At the end of June 1945, when the first government after liberation took office, more than one hundred thousand political suspects were already interned in camps. Most of them had been picked up during the first days after the Allied troops passed through. They were not arrested by the regular police but by the resistance. In August and September of 1944 in the liberated southern part of the Netherlands as well as in May of 1945 in the north, the passing of the Allied troops was followed by a liberation in the true sense of the word: an outburst of popular  rage against the hated minority that had collaborated with the occupation authority. The people reached for paint and razors to punish the collaborators - at first especially the girlfriends of the German soldiers. Local resistance groups arrested NSB-members and other collaborators.