The Hague, the Netherlands, 2014
In the shadow of the International Criminal Court, where they hold war crimes tribunals for global dictators, is the National Archives of the Netherlands. It is where the sealed transcripts of the war trials for NSB members are kept. It takes me years to see the dossiers of my grandparents. A request must be filed with a statement of intent, and only family members are permitted access to a dossier. This request, if approved, prompts a reciprocal request for photocopies of birth certificates, death certificates, passports, and other documents. After these have been submitted, the government assigns a date and time for you to show up. No deviation from these rules is indulged in the years I try to obtain access. The Dutch are nothing if not committed to a bureaucratic system of fairness. Every time I had started the process in years past, I had returned to the United States before getting a date or approval. Finally, one summer, I am able to cut through the bureaucracy and get an appointment. My mother decides she wants to go with me, though we discuss the possibility that there will be information contained in her parents’ records that she won’t know or like. “I am past being disappointed in my father,” she says. “I don’t think it will upset me anymore.” We have four hours on our assigned date to view my grandparents’ dossiers.
On the date of our visit, we are fingerprinted and photographed. We have to put all of our possessions in a locker, except for my laptop, which is inspected, and a notepad for my mother, who doesn’t have a laptop. My mother may use only an assigned pencil to transcribe what is contained in the files. She must leave her pen, eraser, and pencil sharpener in the locker with our other belongings. A guard sits with us at a long table with around fifteen other people looking at dossiers. I’m struck by the knowledge that most of these people are doing what I am doing: trying to find out the facts about their dark family histories. Hundreds of thousands of Dutch people carry this secret about their heritage. In our own quiet conference with the past, we all sit around a table, absorbing the only written record. Most of them inherited a silence about it too, the inheritance of a collective national taboo. I open my laptop to begin taking notes, and another guard walks over and places a sticker over the camera eye on my computer.
I am astounded at the volume of information the government was able to amass in their case against my grandfather as a collaborator. I can’t imagine the man-hours involved or how they managed to collect it all. Letters to and from the NSB office, private notes written by neighbors and family members, receipts, real estate papers, affidavits, employment papers, magazine subscriptions, ID photos, and, of course, the trial transcripts with my grandfather’s defense and the verdict finding him guilty of treason, along with his sentence:
THAT HE, CITIZEN OF THE NETHERLANDS, BORN 22 APRIL 1904
I. During the enemy occupation of the empire in Europe until Sept 1944 remained a member of the National Socialist Movement of the Netherlands …
II. During the enemy occupation of the empire in Europe as a member of the Technical Guild and the Teacher’s Guild and as an allied member of the Dutch Germanic S.S.; shall be deemed based upon foregoing facts to have acted knowingly and deliberately contrary to the interests of the Dutch people …
In view of the relevant Legislative Acts: We declare the accused guilty of: acting deliberately in contravention of the interests of the Dutch people;
WE SENTENCE THE ACCUSED TO
Internment, in which the Tribunal proposes to set a period calculated from 14 May 1945 to end on 15 September 1946; B. Revocation of the right to vote.
27 June 1946.
The files fill four three-inch-thick folders. The contents are at times contradictory, and the apparent conflicts in my grandfather’s character confuse me: What was his true ideology and what was born out of pressure or ulterior motives?
There is a list of his positions in the NSB party. Committee member. Group leader. Committee Organizer. Branch Spokesperson. Inspector-in-training. Subscriber of NSB and Nazi newspapers and magazines. The list of official affiliations runs down one page. Member. Member. Member. His membership in the Germanic SS specifically upsets me. Like most people I know, I have always believed that the SS was made up of hard-core Nazis, and I assume that he is a member of the German SS, which absolutely shocks me. I don’t understand how this squares with his insistence that he was not in favor of the Nazis. Later, to some relief, I learn that the NSB had its own version of the SS, first called the Dutch SS and then changed to the Germanic SS in the Netherlands, not to be confused with the German SS or Waffen SS. The Dutch SS was a political designation established by Mussert under pressure of Hitler, and served more as a symbolic Dutch unit, as opposed to the German Waffen SS, which had Dutch recruits as well but was active in the persecution of the Jews. Further research reveals that my grandfather’s membership was due to the fact that he gave members of the Dutch SS lessons in genealogy, a hobby of his. While I am relieved that he wasn’t a member of the German SS, this detail rattles me. I cannot imagine what use the NSB or the Dutch SS would have had for a lesson in genealogy besides the obvious: a focus on Germanic bloodlines and racial purity and, worse, a tool to track down Jewish citizens. I have no proof of this, but to my mind, there can be no other explanation for the genealogy lessons. I can’t know whether my grandfather was specifically aware of how his lessons in methodology would be applied, but it’s one of the more upsetting things I find in the dossier. It is possible that he was naive about the implications of sharing his enthusiasm and knowledge of genealogy. An internet search of “SS” and “genealogy” returns several passages in a report on the Dutch SS and NSB assembled by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation titled “The SS and the Netherlands, Documents from the SS Archives 1935–1945” that asserts that many NSB members were interested in genealogy as a hobby. It includes the following passage, which revisits a paganist theme found in the NSB philosophy and offers somewhat less sinister, if not nationalistic, motives for the high level of interest in genealogy in the NSB/Dutch SS:
The roots of the people and the unifying elements of blood and land resulted in the interest of … traditions, legends, folklore, old traditions, proverbs … and also in more concrete examples of the folk history: Saxon farms, runes, Germanic fairy mounds, Fresian folk art but also word origins, medieval art (the more primitive the more folksy), historic Dutch names, etc. etc. Knowledge of the ancestors added a new dimension to the present-day existence, also individually; one could fulfill one’s interest in one’s kinfolk via studying the history of tribes, or, to speak in Roman terms, genealogy (this turned out to occasionally be a rather risky hobby for race-conscious detectives).
