Netherlands to open archive on people accused of wartime Nazi collaboration Some descendants are apprehensive but a historian says making 30m pages of records public is ‘important step’.
For the first three months of 2025, researchers and descendants of victims and alleged perpetrators will also have digital access to a quarter of this extraordinary database – on site at the national archive in The Hague – for the first time.
But thousands of Dutch families face having their relatives’ history laid bare later this week when an archive opens on 425,000 people accused of siding with the occupier during the second world war.
On Thursday, the central archives of the special jurisdiction courts (CABR), established after the allies liberated the Netherlands to bring collaborators to justice, will open under national archive rules.
Three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population – more than 102,000 people – were murdered by the Nazis, with antisemitic collaboration from the state, police and some of the Dutch population.
