He is not the only one who is cleaning up his room in the stately canal house. Employees everywhere are clearing out cupboards and carrying boxes for internal renovations. It gives a feeling of solidarity, says Peter Romijn in his room on the third floor of the NIOD. There is one difference: after the renovation, the others will return, he will not.
After more than three decades at the institute, Romijn (1955) retires as head of research at the Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. He supervised, he says, “a very nice diverse group of researchers who are asking essential questions about the impact of war and large-scale violence.” About the occupation, but also about the drama-Srebrenica and, recently, about the colonial war in Indonesia.
Memory and processing permeate much of that research, even almost eighty years after the end of the Second World War. The common thread, he says: ‘The Dutch experiences are no longer isolated and viewed in isolation, but placed in an international context and over a longer period of time. Forty-forty-five is still very much part of my own package, but I have colleagues for whom that is no longer the case, they do very different things.”
Has the war ever ended, and so has the NIOD? Roman laughs. When he started at the NIOD in 1985 as a recently graduated historian, the fortieth anniversary of the liberation was just taking place there. „We then had an internal discussion under the title ‘How long do we commemorate?’ The feeling was: it won’t be long now. I was only hired for two years. The expectation was that the institute would be disbanded in the not too distant future.”
What changed?
“The Fall of the Wall. Not that we were going to investigate it, but the whole world order changed. All kinds of war issues were given a new impetus. Swiss banking secrecy was lifted, sparking a new discussion about restitution of Jewish assets. Archives opened with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The whole aftermath of the war was again problematized. That has not stopped. We have come to see the war in a much broader perspective. This has also been targeted. Comparing helps you to think about the core of the Dutch experience.”
How would you describe that core?
Romijn tastes his words. “Innocence. Not knowing exactly what to expect as a country in such an extreme situation. Also murdered innocence, a little bit, yes. With the idea: as long as we are of good will and do our best, then we can’t be blamed. Good intentions as an apology or legitimacy for one’s own behaviour. You also see it in post-war decolonization, which has strong similarities with that of other colonial powers. Which we didn’t want to see for a long time, because we liked to think: we’ve been so good to Indonesia, it’s just not fair that they kicked us out.
“We have become more realistic, but you also saw it at Srebrenica. We thought we could make a difference there with the best of intentions. The result: lasting frustration about what went wrong.”
Also read this analysis: The Netherlands collectively guilty of ‘shameful facts’ in Indonesia
Are the apologies to Dutchbat exaggerated?
“I find that really difficult to weigh, also because of the victims. In Rutte’s words, it is all just a bit ‘better’ than it was. When I hear that Dutchbat had to make decisions in a split second, I think: well, it wasn’t all that split second.
“At the time, we established that Dutchbat was of course not the main culprit for what happened there. But things have gone wrong. The mandate with which they were sent out was not good. The soldiers were not well prepared, they were not equipped to perform police duties there. The apologies are actually a band-aid on the wound. You wonder how long it will last.”
Was Srebrenica the toughest investigation?
“Yes I think so. It has taken a heavy toll on the researchers. The executions. Transporting men to remote execution sites. Those were stories that were hardly known at the time. There was a great deal of nervousness about that report at the time. We had decided not to share the report with the government for publication. That was exceptional. We didn’t want them asking for adjustments or framing the conclusions before the report was out.
“At the request of the cabinet, we did tell them the main points orally in the Catshuis, three days before publication. I saw how Kok hated it. That was genuine shame. While the ministers involved were looking at each other a bit: who is to blame here?
Also read this report: After 27 years of apologies and recognition for Dutchbat soldiers
Was there ever a need for security in a sensitive investigation?
“Once in a while, and then the police officer comes.” He smiles. “Threat is not the right word, sometimes an attempt at intimidation. A colleague who was investigating the Armenian Genocide encountered people who gave the impression that they were speaking on behalf of Turkish authorities. Two years ago I received a complaint about the investigation into Dutch military action in Indonesia. I won it quite easily, but it’s still very annoying. It was really meant to throw sand in the wheels.”
We commemorate now more than ever. How did that happen?
“The commemoration has changed a lot. After the war, it was top-down, heavily directed by the government as a way of restoring national unity. Let’s face it, the Netherlands had almost closed down. If the Allies hadn’t handed us freedom on a silver platter, we would still have been a German province. That commemoration also included the idea that everyone had suffered and fought together, according to ability and background. For that reason, the government quickly decided not to award any awards to living resistance fighters. That only led to quarrels and divisions.”
