oa Contramine: Grijs verleden

The third issue of the Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis in 2010 contained an article by Martijn Eickhoff, Barabara Henkes, and Frank van Vree entitled: ‘The Temptation of a Grey Perspective. Moral Values and the Writing of History’. In this article the authors reflected on the moral values of historical-writing, discussing three historiographical themes: the Dutch colonial past, the Second World War and the NIODreport about Srebrenica. In examining the value of historical qualifications in terms of ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘grey’, they attributed a specific moral meaning to the grey accommodation- paradigm. It is not surprising that their discussion of the historiography of the Second World War combined with their critical assessment of the grey perspective has provoked a reaction. In ‘Absurdities about a book’ Chris van der Heijden responded to what he considered to be an attack on his views. The three authors of the previously-mentioned article reply to this criticism.