the essential
Since January 2, the Dutch have been torn apart over an initiative by the Dutch national archives, making public a list of people who may have collaborated with the Nazi regime under occupation. Some applaud the transparency of the approach, useful, according to them, for the duty of memory, others fear negative repercussions on the descendants of the people mentioned. Explanations.
Put online on January 2, 2025, the platform “War in court” (war judge, Editor’s note) arouses heated controversy in the Netherlands. Here are five questions about this list of collaborationists revealed by the Dutch archives.
What is “War before the judge“?
The platform went live on January 2 in the Netherlands. It was developed at the initiative of the Dutch archives and financed by the Ministries of Justice, National Education and Culture, we learn The Point. It lists very numerous documents (around 8 million) establishing the link between nearly 425,000 people and the Nazi regime during the occupation of the country between 1940 and 1945.
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Did the initiative interest the Dutch?
The site quickly became a victim of its success. In its first week, the site recorded more than a million connections, reports The Point. So access to the site was quickly impossible. It must be said that this list was until now only accessible to researchers and direct descendants of suspects or victims of deportation.
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How do some historians defend the site?
Many Holocaust specialists welcomed the initiative, showing, according to them, the unsuspected importance of collaboration in the Netherlands. The professor emeritus of history at the University of Amsterdam, interviewed by The World thus believes that this database made public demonstrates “that we have covered the extent of collaboration in the country.”
In addition, a study published in 2023 showed the level of misinformation among the Dutch on the subject: more than half of the country’s inhabitants believe that the Netherlands was not involved in the Shoah. However, more than 102,000 Jewish men, women and children, or 75% of the country’s community, were killed in Nazi camps.
What are the main criticisms?
But the initiative divides our neighbors. The Dutch data protection authority therefore opposed the dissemination of this list, considering that there is a risk of serious harm to the privacy of the descendants of the people mentioned.
Furthermore, an amalgam was quickly made between the 425,000 cases listed and the collaboration of which they are accused. The World specifies that of these 425,000 cases, 329,000 were ultimately not the subject of any prosecution, but the platform does not specify, for each person listed in the database, whether they were found guilty or not. The only way to find out is to go to the archives in person.
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Finally, certain figures in historical research have deplored the absence of the names of companies which collaborated with the enemy during the war, and those of civil servants who actively collaborated with the Nazi regime between 1940 and 1945.
And elsewhere in Europe?
If the initiative divides in the Netherlands, it is not the first to want to shed light on the troubled past of a country during the war. The Point recalls that in Germany, Italy and France, legal files concerning the purification have been accessible for several years.
