A Dutch project – called ‘War in Court’ – has digitally released a list of names of nearly half a million suspected wartime Nazi collaborators after the expiry of a law that had restricted public access to the archive.
The records, consisting of 32 million pages, include about 425,000 mostly Dutch people who were investigated for collaboration with German occupiers during World War II.
The law restricting public access expired yesterday.
Only a fifth of those listed appeared before a court, and most cases concerned lesser offences such as being a member of the Nationalist Socialist movement.
Although the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) protects personal data, it does not apply to those who have died – the vast majority of those listed in the archive.
Initially, scanned files are to made available online, giving users access to dossiers of suspects, their victims and witnesses.
However, following a warning from the Dutch Data Protection Authority, a decision was taken last month to postpone the full release and instead publish only the list of names.
No date has been set for publication of those dossiers but people with a research interest – including descendants, journalists and historians – can make a request to consult them at the Dutch National Archives in The Hague.
