The names of around 425,000 people suspected of collaborating with the Nazis during the German occupation of the Netherlands have been published online for the first time.
The names represent individuals who were investigated through a special legal system established towards the end of World War Two. Of them, more than 150,000 faced some form of punishment.
The full records of these investigations were previously only accessible by visiting the Dutch National Archives in The Hague.
The Huygens Institute, which helped digitise the archive, says this is a major barrier for people wishing to research the Netherlands’ occupation, which lasted from its invasion in 1940 to 1945.
“This archive contains important stories for both present and future generations,” the Huygens Institute says.
“From children who want to know what their father did in the war, to historians researching the grey areas of collaboration.”
The archive contains files on war criminals, the approximately 20,000 Dutch people who enlisted in the German armed forces, and alleged members of the National Socialist Movement (NSB) – the Dutch Nazi party.
But it also contains the names of people who were found to be innocent.
This is because the archive comprises files from the Special Jurisdiction, which from 1944 investigated suspected collaborators.
Hans Renders, a professor of history at the University of Groningen, noted that only around 15% of cases went to court and around 120,000 people had their cases dismissed.
“So if a name appears in the [archive], it is not certain that the person was ‘wrong’,” he told the BBC.
The online database contains the names of suspects, as well as the date and place of their birth, which are only searchable using specific personal details.
It does not specify whether a particular person was found guilty, or what form of collaboration they were suspected of.
But it will tell users what file to request to see this information if they visit the National Archives. People accessing the physical files must declare a legitimate interest in viewing them.
Thomas Bottelier, a historian of 20th Century war at Utrecht University, told the BBC there were many similar commissions in other countries, and that until now access to the Dutch records was “more restrictive” than in Italy, “despite [Italy’s] much more controversial wartime past”.
The project to digitise the records as originally envisioned would have brought the Netherlands in line with other European nations, he said.
But there has been some concern in the Netherlands about personal information linked to a sensitive period of history being made freely available, prompting the information published online to be initially limited.
“I am afraid that there will be very nasty reactions,” Rinke Smedinga, whose father was an NSB member and worked at Camp Westerbork, from which people were deported to concentration camps, told Dutch online publication DIT.
“You have to anticipate that. You should not just let it happen, as a kind of social experiment.”
Recent research suggests that around a fifth of Dutch people feel uncomfortable with the idea of the children of collaborators holding public office, and 8% if they were to discover a friend or colleague had relatives who were collaborators.
“For children of NSB members, the past is often a trauma,” Prof Renders said.
“On the one hand, because they are carrying around a secret, while they have done nothing wrong. On the other hand, because they do not know what their father or mother did during the war.”
Tom De Smet, the director of the National Archives, told DIT that relatives of both collaborators and victims of the occupation had to be taken into account.
But he added: “Collaboration is still a major trauma. It is not talked about. We hope that when the archives are opened, the taboo will be broken.”
Dr Bottelier said it was “surprising” the project had “kicked up so much dust”.
He said the Dutch privacy watchdog “has consistently opposed the complete and transparent digitisation” of the records, and said this clash deserves more attention.
“It has real and often negative consequences for our easy access, as citizens, to the records of the state and its decisions that shape our lives.”
In a letter to parliament on 19 December, Culture Minister Eppo Bruins wrote: “Openness of archives is crucial for facing the effects of [the Netherlands’] difficult shared past and to process it as a society.”
How much information made available online would be limited given privacy concerns, and those visiting the archive in person will not be allowed to make copies, he said.
Bruins has expressed a wish to change the law to allow more information to be disclosed publicly.
The online database’s website says that people who might still be alive are not listed online.
