Capitalism in Decay

The impending availability of the material has been controversial in the Netherlands because relatively few of the people in the database were ever formally charged with crimes. Not all even faced formal investigations.

The Dutch government investigated 300,000 people for collaborating with the [Axis] and more than 65,000 of them stood trial in a special court system in the years after World War II.

Collaboration enabled the [Axis] to murder an estimated three quarters of Dutch Jews, including their most famous victim, Anne Frank, and her family. The identity of the person who exposed Frank’s hiding place has been a matter of debate.

It was not until 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.

More recently, some institutions in the Netherlands have sought to make amends for their rôle in the Holocaust locally. The Dutch public tram company GVB, for example, sought compensation after the war for having transported Jews to their deaths; earlier this year, it announced that it would place memorials at three deportation hubs, and the city of Amsterdam pledged 100,000 euros — and potentially more in the future — to local Jewish groups to divest itself of its revenue from collaborating with the [Axis].