Didn’t Jewish Dutch fall outside that celebrated unity?
“Oh, it was very simple then. They had suffered too, but like the rest, was the idea. Moreover, it was thought: if you treat the Jews separately, you are also discriminating. Which, of course, was a gross misjudgment of the facts. However you look at it, the persecution of the Jews is the greatest crime ever to have taken place on Dutch soil. The mass murder itself, but also the very rapid discrimination and exclusion of a population group that is being deprived of all civil rights. Complete lawlessness. You have to imagine: that happened in a year and a half! It has been a broad social process and that is how you should study it.”
That national unity had been broken since the 1950s, says Romijn, because more and more groups wanted separate recognition and claimed a place in war history. “That also had to do with the granting of resistance pensions and compensation funds. Each group gets its own war at some point, but still with the intention of being included in the national pantheon.”
The institute sued heavily. In 1976 with a damning report about the alleged Jewish resistance fighter Friedrich Weinreb, who turned out to be an impostor. Two years later about CDA politician Willem Aantjes, who had worked for the Germans. He disappeared from politics.
“We have become more distant. Especially compared to the early years. The first generations who worked here never really separated their roles as investigators from those as prosecutors or assessors. You can see that in the Aantjes case, where De Jong [Loe de Jong, de eerste directeur] went in with a straight leg, in hindsight disproportionately. At the Special Court [van justitie] after the war, NIOD historians worked very closely with the Public Prosecution Service. Now we deliver knowledge and expertise, not judgements. That’s up to others. We also avoid the word report. We also said at Srebrenica: this is a book.”
What is the difference?
“A report is a judgment, a book is an argument: this is our question, that’s how we approached it and here are the results. But we are not making recommendations on what to do with it.”
Do you not end up in the gray tones, also a much-discussed concept?
Romijn looks thoughtfully at the safe behind his desk, where personnel files are still kept. “I have a bit of trouble with that grayscale story, which emerged in the nineties and became known mainly through Chris van der Heijden’s book Gray past [2001]† It goes without saying that there were all kinds of role changes during the occupation. A lot of people sometimes did something about resistance, then they gave in again, and sometimes they turned their backs. That doesn’t make them ‘grey’, but rather multicolored. Gray suggests an essence of how people behaved. But it was a very uncertain time, in which people had to reconsider their attitude again and again.”
Also read this interview with Chris van der Heijden: ‘No doubt my father shot and killed as a soldier in the Waffen-SS’
Gray was intended to counter the moralism of De Jong’s time.
“Yes, but with those shades of gray you also introduce another form of moralism. Right and wrong are the people who at least still had ideals that they stood up for. The gray matter just kind of bobbed along, without really choosing. That is again a moral judgment that does not do justice to the complex behavior of people and the dynamics of the occupation time. I have investigated the contact with former NSB members after the war. The Foundation for the Supervision of Political Delinquents had to help them to reintegrate into society, also a forgotten history. They were treated as a social problem, not a political problem. Very Dutch. As long as you got them a job and a roof over their heads, things would sort itself out and they wouldn’t fall back into their old beliefs. That has worked quite well.”
Did the royal family interfere in research in your day?
“No not really. There was, of course, traditionally a relationship with the Oranges. De Jong wanted to be the national historian. Queen Wilhelmina is the unspoken heroine in its history. That has really disappeared. I personally have a hard time with the figure of Prince Bernhard, but he too is part of history and you have to understand him. He tended to call people when he was angry, usually about the war past. I’ve been on the phone with him too. He started barking at something he didn’t like until he asked ‘are you still there?’ and then it was over.”
Former employee Gerard Aalders, who wrote an incriminating book about his time at the institute, thinks otherwise. He accuses the NIOD of yielding to pressure from stakeholders, especially Prince Bernhard.
“I have big doubts about his representation of that, I don’t want to say too much about it. I can only speak for myself and in my time as head of research we have never kept the royal family from the wind. When we were still a national institute, the Ministry of Education and Science sometimes wanted to inquire whether trouble was coming about the Oranges. Since we have been accommodated at the KNAW, we have never had that again.”
Is there historical guilt?
“I would rather say responsibility. Guilt is a motivation that you shouldn’t want to impose on groups that weren’t directly involved in something. But the responsibility of dealing with the guilt of the previous generation, you may ask.”