The fact that names of family members appear in the Central Archives for Special Legal Procedure (CABR) was shocking to some people in Drenthe. Especially if that person is known to family as a resistance fighter, such as Hendrik van Triest from Geeuwenbrug. These and other names were taken offline today.
The CABR contains the names of 425,000 people who were investigated after the war for collaboration with the German occupier. The name index only contains names of people who, for example, were interviewed as witnesses and not as suspects.
“My great-grandfather Van Triest was mentioned in the archive. This is quite painful considering he had someone in hiding at home,” says Rob van Triest from Amsterdam. “He also took people out of prison camps at the risk of his own life.”
Van Triest points to a newspaper article from Trouw of July 30, 1945. In it, Mr. GA Bruinsma thanks “Mr. J. van Triest, shopkeeper, (…) for his courageous behavior in making my escape from the German Punishment Camp Geeuwenbrug possible.”
According to Rob, the fact that Hendrik is referred to here as J. van Triest is a clerical error on Bruinsma’s part. “And my family visited the person in hiding in America. That story is correct.”
The National Archives already warned yesterday that there were errors in the list of names of people who appear in the CABR as suspected of collaboration with the German occupier in the Second World War. Not all persons in the name index would have been suspected or accused.
Hendrik van Triest was also initially identified as a suspect in the archive. But there were no files linked to his name. Rob van Triest: “He was mentioned, but there is zero information.”
The National Archives confirms that names are being removed from the online list. “We have received several calls from people who are shocked that a family member was on the list,” says a spokesperson for the archive. “In some cases the name is removed because there was no file linked to it.”
He emphasizes that this does not mean that all names will be removed from the list. But at least temporarily they cannot be seen. “Sometimes it concerns people who were witnesses or victims.”
Rob van Triest is happy that his great-grandfather is no longer there. “But it also feels a bit strange. Now you want to know why it was removed.”
At the moment you can see in the online war archive who is on the list of collaboration suspects, but not whether they have been convicted, for example. To view the files, you must make an appointment to go to the reading room of the National Archives in The Hague.
Rob van Triest advocates that the entire archive should still be made public online. “A lot happened in the area around Geeuwenbrug and Diever during the war, so it is very logical if my great-grandfather would have been heard as a witness. If the archive were completely public, you could continue searching under his name. Now it only makes for confusion.”