Dutch to Make Public the Files on Accused Nazi Collaborators

AMSTERDAM — In the aftermath of World War II, greater than 300,000 Dutch individuals had been investigated as collaborators, from males who volunteered for the German military to these accused of betraying resisters and Jews, who had been usually arrested or despatched to their deaths.

More than 65,000 accused collaborators ended up standing trial in a particular court docket system that stripped a few of sure civil rights, despatched some to jail and condemned others to demise.

Most of the circumstances had been resolved by 1950 and the filings of the particular court docket — together with police experiences, witness depositions, materials proof and photographs — had been packed off to an archive with restricted entry for a interval of 75 years.

In two years these restrictions might be lifted and an enormous trove of about 32 million paperwork — recordsdata on individuals who stood trial in addition to the numerous others who solely got here below scrutiny — might be opened to the general public. It is a prospect that has some individuals bracing for presumably discomforting disclosures.

“It’s a sensitive archive,” stated Edwin Klijn, mission chief of The War in Court, a consortium of Dutch institutes that target historical past and assist the expanded entry.

Currently, solely researchers and the relations of people that had been accused of collaboration can entry this archive, and solely after proving that an accused perpetrator is useless and explaining the explanations for his or her inquiry.

Some archivists and historians count on that as better entry is given to the recordsdata, public curiosity will develop as effectively. Already, with limits on the permitted guests, the archive receives 5,000 to six,000 data requests a 12 months, making it the preferred trove inside the National Archives, stated Tom de Smet, its director of Archives, Services and Innovation.

The recordsdata are additionally being digitized to permit searches by key phrases or names.

“You will be able to type in the name of a victim and discover who was accused of betraying them,” stated Klijn.

Most of those that are named within the recordsdata as Nazi perpetrators or accused collaborators are useless, however their youngsters are sometimes nonetheless alive, as are their grandchildren, a few of whom could have had no clue a couple of relative’s wartime previous. Similarly, descendants of victims could search readability on who betrayed them and the way.

All of which considerations Dutch creator Sytze van der Zee, the previous chief editor of Het Parool newspaper. He explored his household’s wartime previous in a 1997 guide, “Potgieterlaan 7,” during which he described the ache of studying that his father had been a Dutch Nazi.

“This is just opening up a Pandora’s box,” he stated to clarify why he objects to broadening entry to the archive. “There are things in these files that are so horrible and disgusting — things that people did to survive, things you don’t want to know about your grandmother.”

By opening the recordsdata, he stated, “we go back to the years of shame,” he stated. “I’d say, wait another 50 years or so.”

But Klijn argues that it’s time for the general public to know extra. “For years, the whole theme of collaboration has been a kind of taboo,” he stated. “We don’t talk about collaboration that much but we’re now 80 years further and it’s time for us to face this dark part of the war.”

The challenge of Nazi collaboration has haunted many international locations as soon as occupied by the German Reich. Access to archives like these held by the Dutch have been restricted for many years and to various levels, primarily based on each European and nationwide privateness legal guidelines.

But the Dutch archive isn’t the primary to be made public, stated Paul Shapiro, director of the Office of International Affairs on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

The Vatican opened up archives of two,700 recordsdata regarding its Holocaust historical past in 2020. They shed new gentle on Pope Pius XII’s relationship with Nazi Germany, following years of debate about applicable guidelines for public disclosure.

In 2015, France opened a big archive of paperwork associated to the prosecution of conflict criminals that got here earlier than navy and maritime tribunals. Public entry to about 200,000 paperwork illuminated points of the Vichy authorities’s Nazi collaboration.

What makes the Dutch plan uncommon, in keeping with Shapiro, is the extent of entry that might be afforded by searchable information which can be out there on-line.

The expanded entry to most people, stated Shapiro, is a vital step in understanding how and why common individuals and establishments participated within the Holocaust.

“Genocidal crimes leave a very long legacy behind them,” he stated. “For better or worse, the only way to resolve some of those issues is to have your eyes wide open and look at the past openly and accept what the history really was. One way to look at that is through the paper trail in the archives.”

Klijn stated that increasing entry to the archive would assist to know the big selection of things that got here to play in private decision-making throughout the conflict. “People may have made a choice at a certain point to join a fascist political party for an ideology they felt meant one thing, but later that turned out to be murderous,” he stated. “Why did people make these kinds of decisions?”

The Netherlands, regardless of a fame as a rustic that heroically resisted the Germans, has extra just lately been coming to phrases with proof of the extent to which people and establishments collaborated with the Nazis.

Dutch historian Ad van Liempt’s landmark guide, “Hitler’s Bounty Hunters,” revealed a community of Dutch privateer “Jew hunters” who had been paid “head money” for every individual they delivered to the police. He stated in an interview that the archives had been important to his analysis.

“It’s a treasure trove,” he stated. “There are hundreds of pages of depositions; sometimes people were interviewed four or five times about a single arrest. I was impressed by how deep these investigations went.”

Jaïr Stranders, a Jewish organizer of commemorative actions to honor resisters and Holocaust victims, stated opening the archive will assist with nationwide reconciliation. “It’s always better to dig where it hurts,” he stated. “When we want to heal together, we have to look history in the face.”

Raymund Schutz, a World War II researcher who usually advocates for the opening of archives, is anxious about these, as a result of, he says, “there are a lot of false allegations as well.”

“Without any contextual information and expertise, the general public will not be able to really understand what is in those files,” he stated. “They may not understand that some of the information in those files is not proven.”

Some individuals had been jailed on baseless accusations, others had dedicated transgressions that had been deemed too small to warrant a trial, defined de Smet of the National Archives. Those recordsdata had been preserved nonetheless.

This is what units it other than different European archives of postwar collaborator investigations, he stated. “The entire archive has been preserved, including people who were not convicted, only accused,” stated De Smet.

About 51,000 Dutch residents who confronted the courts of the Special Jurisdiction and tribunals obtained jail sentences, in keeping with the Belgian sociologist Luc Huyse. About 1,800 of these circumstances had been thought-about severe sufficient to benefit sentences longer than 10 years, wrote Dutch historian Peter Romijn. A complete of 152 perpetrators had been sentenced to demise — a sentence carried out in 40 circumstances, in keeping with Romijn.

Jeroen Saris, chairman of a bunch of about 230 Nazi collaborator descendants, the Recognition Working Group, stated his members are involved about opening the archive. “There are people in our group who are worried about it, and they have a reason to be worried,” he stated. “Fights from the past are going to be reignited.”

Saris was 18 when he came upon his father, a physics professor, had been a pupil informant for the Dutch Nazi celebration. It prompted a household rupture that by no means healed. “I found that I had to still respect him, but the love was over,” he stated.

Saris is a member of an appointed panel that may information the archive digitization and opening in order to handle privateness and different considerations. “If it’s open,” he stated, “we can better understand what happened, and check the facts.”

Another panel member, Dik de Boef, chairman of a bunch of 14 Dutch resistance and sufferer teams, feels equally.

“If there’s very shocking material in these files, you have to approach them with prudence and care,” he stated. “Children aren’t responsible for the crimes of their parents. But it’s important to know what’s in these archives, to prevent it from happening again.”