Afternoon of reflection in Nijmegen about the Central Archives for Special Jurisdiction

On Feb. 7, our former colleague Dr. Jan Julia Zurné, now a lecturer at Radboud University in Nijmegen, organized an afternoon of discussion about the Central Archives for Special Jurisdiction (Centraal archief bijzondere rechtspleging - CABR). The occasion was the digitization and planned online accessibility of these archives, initially scheduled for early 2025. For the time being, this online accessibility has not materialized, but nevertheless, this afternoon of inpsiration provided a number of interesting directions for new research and reflection on the best way to deal with digitized archives.

The CABR are the archives on the trial of collaborators after World War II in the Netherlands and are very similar to the Belgian 'repression archives'. They are very extensive archives (more than 400,000 files) that are relevant not only to prosecution and punishment of collaboration, but also to the history of occupation itself. Since 2025, the CABR archives have been in the public domain. Given the expected great interest from family members - a phenomenon we also see in Belgium - it was decided to digitize the entire archives and make them accessible online. This not only facilitates consultation because a move to the National Archives in The Hague is no longer necessary, but also ensures that the already often in poor condition paper originals are not further degraded. To this end, a consortium “ Oorlog voor de Rechter ” (including the NIOD and the National Archives) set to work to enable and frame this digitization and online access, for example by providing sufficient context on the website for these complex and legal-technical archives. There is even a chat available 12 hours a day and Saturday mornings.

Personal data

These archives contain a great deal of (sensitive) personal data. Although a thorough data protection impact assessment had previously shown that making the archives accessible online would not pose a disproportionate risk to the protection of personal data, the Dutch data protection authority issued a formal warning against making the archives accessible online at the end of November 2024. It was then decided to refrain from doing so and to make only the names that appear in the files accessible online. Consultation of the files themselves is still done in the reading room of the National Archives. The expectation that the CABR archive would be in high demand came true. For example, anyone who wanted to consult a file on 13 February could not visit the reading room until 21 March at the earliest. However, the request procedure has been greatly simplified and is entirely digital. On Oorlog voor de rechter, anyone wishing to consult a file can enter a name, is given a brief explanation of the outcome of the court proceedings, immediately receives an overview of the files on this person and can immediately request those files for consultation in the reading room of the National Archives, after creating an account of course.

Research perspectives

When the reflection afternoon was planned, it was expected that the CABR archives would be accessible online and that the participants would have a good idea of the contents and could share their ideas on research perspectives and methodological aspects. This was now not possible, leaving many questions open such as, for example, the exact choices made in digitizing the files, the quality of OCR, the functionality of searchability, etc. Nevertheless, the presentations on new research perspectives, interrogation practices and digital methods offered interesting leads especially as the questions were embedded in an international context, referring not only, as traditionally, to neighboring countries but also to Eastern and Central Europe. Moreover, in her introduction, Jan Julia Zurné pointed to legal history and historical criminology as sources of inspiration for historical research and argued for an approach from “uses of justice,” which allows for a more central focus on the subjects of justice. Whereas past research often focused on the role of the main actors such as prosecutors or judges, digitization offers an opportunity to look at the role of ''auxiliaries'' of justice such as interrogators. Elwin Hofman of Utrecht University gave an interesting talk on interrogation practices in a long-term perspective and outlined a methodological framework for dealing responsibly with this resource. It was noteworthy that in the Netherlands, in addition to police forces authorized to do so, 'lay people' such as school principals were used to interrogate suspects after the war.

Digitization

Milan van Lange of the NIOD pointed out the importance of knowing the structure of the underlying datasets used for digitization to be able to apply network analysis and techniques of digital text analysis by, for example, detecting patterns in the files based on words and terms. Furthermore, from an archival theory perspective, it is crucial to know how, by whom, and when files were formed because there is a chance that files may have become mixed up over the years or ended up outside their original context. The CABR's archives are somewhat “messy” due to their size and the use made of them over the years. The original structure of the archives needs to be precisely reconstructed and visible in the digital dataset. Because there is as yet no online access to the digitized files, the questions could be asked but not yet answered.

Context

Precisely because these archives can still be sensitive to family members, because they are technical in nature, and because it will not be immediately clear to those unfamiliar with legal proceedings what position a person who is named occupies in those proceedings (just because someone is suspected does not mean that they ultimately turn out to be guilty), contextualization is of great importance, especially when these archives are used for educational purposes. Therefore, Oorlog voor de Rechter puts great emphasis on that contextualization. Reference can be made here, for example, to the 'Handreiking Centraal Archief Bijzondere Rechtspleging', which Kris van der Aar, who incidentally was an intern at CegeSoma, wrote for the Huygens Institute, another partner of Oorlog voor de Rechter. The guide is specifically intended for family members who want to use the CABR archive. It starts from targeted questions such as “Are the Central Archives for Special Jurisdiction (CABR) objective?” and answers them in human language.