The Dutch Royal family is haunted by a past that won’t stay hidden forever.
Now, the discovery of a ‘Nazi membership card’ in the name of late Dutch Prince Bernhard, a German grandfather to the Dutch King, revived calls on Friday for an inquiry into his ties to Adolf Hitler’s party.
As the claims that long dogged the prince were confirmed, the country’s leading Jewish group as well as opposition politicians, are up in arms.
Reuters reported:
“Prince Bernhard, the grandfather of Dutch King Willem Alexander, died in 2004. He consistently denied having been a Nazi although he did acknowledge membership of several Nazi military units, saying it was common for men of his age at the time.”
There always was suspicion that the prince had been a Nazi party member, which he always denied.
Netherland’s Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), said on Friday that the discovery of Prince Bernhard’s original NSDAP membership card ‘is a new part of a painful chapter in Dutch history’.
“‘That Bernhard was a member is not so much what caused the shock: most Dutch people had expected that by now. But that he continued to deny it until his death weighs much more heavily for people’, the CIDI said in a statement.
In interviews with De Volkskrant newspaper shortly before his death, Bernhard had repeated his denial: ‘I can state with one hand on the Bible, I was never a Nazi’, he said.”
Many were puzzled that the Prince, after decades denying the existence of the membership card, had kept it.
“As early as 1996 Dutch journalists published a book containing a copy of an NSDAP membership card in Bernhard’s name that was found in U.S. archives, along with correspondence showing that he quit the party in 1936 when he became engaged to Juliana, the Dutch princess who later became queen.”
A minor German prince, Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld married Crown Princess Juliana after meeting her in 1936 at the Winter Olympic Games in Bavaria.
The Guardian reported:
“Bernhard, who was prince consort until 1980, adamantly denied being a Nazi. ‘I can swear with my hand on the Bible: I have never been a Nazi’, Bernhard, then 93, told the national daily newspaper De Volkskrant in an interview shortly before his death in 2004. ‘I never paid for party membership. I never had a membership card’.
Earlier this week, the former head of the palace archives, Flip Maarschalkerweerd, told the media outlet NRC that he had come across the card while he was cataloguing the prince’s belongings. The royal household confirmed to AFP that the 1933 card was genuine.
[…] King Willem-Alexander also sought to address the issue. ‘I imagine that the news has a major impact and that it prompts a lot of emotion, especially in the Jewish community’, he told reporters.
‘We have to see the past as it is, including the less nice parts’, he added.”
