oa Digitale ontsluiting van het Centraal Archief Bijzondere Rechtspleging

Digital Access to the Legal Files of those tried for Nazi collaboration in the Netherlands: Possibilities and Impossibilities

This article reflects on the findings of a pilot project called Triado that digitized a sample of the 4km of legal files created by the Special Jurisdiction for investigating Dutch Nazi collaboration (CABR) in the years after the Second World War. We show that large scale digitization may help to analyze complex historical sources in new ways, thus deepening our understanding of the consequences of war and genocide. However, this can be achieved only if all specialists involved develop ways to deal with ambiguity in the sources: instead of disambiguation we need mixed approaches that allow for data to have multiple meanings and for interpretation of meaning to change over time. This article offers suggestions and gives a brief overview of some of the possibilities for researchers and lay users of digitized historical sources.