The cost of transparency: Nazi collaboration files spark painful Dutch reckoning with WWII past

World War II may have ended 80 years ago, but its painful legacy has been brought to the surface once more in the Netherlands, after a large archive on suspected Nazi collaborators was made public for the first time.

A Dutch law restricting public access to the Central Archives of the Special Jurisdiction (CABR) — which contains information on about 425,000 people accused of collaboration during the German occupation of the Netherlands — expired at the start of this year.

Despite the lifting of the restriction last week, critics complain that the archive is still not truly open, as only the physical version in the Hague can be accessed.

Online publication had been planned, but the process has been stalled because of concerns it would breach the data privacy of living people who appear in the files. As such, only a list of the names of deceased suspected collaborators has been made digitally available.

The developments have sparked a nationwide debate in the Netherlands, pitting the right to privacy against the need for transparency about the country's wartime past.

In interviews with Euronews, historians, archivists and descendants of suspected Nazi collaborators spoke about the case's complexity and the breadth of opinion it has generated.

Some of the children of the accused, for example, fear potential repercussions if the CABR is made fully searchable online. They recall their struggles during the post-war years, when they were often ignored and discriminated against by their compatriots.

However, others believe that privacy concerns are less important than the public’s ability to scrutinise all of the available evidence and to reckon, more fully, with the past.

This desire can be personal, including for the descendants