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Dutch archives on accused Nazi collaborators to open to the public in 2025
(JTA) — The Dutch government is planning to throw open information about 300,000 people investigated for their collaboration with the Nazis, in a move that could accelerate a reckoning with the Netherlands’ Holocaust record.
For the past seven decades, only researchers and relatives of those accused of collaborating with the Nazis could access the information held by the Dutch archives. But a law guarding the data is set to expire in 2025.
In February, The War in Court, a Dutch consortium devoted to preserving history, announced that it would make the records available online when the privacy law expires. The effort drew additional attention this week when a New York Times article explored concerns the hopes and concerns held by people in the Netherlands who have an idea of what lies within the sweeping repository.
“It’s a sensitive archive,” Edwin Klijn, project leader of The War in Cort, told the Times.
“For years, the whole theme of collaboration has been a kind of taboo,” he added. “We don’t talk about collaboration that much but we’re now 80 years further and it’s time for us to face this dark part of the war.”
The Netherlands has world’s second-highest number of documented saviors of Jews, but it also had many collaborators who, aided by the topography and Holland’s proximity to Germany, helped the Nazis achieve the highest death rate there among Jews anywhere in Nazi-occupied Western Europe. Of 140,000 Dutch Jews, more than 100,000 were murdered. As is presumed to have happened with the most famous victim of the Nazis in the Netherlands, the teenaged diarist Anne Frank, many were given up by their neighbors and acquaintances.
The Dutch government investigated 300,000 people for collaborating with the Nazis and more than 65,000 of them stood trial in a special court system in the years after World War II. But it was only in 2020 that the Dutch government apologized for failing to protect Jews during the Holocaust, long after other European leaders and after local Jews had requested an apology; a town square was named for a mayor who handed Jews to the Nazis until last year.
The archive due to open in 2025 will offer widespread access to the files from the postwar investigations, which researchers who have used the files say are detailed — and also could contain false accusations made at a tumultuous time.
The 32 million documents contained in the archive stretch to nearly two and a half miles and include witness reports, Dutch National Socialist Movement membership cards, diaries, and petitions for pardons and photos. Currently, the archive receives between 5,000 and 6,000 requests a year and cannot accommodate more.
The documents will be digitized to allow searches by key words or names. “You will be able to type in the name of a victim and discover who was accused of betraying them,” Klijn said.
The effort will be second major digitization of a Holocaust document trove in the Netherlands, where an efficient collaboration machine made for detailed records. In 2021, the Red Cross transferred ownership of its Index Card Archive, a repository of nearly 160,000 cards with personal information of Dutch Jews maintained by the Jewish Council of Amsterdam, a body set up by the Nazis to govern the community ahead of its extermination, to the National Holocaust Museum in the Netherlands. The museum will reopen to visitors next year but has made the cards accessible online already.
Paul Shapiro, director of the Office of International Affairs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., told The New York Times that the new Dutch database is unusual — and important — because of the planned ease of access.
“Genocidal crimes leave a very long legacy behind them,” Shapiro said. “For better or worse, the only way to resolve some of those issues is to have your eyes wide open and look at the past openly and accept what the history really was. One way to look at that is through the paper trail in the archives.”
In 2020, the Vatican unsealed its archives from World War II, sharing 2,700 files that revealed details about Pope Pius XII’s relationship with Nazi Germany. Those records showed that the Vatican fought efforts to reunite Jewish orphans with their relatives and also urged the Pope not to protest the deportation of Italian Jews.
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The post Dutch archives on accused Nazi collaborators to open to the public in 2025 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Pope Leo Says Those Who Wage War Are Thieves Stealing Away Our Peaceful Future
Pope Leo XIV looks on as he meets with Catholic religious education teachers attending a national meeting organised by the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, April 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Leo on Sunday described those who wage wars and appropriate the earth’s resources as thieves who rob the world of a peaceful future, issuing a warning about the use of nuclear power on the anniversary of the Chernobyl reactor accident.
Ukraine is commemorating the 40th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster on Sunday amid lingering fears that Russia’s four-year-old war could spark a repeat of the tragedy.
In his weekly address after the Angelus prayer, the Pontiff said the Chernobyl accident had left a mark on humankind’s collective conscience.
