'Niet weggooien!': How the early history (1945-1960) of NIOD inspires documenting and studying war and violence in the twenty-first century.

The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies was founded in May 1945 as Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (RVO, later RIOD). The Dutch government tasked the institute with documenting and researching the history of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and, later, also the history of the War of Independence in Indonesia. The NIOD has accumulated over two kilometres of archival holdings, built a library, and established an international reputation. The institute also collected and created thousands of war-related records, including diaries, personal correspondence, post-war interviews, testimonies, and surveys. The NIOD continues to play a central role in the dissemination of historical knowledge and the management of historical record collections, both in the Netherlands and beyond. In our contribution, we focus on the early policies and activities and their implementations regarding the collection and management of personal wartime records at NIOD. How did the institute's early collection practices influence the research and publications produced by the institute? What ongoing impact do these practices have on the contemporary functioning of the institute? And to what extent can they serve as a source of inspiration for future policies and activities? We analyse the NIOD's past policies and activities, drawing on the institutional archives, including policy reports, donation records, personal documents, and meeting minutes (1945-1960). We aim to illustrate how these processes developed, were documented, and continue to be a dynamic and complex phenomenon, holding significant potential for the future of documenting war and violence.