Documents from the National Archives are released every year. Various government archives kept here have different deadlines for publication. The minutes of the meetings of the Council of Ministers, for example, remain secret for 25 years. This year, for the first time, the minutes for 1999 can be read.
A special feature this year is the publication of the archives of the so-called Special Administration of Justice. This concerns the files of Dutch people who had to answer for their behavior during the German occupation after the Second World War. This is one of the largest archives in the Netherlands, covering almost four kilometers of documents. At the last minute, after an urgent warning from the Dutch Data Protection Authority, the cabinet decided not to make the now digitized archive digitally searchable for the time being. It immediately led to congestion at the specially set up site on Thursday www.trouwvoorderechter.nlwhere people can request access to files. During the day, appointments for inspection could only be made in February.
Such waiting periods do not apply to the other thousands and thousands of documents that were made public as of January 1. On Thursday, the first interested parties opened folder after folder in the reading rooms of the archive in The Hague.
Three files from the large quantity.
‘Killer of farming families’
The toughness of political files becomes visible in the archives. For example, in the discussions of the Kok II cabinet in the autumn of 1999, the ‘integral approach to the manure problem’ stands out.
On October 8, Minister Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst (Economic Affairs, D66) will discuss his proposal in the Council of Ministers. “During the general consultation in the House of Representatives, says Brinkhorst, a large number of farmers were present in the room who wore T-shirts with the inscription ‘Brinkhorst, killer of 10,000 farming families’.”
Brinkhorst says that he wants to see whether “some rabid statements in the media from the representative of the Dutch Pig Farmers’ Union (NVV), Mr. [Wien] Van den Brink” are punishable. Wien van den Brink was chairman of the NVV, the Dutch Association of Pig Farmers, founded out of dissatisfaction with the, in their view, overly cooperative course of the agricultural organization LTO.
In view of a European directive for nitrate emissions, the government stated in 1999 that the manure standards would be tightened with effect from 2002/2003. “It must be made very clear to the sector that postponement is no longer possible,” the Economic Affairs memorandum states. The result: around six thousand farms will have to close. The government is making more than 100,000 guilders available per company for voluntary retirement.
Farmers could have seen this coming for a long time
This is “the difficult point,” the officials write in the note. “On the one hand, you now want to give farmers the opportunity to stop so that they can be enforced with a firm hand later (as of 2002), but on the other hand, it should not become a hassle.” Moreover, farmers “could have seen this coming for a long time.”
Asking the European Commission to make an exception for the Netherlands seems pointless. Brinkhorst spoke with European Commissioner Margot Wallström and reported in the Council of Ministers on December 3 that the Netherlands “cannot count on a lenient attitude from the European Union.”
When the Purple Cabinet falls in 2002 (following the Srebrenica report), the always agriculturally-friendly CDA returns to the center of power. Minister Cees Veerman actually manages to make a deal with Italy and makes ‘Brussels’ an exception for the Netherlands. The term of that exception expires on January 1, 2026.
Wien van den Brink’s distant successors are part of the current coalition. Minister Femke Wiersma (Agriculture, BBB) insists that she will succeed in obtaining a new exception for the Netherlands in Brussels.
What was it in the 1999 memorandum again? “It must become very clear to the sector that postponement is no longer possible.”
‘The Prince Speaks’
It is a footnote to one of the most remarkable productions in Dutch journalism. Published on December 14, 2004 de Volkskrant a many-page interview with Prince Bernhard, who died two weeks earlier. The piece turned out to be the result of years of conversations, kept secret from Queen Beatrix, his daughter, and from the Government Information Service (RVD), between Bernhard and de Volkskrant-editor-in-chief Pieter Broertjes and his deputy, Jan Tromp.
Under the headline ‘The prince is dead, the prince speaks’ Bernhard revealed, among other things, that he had two illegitimate daughters. He also laid out a complicated argument about how he had “fallen into the trap” in the Lockheed affair. And he firmly says “I have never had a membership card” when it is told to him that he was a member of the NSDAP. Bernhard’s membership card was found last year by Flip Maarschalkerweerd, who wrote about it in his book The stragglers. Bernhard himself summarized the veracity of the interviews as “my view.”
The correspondence has been preserved in the National Archives, in the documents of Bernhard’s private secretary. On June 16, 1999, Broertjes wrote a letter to the prince, asking him for an interview on the occasion of the turn of the century. “For the record: we are not interested in going through your own biography,” writes Broertjes. “We stay far away from that. It is about the Netherlands in this century seen through your glasses.”
Bernhard was a loose cannon
In the booklet they made of the interview, Broertjes and Tromp call this an “extremely neutral” proposal. That would make it more difficult for the RVD to refuse. The RVD refused anyway – and did so, according to the book Beatrice. Straight through all resistance by Jutta Chorus, in committee with Queen Beatrix and Prime Minister Wim Kok. The latter said in that book: “An important consideration was that we could not use unguided projectiles. And Bernhard was a loose cannon.”
So what does Bernhard do when he knows it’s not allowed? The answer is in a handwritten note on a ‘telefax’ from his private secretary Aernout Broekhuyzen, dated June 23, 1999. “PB would also like to speak to Broertjes to explain why he does not give interviews.”
If the front door had to remain closed, Bernhard could always open a side door.
‘Don’t arrest a Jew’
On March 8, 1943, the commander of the military police in Warffum, Groningen, was ordered to arrest “all Jews still present, healthy or sick.” The first deportations had started more than six months earlier, Westerbork camp was already in use as a transit camp.
As soon as the order reaches him, sub-lieutenant Koopmans asks whether ‘the 92-year-old Jew in Warffum’, who has been paralyzed on one side in bed for more than ten years, should also be taken away. “After consultation with the Security Service in Groningen, it was determined that this Jew could be transported by car, not to Groningen, but straight to Westerbork.”
Two officers are assigned to pick up the elderly man: constable Kuilder and military police Schoemaker. But they refuse. Schoemaker has no objections in principle to rounding up Jews, he says in a conversation with his commander. He worked in Westerbork for four months and “had always done his duty there,” according to the report of that conversation. But surely this half-paralyzed elderly person, who according to him “had no clothes left,” could no longer do any harm to society “and certainly not provide for offspring”?
The next time he was ordered to arrest and deport young Jews, “he would comply. However, in this case he couldn’t do it.” Schoemaker is disciplined.
Kuilder won’t get off that easily. His objection is a matter of principle, according to his commander’s report: “He could never arrest people who had done nothing. Before the war it was punishable if someone was unlawfully deprived of his freedom, while now people who had done nothing wrong were deprived of their freedom.” No, Kuilder would “under no circumstances arrest a Jew.”
[De veldwachter] will fully comply with every order given to him in the future
The constable is relieved of his duties, without the right to a pension, and initially locked up in the military police barracks in Groningen. He was there for two days when, on March 15, 1943, a new telex message was sent to the headquarters of the Ordnungspolizei in Hoog Soeren. Kuilder has, as can be read, “changed his position”. He stated in the presence of the German police that he “will fully comply with every order given to him in the future.” The former constable is then recommended for (lighter) disciplinary punishment.
It made no difference to the 92-year-old Jewish man from Warffum. Instead of the unwilling police officers, “Chief Chief Meier and Military Police Pijkstra from the Baflo post” came to the door and did what the occupier wanted of them without complaining.
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