How to Flee the Gestapo

Although, as an historian, I remain astounded by the vast amount of documentation about Dutch-Paris now available in various archives, a lay person could be forgiven for thinking that rather […]

Because there’s no written history of Dutch-Paris, or even a complete list of names of its members, I’ve been reconstructing the line following the trail of names in the archives. […]

I’ve had many occasions over the last two weeks to remember what my friend at the Dutch Red Cross Archives pointed out: an archive preserves the idiosyncratic organization created by […]

It’s not enough just to find an archive with relevant documents; you also have to find those documents within the archive. Unfortunately, every archive is organized differently, and none of […]

There’s a lot of dull reading involved in historical research, and at the beginning of a project it’s difficult to tell if the letter of complaint about delayed trams is […]

I’ve been looking through the handful of cartons of documents originating from the German police at the Archives nationales in Paris. These are the papers of the SIPO-SD, meaning all […]

One of the more unexpected difficulties I’ve encountered in researching Dutch-Paris has to do with people’s names. I knew, of course, that it would be difficult to uncover the names […]

Just because dossiers on resisters are now available, doesn’t mean that the dossiers have more information than a name and date of birth (sometimes not even that). But sometimes you […]

Historical research is a little like hunting. You need to know what kinds of tracks your quarry leaves; it always helps to have a local guide, and timing makes all […]

Two weeks ago I had never heard of the archives of the Dutch Red Cross. But then in two days a Belgian archivist, a Dutch editor and a footnote all […]