“It remains a warning over the use of ever more powerful technologies,” the Pope, who has just returned from a 10-day tour across four African nations, said.
“I hope that at all decision-making levels, wisdom and responsibility always prevail, so that atomic power can always be used to support life and peace,” he added.
Commenting on the Gospel of the day, which contained the metaphor of a sheep thief, Pope Leo said thieves came under many appearances, listing as examples “superficial lifestyles driven by consumerism,” prejudices and wrong ideas.
“And let’s not forget also those thieves who, by plundering the earth’s resources, by fighting bloody wars or feeding evil in whichever form, are simply taking away from all of us the chance of a future of peace and serenity,” he added.
Leo, the first US pontiff, has attracted the ire of President Donald Trump after becoming more outspoken against war and despotism.
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UK’s Starmer and Trump Discuss ‘Urgent Need’ to Restore Shipping in Strait of Hormuz
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump (not pictured) hold a bilateral meeting at Trump Turnberry golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, July 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump discussed the urgent need to get shipping moving again in the Strait of Hormuz during a call on Sunday, a Downing Street spokesperson said.
“The leaders discussed the urgent need to get shipping moving again in the Strait of Hormuz, given the severe consequences for the global economy and cost of living for people in the UK and globally,” the spokesperson for Starmer’s office said in a statement.
“The prime minister shared the latest progress on his joint initiative with President (Emmanuel) Macron to restore freedom of navigation,” the spokesperson added.
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Palestinian Leader’s Loyalists Win Local Elections, Including Some Seats in Gaza
A Palestinian man votes during the municipal election at a polling station in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip April 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Loyalists of President Mahmoud Abbas won most races in Palestinian municipal elections, election officials said on Sunday, in a vote that for the first time in nearly two decades included a city in the Gaza Strip run by rival Hamas.
Saturday’s ballot marked the first elections of any kind in Gaza since 2006 and the first Palestinian polls since the Gaza war began more than two years ago with Hamas’ cross‑border attack on southern Israel.
Abbas’ West Bank–based Palestinian Authority (PA) said the inclusion of the Gaza city Deir al‑Balah, which suffered less damage than other areas of the coastal territory during the war, was intended to show that Gaza was an inseparable part of a future Palestinian state.
The elections, in which voter turnout was low, had been held “at a highly sensitive moment amid complex challenges and exceptional circumstances,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa said as results were announced on Sunday.
But they represented “an important first step in a broader national process aimed at strengthening democratic life … and ultimately achieving the unity of the homeland,” he said.
POSSIBLE INDICATOR OF HAMAS SUPPORT
Hamas, which ousted the PA from Gaza in 2007, did not formally nominate candidates in Gaza and boycotted the race in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Fatah’s victory was widely expected.
But some candidates on one of the Deir al-Balah lists were widely seen by residents and analysts as aligned with the movement, making the vote a potential indicator of support for the Islamist group.
Preliminary results showed that the list, known as Deir al‑Balah Brings Us Together, won only two of the 15 seats contested in Gaza.
The Nahdat Deir al‑Balah list, backed by Abbas’ Fatah party and the Western-backed PA, secured six seats. The remaining seats were won by two other Gaza-based groups, Future of Deir al‑Balah and Peace and Building, not affiliated with either faction.
Abbas loyalists swept the election in the West Bank, running unchallenged in many seats.
Fatah spokesperson Abdul Fattah Dawla noted that turnout was close to that for the last municipal elections in the West Bank, in 2022, praising voters for participating despite ongoing violence by Israel.
“By electing figures linked to Fatah, voters appear to be seeking unrestricted international support for municipal governance and a gradual political shift that could extend beyond the local level,” said Palestinian political analyst Reham Ouda.
The recent war has left much of Gaza reduced to rubble, with many residents displaced and focused on survival. Israel has continued conducting strikes despite an October ceasefire.
In Gaza, voter turnout reached just 23 percent, while in the West Bank it was 56 percent, according to Chairman of the Central Elections Commission Rami al‑Hamdallah.
Al‑Hamdallah said some of the ballot boxes and voting equipment did not make it into the enclave because of Israeli security restrictions, though those challenges were overcome.
Hamas’ Gaza spokesperson, Hazem Qassem, downplayed the significance of the election results, saying that they had no impact on wider national issues.