As accused Nazi collaborator's name released, Dutch digs deep into family past

The Hague, Netherlands—— The release of secret documents from the National Archives this year at the Dutch Open House suddenly raised fundamental questions for Peter Bass about his father's status as a Second World War resistance fighter.

As many people were cleaning up the chaos caused by New Year's Eve fireworks on January 1, hundreds of thousands more in the Netherlands were searching for their loved ones in a new database of people under investigation for collusion with the Nazis in 1940-45. The names of approximately 425,000 people.

Some do it out of curiosity, some out of concern.

One of those names was Ludolf Baas, a resistance fighter who taped microfilm of Nazi atrocities to his body and sneaked past enemy lines. “When I saw my father's name, I was shocked,” Peter Bass told The Associated Press. He wonders if his father's legacy was a lie, and needs to find out if one of society's ugliest stigmas can also be attached to him.

“The publication of the list caused huge social unrest,” the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Research said in a statement on Friday. The research organization, which was founded days after the liberation of the Netherlands, called on the government to intervene.

Nazi collaboration is a controversial topic in the Netherlands and much of Europe, and is often shrouded in family mystery and suppressed by a cloak of silence. Initially, the Netherlands had long been seen as a welcoming haven for persecuted groups. Many Jewish families, such as that of famous diarist Anne Frank, fled Germany in the 1930s for the relative safety of their Dutch neighbors.

Things changed after the Netherlands surrendered to Germany in 1940. Only 27% of Dutch Jews survived the war, far lower than the survival rates in France and Belgium, and cooperation made persecution easier.

Eight years after the war ended, many still worry about what that legacy means.

“You can see bullying even now,” said Holocaust historian Eileen Pennevard. She described social media posts denouncing Dutch politicians as Nazis because they shared a surname with someone on the list.

Plans to fully open the archives would have provided answers, but Bass, who lives in France, found he could not easily obtain details about his father's case.

Initially, the National Archives wanted to release more than just the suspect's name. The organization has been working to digitize and publish all 30 million pages of material, from secret police records to witness statements, on a newly created website.

But just before Christmas, Dutch education minister Eppo Bruins intervened after the Dutch privacy watchdog formally warned that releasing the records would breach EU privacy rules. Now, only the name and corresponding file number are immediately available.

To view his father's files and understand why and how he was investigated, Bass had to request an appointment with the archives and travel 650 kilometers (404 miles) to The Hague to read his father's files.

“It's a very sophisticated way to get a family history,” Bass said.

Despite these complications, the Dutch are still lining up.

“The interest is incredible,” Werner Zonderop, a staff member at the archives, told The Associated Press. Seats in the reading room are reserved until the end of February. Every day, new appointment times open at midnight and fill up within minutes.

Documentary filmmaker Marieke van der Winden knows what it's like to confront the dark truths of your family history. Her 2022 film The Great Silence shows how taboo the subject of collaboration can be for many.

Van der Winden discovered at her mother's funeral that her grandfather had collaborated with the Germans. After her own research, she discovered that her grandparents, great-grandparents and several other family members had collaborated. “This is a family matter,” she told The Associated Press.

The 58-year-old said it was important for future generations to know what happened and supported putting the entire archive online. “They should open it up,” van der Winden said.

Even relatives of many known collaborators support releasing the archives.

“It's time that we discuss this issue openly and honestly, without blaming relatives. We are part of this society and the silence in our lives has huge and mostly bad consequences,” Jeroen Sarris, chair of the recognition task force (Jeroen Saris) said last year. His organization represents family members of people who supported the Nazis during the war.

Bass was so concerned about his father's history that he managed to get a friend in the Netherlands to look up his records, describing the cumbersome process as “utterly bizarre”.

According to records, his father joined an organization when he was 19 that later merged with the Dutch Nazi Party, and he was investigated for that membership.

“It was a bad choice for a 19-year-old, but it was completely reversed by becoming an active member of the resistance movement,” Bass said.