There is also a lot of information in the dossier complicating the damning pieces of evidence about my grandfather’s involvement with the NSB and Dutch SS. There are affidavits from his neighbors that they had Jewish people in hiding and were in the resistance, and that my grandfather kept their secrets to the end. Affidavits that he helped members of the resistance in concealing radios, bicycles, contraband items. In a way, this dossier is as close to putting my grandfather on the psychoanalyst’s couch as I can get. Viewed together, the documents paint him as a fairly conflicted and pathetic man. Though most of my questions will remain forever unanswered, I do get a few more clues as to the “why” behind my search, the great “why” that my grandfather has taken to his grave. One of the more telling documents is my grandfather’s letter to the NSB head office after the Nazi occupation regarding his years-long study of cryptology:
During the mobilization I offered the Dutch Department of Defense my services multiple times. I know that I am one of the few Dutch experts in cryptology. If everything had been well managed in our motherland, then they surely would have at least taken note of my offer … Presumably the fact that I never received a single word nor a letter back is connected to the coincidence that I, as NSBer, was seen by them as “untrustworthy.” Should it come to pass, then I gladly offer myself as a consultant to the NSB in this regard.
His words reek of bitterness. To me, they reflect the low self-esteem of a rejected man who, feeling the sting of disregard by his government, joins forces with the enemy purely out of spite.
In the end, after the smoke of war clears and the horrible truth of it comes into view, he feels betrayed and undervalued by all parties. In a letter to the judge in his own defense, he states, “I have believed that the social needs of the Dutch people could best be met by a political party that, according to its stated platform, served them. Over the course of the last few years I have been disappointed and disillusioned in many ways. I have not profited from my membership [in the NSB] in any respect.”
In another letter in the dossier, one sent to the courts after his arrest, he goes into even more detail, writing,
I became a member of the NSB because, given the societal situation prior to 1940, the NSB’s platform was the only one I saw for building a just community. After 1940 I also believed that only that platform could help form a good society. The mistakes of the Germans can’t be projected onto the NSB members, in my opinion. I never profited from the political developments after 1940, as some would have done. I rejected a number of good opportunities that were offered to me, such that I stayed true to myself. I didn’t accept a radio, as other Dutch people also weren’t allowed radios. I never bought anything on the black market. Everyone could speak to me openly about their beliefs, without having to fear that I would turn them in. My students and character witnesses can attest to the fact that I consistently cursed and condemned the razzias, prosecutions, the concentration camps, etc. of the Germans. Further, I never once revealed anything; Germans never came in my house. I have never wanted to be anything but a good person. I reject the accusation of “traitor” with indignation. I think the aforementioned reasons are sufficient reason to release me immediately. Measured by my intentions and the way I conducted myself, it is my impression that I have not earned being arrested.
Another document I come across was added after my grandfather was released from prison. It regards the “Cleansing” or “Purification” Act of 1945, which was enacted after NSB members and other collaborators had served out their sentences and many were due to reenter society. The Cleansing Act Advisory Commission sought to further “cleanse” the Netherlands of these fout people, removing them from jobs and all other positions and stripping them of their right to their pensions. In effect, the Cleansing Act added a life sentence to their prison sentences. I am struck by the specific use of the word cleansing, because it is so close to the language the opposing side used during the Holocaust. This is uncomfortable for me, because it allows for a conflation that should not be allowed to exist.
MINISTER OF EDUCATION, ARTS, AND SCIENCES. JANUARY 1948.
