Flemish leader who won Belgian election had sparked controversy with Jews

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Brussels - The leader of a Flemish nationalist political party who secured a landslide victory in early parliamentary elections in Belgium on Sunday had sparked a controversy with the Jewish community three years ago when he criticized official apologies by Antwerp’s Mayor for the role of Belgians in the deportation of Jews during WWII.

Bart De Wever, whose right-wing New Flemish Alliance (N-VA) won around 30% of the vote in the Northern, Flemish-speaking part of the country, well ahead of the ruling Christian Democrats, at the time called the apologies “a gratuitous act" and said that "those who led Antwerp at the time had to make delicate decisions in difficult circumstances." 

De Wever also drew a parallel between the commemoration of the Holocaust and the current situation in the occupied Palestinian territories where, he said, “some use techniques which recall me a dark past.”

Antwerp’s Socialist Mayor Patrick Janssens had apologized for the first time during a congress on the Holocaust organized by the local Forum of Jewish Organizations.

According to an official report issued in 2007 and titled "Docile Belgium," policemen and civil servants in Antwerp participated during WWII in three raids, at the request of the Nazis, which resulted in the deportation of about 1,200 Jews to Auschwitz in 1942. 

Contrary to what happened in Brussels, the Antwerp authorities at the time showed overzealousness and arrested more Jews than requested by the German occupier.

65% of Antwerp’s Jews were deported during the Nazi occupation.  

De Wever also drew a parallel between the commemoration of the Holocaust and the current situation in the occupied Palestinian territories where, he said, “some use techniques which recall me a dark past.”  

He  later downplayed his remarks and although he apologized at a meeting with  Jewish leaders, he mentioned what he termed “the controversy among historians who study the history of the Holocaust over the last decade.” 

A French-speaking newspaper then called him a “negationist.”  

Around 18,000 of Belgian Jews live in the northern Flemsih part of the country, mainly in city of Antwerp.

EJP

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