Thousands of women abused in postwar Dutch camps, study finds

A study released Thursday by the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies has found that thousands of women imprisoned in internment camps after World War II were systematically sexually abused but that evidence of the crimes was hidden away.

The women, who were accused of having relationships with Germans during the Occupation of the Netherlands or were suspected collaborators, were subjected to “rapes, sadistic torture, forced undressing and public humiliations” in dozens of the country’s more than 200 internment camps, said NIOD.

Some 200 victims and witnesses gave statements to then-retired police inspector Johanna van Schilfgaarde for parliament’s 1950 Committee of Inquiry, but their accounts never made it into the final report.

Lead researcher at the time, Arnaud Baron van Tuyll van Serooskerken, was appointed to investigate reports of camp abuses, but concluded he couldn’t finish his assignment because witnesses were too afraid to speak out.

But the women’s testimonies were indeed in the archives, with almost all of them reporting sexual abuse and sadistic abuse by camp guards, including rape and sexual assault.

“In dozens of internment camps, structural sexual violence has been used by guards,” said historian and journalist Ewoud Kieft, who conducted the research for NIOD. “The lead investigator was grossly negligent, he told broadcaster NOS. “He failed to do his job.”

Because the committee’s final report contained no reference to the women’s testimonies, the Dutch government was never held to account.

Sixteen internment camp officials were eventually punished for murders and torture and were given fines or one-year prison sentences, but no one is known to have been punished for rape and sexual violence against women.

Kieft calls the testimonies “the tip of the iceberg” and has vowed to continue his research.