Given the advice of the Advisory Commission named in article 5 of the Cleansing Act of 1945 from December 10, 1945; Whereas, the person named below … having been found guilty of treason, the aforementioned Commission has approved:
a. dismissal from his post for A.C. Kock, teacher at the “Dutch Institute of Community Education” in Arnhem;
b. Expiration of all rights to current or future pension and other rights. The Hague, January 31, 1948
2. Termination as Special Education Teacher for the Engineer and Automobile Technical School Apeldoorn per 11-2-45. “Was a member of the NSB.”
Upon this decree, notes are handwritten in the space provided at the end of the document:
Not NSB profiteer. Should be regarded as an “idealist.” Spread no propaganda at school. Warned some of the teachers about the [German] S.D., who wanted information from them. This man belongs to the group of “good” NSB members before the war. He disapproved openly of the Holocaust and razzias and resigned in Jan/Feb 45 as a member.
I am perplexed. Who has written these extra notes on the form? The judge? An administrator? The form has been placed in the dossier by the government officials associated with the special tribunal, so the notes will have come from the hand of the same government that sentenced my grandfather. If these are the notes of the judge, or of persons at the Cleansing Act Advisory Commission, I can’t help but wonder what their advice would be for “bad” NSB members.
My mother and I leave the archives drained, with hand cramps from copying down as much as we can. We talk in the car. One thing she realized in reading the dossiers was that she didn’t know her father very well. And now that her parents are gone, we cannot ask them why they made the choices that they made. We cannot ask them what happened in the internment camps for collaborators, about the lived experiences behind the typed sentences and forms in a dossier in a box in the national archives of the Netherlands. They refused to speak of it, and so the dossiers are all we now have. I discover that I have more questions than answers now, and must be content with the idea that the true character of my grandfather lies somewhere between idealist and monster.
Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 2016
In all of the years I visited the Netherlands, I avoided Rotterdam. In the southern part of the country, it’s not where my people are from. But I also had a bias against the city. Because the center of Rotterdam was destroyed by the Germans in the war, it was rebuilt in the ensuing years, and the city became a European center for contemporary architecture.
Perhaps because I grew up in a midcentury modern house in Los Angeles, a city of eclectic architecture that tears down and rebuilds as if it were changing socks, I have a romanticized love for the historic architecture of European cities: the cobblestoned streets, the art nouveau and stained glass art deco buildings, the red clay roof tiles and spires of churches so old that William Shakespeare could have sat in their pews. I fetishize oldness. Rotterdam, with its glass cube houses and mirrored skyscrapers, never really appealed to me. But one day I find myself there when meeting a friend for a day of pure tourism and the delight of aimless exploration, and I begin to appreciate the juxtaposition of the old and the new in this strange city, as I see how the contemporary architects respected what was left of the old landscape. Progress works in harmony with history in Rotterdam, and while the last thing on my mind on this day is my parents, I suddenly see that this is a natural stop in their narrative. Rotterdam is a city ravaged by war, but it is redefining itself with its scars laid bare.
My friend and I visit Hotel New York, which has been recommended to him as a nice place to eat in the harbor. What my friend doesn’t tell me is that Hotel New York is the former terminal for the Holland America Line, which carried thousands of immigrants to America. The restaurant where we have come to eat is the former departure hall where my parents left the Netherlands together for a new life in the United States. Standing in front of it, I look at the last landmark my mother would have seen of her home country before seeing the Statue of Liberty come into view on the other end of the Atlantic. The stone building has two green patinated clock towers and Holland Amerika Lijn spelled out across it in art nouveau lettering. Built in 1904 by a Jugendstil architect, it somehow survived the German blitzkrieg as the rest of the city burned. When I get home, I immediately play the home movie my father shot in 1967 as they left Rotterdam, and there it is: the same building, the two green clock towers exactly as I saw them. Below it on the wharf are my father’s parents and my mother’s mother, and Hannie and her kids, waving goodbye.
For my father, the Netherlands was never really home. He had watched his home vanish into the horizon from a ship sailing out of the Semarang harbor two decades earlier. But for my mother, this was the home she loved, the home she deeply wanted to belong to, the home she left behind. The home where she would have preferred to stay. In grainy silent film, I see my mother standing on the deck of the SS Nieuw Amsterdam, newly married, waving her scarf to her family members standing on the quay below. As my father trains the camera on her, I see my mother waving and waving as they leave the harbor, her eyes full, a forced smile on her face. She hangs over the railing of the ship and waves until she cannot see them waving back anymore, and then she is watching this beautiful building with its two round clocks like goalposts recede farther and farther into the distance until it disappears for her and there is only the vastness of ocean and the things she left behind. As I stand on the same wharf in Rotterdam completely by chance, I think about how perfect this is, how it is a puzzle piece I didn’t realize was missing until I could almost see the whole picture come into view. Of course, this ends with her daughter following her through history, crisscrossing the Netherlands in search of the past, and ending that journey here, at this very point where she left it all behind on a ship spewing salt water back at the shore.