Helen Grevers

Re-education in times of transitional justice: the case of the Dutch and Belgian collaborators after the Second World War

After the liberation of the Second World War, the governing parties in both Belgium and The Netherlands agreed that it was necessary to punish the collaborators. But the notion that the large majority had to be ‘re-educated’ for social reintegration also very soon prevailed in both countries. Collaborators had to be ‘cured’ to become full democratic national citizens again, and their punishment was designed to achieve this. Although in the last few decades the research scope of transitional justice has developed greatly and has contributed to an ever more nuanced picture of the punishment of collaboration in the post-war period, the question of to what extent prisons were used as places to ‘improve’ enemies of the state during a regime change has largely been overlooked. But precisely by studying the execution of the punishment, underlying ideologies and interests are exposed, and we can see how well defined citizenship was. This paper, with the aid of the Dutch–Belgian comparison, considers how post-war re-education was approached in those countries and what this says about the meaning of imprisonment during regime changes.

Voorbij Bijltjesdag? Recente werken over de bestraffing van collaboratie na beide wereldoorlogen in de Lage Landen

Lijst van besproken publicaties: Guido Abuys, Bas Kortholt, Interneringskamp Westerbork. Verhalen van een vergeten verleden 1945-1948 (Hilversum: Just Publishers, 2010, 175 p. + dvd, ISBN 978 90 8975 143 0) Guillaume Baclin, Laurence Bernard, Xavier Rousseaux, En premiere ligne: La justice militaire belge face a ‘l’incivisme’ au sortir de la Premiere Guerre Mondiale (Etudes sur la Premiere Guerre mondiale. Studies over de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Studies on World War One 16; Bruxelles: Archives generales du Royaume, 2010, 249 pp., ISBN 978 90 5746 257 3) Koos Groen, Fout en niet goed. De vervolging van collaboratie en verraad na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Hilversum: Just Publishers, 2009, 695 p., ISBN 978 90 77895 64 1) Xavier Rousseaux, Laurence Van Ypersele (eds.), La Patrie crie vengeance! La Repression des ‘inciviques’ belges au sortir de la guerre 1914-1918 (Histoire; Bruxelles: Le Cri, 2008, 437 pp., ISBN 978 2 8710 6493 0) Frank Seberechts, Frans-Jos, Verdoodt, Leven in twee werelden. Belgische collaborateurs en de diaspora na de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2010, 236 p., ISBN 978 90 5826 664 4) Jan Sintemaartensdijk, Yfke Nijland, Operatie Black Tulip. De uitzetting van Duitse Burgers na de oorlog (Amsterdam: Boom, 2009, 175 p., ISBN 978 90 8506 808 2) Pierre-Alain Tallier, Patrick Nefors (eds.), Quand les canons se taisent. En toen zwegen de kanonnen. When the Guns fall Silent. Actes du colloque international organise par les Archives de l’Etat et le Musee royal de l’Armee et d’Histoire militaire (Bruxelles, 3-6 novembre 2008) (Etudes sur la Premiere Guerre mondiale. Studies over de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Studies on World War One 18; Bruxelles: Archives generales du Royaume, 2010, 631 pp., ISBN 978 90 5746 284 9) Marc Van den Wijngaert, e.a., Beulen van Breendonk. Schuld en boete (Antwerpen: Standaard, 2010, 223 p., ISBN 978 90 02 23956 4)