suspected because of their connections with the occupiers. One of them was my grandmother, who had a child with a German soldier. »
Schuling’s grandmother gave birth to this child — his father — in a Lebensborn clinic in Steinhöring, Germany, on 21 June, 1941.
As a result of her liaison with the soldier, she was taken to an internment camp in late 1944, after her part of the Netherlands had been liberated from the Nazis. She was released in January 1946, but her assets were seized, she was barred from holding a government position and she was made « stateless » for 10 years.
During her time in the camp, her two children were separated from her. Schuling said his father was mistreated in one of the children’s homes to which he was sent, and that he carried the trauma of that period into adulthood.
Ashamed by what had happened, Schuling’s grandmother told her family that she had been raped by the German soldier. The pair had actually had a romantic relationship, Schuling said, citing evidence he has read in her CABR file and a happy photo of the pair that was discovered among his grandmother’s belongings.
Schuling said the piecing together of her and her son’s past allowed him to feel more empathy towards his relatives.
« You can better address what happened in your own life, » he reflected. « This is why my father did this, this is why he was so angry, this is why he was so sad. »
Sharing details about his family history was a personal choice, he said, something that other descendants might not feel comfortable doing. « There are, of course, different opinions among our members about these really sensitive files. »
His organisation recently sent questionnaires to its members asking whether they were for or against the CABR’s digitisation. Of the 153 forms returned to date, 16.3% believe the archive should be fully searchable online, while 26.1% of respondents are against any digitisation. The rest said they were somewhere in the middle.
The older generation is less likely to be in favour, Schuling said.
« The grandchildren (of the accused) more or less always want to know (the truth). They are curious about what happened and have more distance from it. But some of their parents are not ready to talk. »
Four months ago, government-commissioned research found that a fifth of the Dutch population are uncomfortable with the idea of the children of collaborators holding public office. It also discovered that 8% do not feel comfortable if a friend or colleague’s family has a history of collaboration.
Given the sensitivity around the subject, the right societal debate needs to take place about the archive before further digitisation, Schuling said.
« We have to find a way to do it that is ethical, so that the children of (suspected collaborators) aren’t hurt, » he said. « There are a lot of different perspectives to this situation. That’s why I say it’s better to make changes in phases. »
A filmmaker’s personal connection
Other descendants would like the files published online sooner.
One is Eline Jongsma, a documentary maker who, along with her partner Kel O’Neill, made an animated film called His Name is My Name about the crimes committed by her great-grandfather, Gerrit Jongsma, who was the mayor of Krommennie, a small town north of Amsterdam, during the war.
Jongsma only found out about her great-grandfather and his crimes a decade ago, as her family had shrouded his life in secrecy. Many other families are in the same position, she said.
« A lot of people contacted us privately, and wanted to confess their tragic collaborator family member story that cast a shadow over their family, » Jongsma told L’Observatoire de l’Europe.
« These confessions showed how the secrets of your ancestors can really weigh on people for generations. That’s what you see with my father’s generation, » she added.
« My dad took on an attitude of silence and, I think, guilt and trauma. A lot of people are in that position. »
This is the attitude she wanted to break by releasing her and O’Neill’s « Instagram documentary », which consists of 10 chapters that last around three minutes each.
Her own family’s secret began to unravel in the wake of a family dinner 10 years ago. « I don’t know the exact words my dad used, but he casually asked whether I knew whether my grandfather was a Nazi, » Jongsma said.
Jongsma and O’Neill later started to dig into the story, making use of the CABR with the help of the local historian Alex Dekker.
They discovered that Gerrit, who belonged to the Dutch Nazi party, the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB), was responsible, among other war crimes, for sending at least one Jewish family to their deaths in the Nazis’ extermination camps.
After an anonymous tip-off, he ordered the search of a house where Esther and Benjamin Drilsma were hiding. Gerrit also ordered a hunt that led to the capture of their six-year-old daughter Adolphine. All three were later killed by the Germans.
One of the film’s chapters looks specifically at the CABR itself, while other parts of it reflect on the importance of making the archive more widely accessible.
« Our experience with the archive was a very analogue one. It was a dusty set of boxes that we opened up. And there were typewritten reports in it and there were pieces of paper whose edges were dissolving in our hands as we were opening them up, » O’Neill said. « That is not the way research can be conducted long-term. »
The documentary, which was released in 2022 and which is currently touring schools in the Netherlands, is narrated by Jongsma. Such first-person narratives are crucial for teaching people about Dutch collaboration during World War II, she said.
« It’s such a dark and complicated part of history for the Netherlands. You really need projects like this to help people understand it, » Jongsma added, before suggesting that more stories like hers would emerge once the entire archive was digitally available.
Although Jongsma sympathises with the worries felt by some descendants of the accused, she thinks it is better for the truth to see the light.
“It seems that there is fear around the archive being very searchable. A level of accessibility where you don’t have to go to the archive and register yourself, » she said.
« I understand it, but also, these people will, at some point, have to reckon with this part of the past. »
Jongsma believes now is the time for a more collective and honest approach to what took place in the Netherlands between 1940 and 1945. « How are you supposed to learn from the past if you don’t know truly what it was like? » she said.
