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| Belgium SS Leon Degrelle with Goebbles. |
Did Belgian interior Minister Condone Nazi Collaboration? (Forward).
A representative of Flemish Jews asked a deputy prime minister of Belgium to clarify statements in which he appeared to condone the actions of Nazi collaborators.
Jan Jambon, who is also Belgium’s interior minister, made the statements during an interview which was published last week in the La Libre Belgique newspaper.
During the interview, Jambon, who is a member of the New Flemish Alliance party, was asked about his participation in 2001 at a rally organized by the far-right association Sint-Maartenfonds, whose mission statement is to support Flemish Belgians who fought on Nazi Germany’s side in World War II.
Commenting about these veterans, he said: “The people who collaborated with the Germans, they had their reasons. I did not live in those times.”After the Oct. 13 publication of the interview, Jambon rejected any interpretation of his words as condoning Nazism or collaboration with Nazi Germany and apologized to anyone who was offended by them.
But Raphael Werner of the Flemish Forum of Jewish Organizations told the Antwerp-based Joods Actueel newspaper that the forum wants to meet with Jambon and discuss the issue more thoroughly.
“Then we could hear for ourselves what are the positions of the minister, not only about collaboration but also about the sensitive questions connected to it,” he said, according to an article published on Oct. 14.
Some 66,000 Jews lived in Belgium when Germany invaded in 1940, according to Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. Of them, 34,801 were imprisoned and or deported. More than 80 percent of those deported died.
Belgium, a federal bi-national state, comprises three autonomous regions: The Dutch-speaking Flemish Region; the French-speaking Walloon Region; and the central Brussels region.Read the full story here.
Related: Belgian Senate recognizes authorities’ role during Holocaust
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