A woman came into possession of her grandmother’s criminal file, revealing a troubling past as a Nazi collaborator. She then offered to share it with a Jewish family affected by the betrayal. However, when the time came to hand over the information, she hesitated, leading to a new conflict.

The situation came to light when Judith Zilversmit, a journalist based in Amsterdam, received a message on Instagram in October 2023. The message was from someone she did not know, claiming to have details about Zilversmit’s family history.

The sender was Ingeborg Boelen, a Belgian living near the Dutch border. She revealed having discovered her grandmother’s dark history two years prior, reading in an old newspaper article that her grandmother had betrayed Zilversmit’s family during World War II.

Boelen had accessed her grandmother’s criminal file from a Belgian judicial archive. It contained information about her grandmother’s collaboration with the Nazis. She invited Zilversmit to get in touch for more details.

Upon receiving this unexpected message, Zilversmit, aged 49, was taken aback. She admitted to swiping away the message out of surprise.

Who was this stranger contacting me about such a traumatic part of my family’s history? Zilversmit recalled asking during an interview.

Zilversmit had some knowledge of her family’s experiences during the Holocaust. Her father had recounted their flight from Holland to Belgium in 1940 as Germany invaded. Her father, Hans, passed away in 2014, but his stories provided a framework of her family’s past.