Netherlands releases list of 425,000 suspected Nazi collaborators online

As It Happens6:52Netherlands published list of 450,000 suspected Nazi collaborators

Rinke Smedinga has known for decades that his father was a Nazi collaborator. Now, thanks to a new online archive, that information is available to anyone with an internet connection.

On Jan. 2, researchers in the Netherlands published the names of about 425,000 people who were investigated on suspicion of collaborating with German occupiers during the Second World War, as part of a project called War In Court. 

One of those names is the late Piet Smedinga, Rinke Smedinga's father, and member of the National Socialist Movement, a.k.a. the Dutch Nazi party. 

Smedinga says he was about 12 years old when his father took him for a drive, confessed his involvement in the Holocaust, and made him promise to never tell anyone.

"It has been a great burden. It was very heavy for me to deal with that, and it also put me in a kind of crisis, personally," Smedinga, 61, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

"It has been in my life all of the time, and it's still a vulnerable part of my identity and existence."

Names includes falsely accused

The names are part of an archive of files from the Special Jurisdiction, a legal system set up in 1944 to bring Nazi collaborators to justice after the Allies liberated the Netherlands from German occupation.

It includes the names and birthdays of war criminals, collaborators, people who enlisted in the German armed forces and members of the National Socialist Movement.

But it also includes many people who were accused, but never tried or convicted.

Only about 15 per cent of the Special Jurisdiction accused went to court. About 120,000 people had their cases dismissed, Hans Renders, a professor of history at the University of Groningen, told BBC News.

Martijn Eickhoff, director of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, says the archive is a valuable tool, but warned the post-war period was one of widespread — and sometimes unfounded — accusations. 

"It is important to look at this archive carefully," he told the Guardian newspaper.

Smedinga says that for most of his life, the widely accepted narrative in the Netherlands was that the Dutch were all victims during the Second World War.

"The national memory has an image that we were all against the Nazis. There were some bastards, but we got them," he said. 

But in recent years, he says, the country is starting to reckon with dark truths. 

In 2019, the Dutch national railway company announced it will pay reparations to Holocaust survivors it transported to concentration camps, or their heirs.

In 2020, the Dutch government issued a formal apology for failing to do more to prevent the deportation and murder of more than 100,000 Jews. And in 2024, the country opened its first Holocaust museum.

Of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands at the outbreak of the Second World War, only 38,000 survived.

'What my father had done'

Smedinga says he'd known since he was a little boy that something wasn't quite right in his family, and he often had nightmares about war. 

When he was about 12 or 13, he says his father drove him to the Westerbork Camp, where Jews were rounded up to be shipped off to Nazi concentration camps.

His father, he says, showed no signs of remorse as he recounted working at Westerbork as a guard, and witnessing his friend carry out an execution.

Smedinga says his father recounted seeing his childhood math teacher being held prisoner at the camp. But rather than worry for the man's well-being, the elder Smedinga feared the war would end and the teacher would survive and report him as a collaborator. 

"As I discovered the details about what my father had done, and having no regrets of the horrible things he had done, my first reaction was to get out of the house and start a new life and get away from him," Smedinga said.

At first, he says, he was able to put it behind him. But decades later, in his 40s, he began to feel sick and couldn't get to the bottom of why. That's when he realized that he needed to begin the difficult journey of processing that trauma. 

Full archive not yet published

Until 2025, files related to the Special Jurisdiction were only available on-site at the National Archives in The Hague. But this year, a law restricting access to the archives expired.

"This archive contains important stories for both present and future generations," the Huygens Institute, which is helping to digitize the archive, said in a statement.

"Without digital access, this archive does not exist for many, especially younger generations. Only large-scale and easy access will keep this important archive with all facets of the war relevant, and allow us to continue learning from the past."

Initially, researchers intended to release the full case files of the accused. But those plans were halted in December, when the Dutch Data Protection Authority issued a warning that doing so would violate privacy laws. The files don't just include names and personal details about the accused but also witnesses, victims, friends and families. 

Culture Minister Eppo Bruins has said he's looking at amending Dutch privacy laws to find a balance between publishing this national history, while not violating anyone's privacy rights. 

In the meantime, those who want to see the full files associated with the names on the list can make a request to the National Archives to view them in person. 

Smedinga first saw his family's files shortly after his father died in 2001. The archive, he says, won't let you view records of people who are still alive without their consent. 

The most interesting part, he says, wasn't what was there, but rather what it was missing. Many of the horrific details his father confessed all those years ago were not part of the official record, he said. 

When more of the archive comes online, he says he hopes that experts will be made available to help people research their family histories, sort fact from fiction, and put findings into context. Even historians, he says, struggle to find the truth in those pages. 

"This is one of the interesting, but difficult, parts of the archive," he said. "Many people that did horrible things, of course, tried not to tell it or to make another kind of easy story because they feared the consequences."