IN CAMERA

The Verdict

A very telling aspect of the trial of Albert Folens in 1947 is that much of it was held in camera, that is, in secret or in private, out of the public gaze. The reason given by the court is that airing some of the evidence in public could undermine the Belgian Security Service.

The only part of Folens' evidence which might have been sensitive in this way is the spying missions into the Soviet Zone into which he was blackmailed by the renegade Lieutenant Guy van den Plas.

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE

Juliette Folens

In the run up to Albert Folens' trial, his wife made a passionate plea to the Prosecuter to treat him gently as Albert's involvement with the Germans resulted from a horrible mistake he had made, based on a misunderstanding. She stressed that in his job working for the Sicherheitdienst he had done his best for his people. This, as we have seen elsewhere, meant mitigating the effects of the occupation on Flemish authors and cooperating with the Flemish Resistance. In doing this he was putting his life on the line.

AN bhFUIL CEAD AGAM DUL AMACH?

Teaching was his passion. He entered the De la Salle Brothers to teach. And he did teach for a number of years, in both Antwerp and Brussels, while with the order. He was inspired by his own original teacher Mr Trifoen at the primary school in his village and in a different way by the nuns at his French-speaking primary school.

LETTER FROM A JOURNALIST

The poster, of course, is a fiction. Albert's photo did feature on Belgian lamp posts after the end of the war when the local police were trying to find him. Their last address for him dated from August 1944 but no trace could be found of him.

When they did eventually find him, it was at a new and unexpected address, Saint-Gilles prison in the heart of Brussels. He had been repatriated there having spent over a year working for the Germans and subsequently for the Allies in the heart of Germany.

LODE ZIELENS AND THE RESISTANCE

Albert Folens had two difficult facts to establish to the Court if he wanted to get any credit for his work with the Resistance.

First he had to show that he had been in contact with Lode Zielens, a well known Flemish author who he said was his contact in the Resistance. Second, he had to show that Zielens was in the Resistance. This was proving very difficult because all of this had been going on under the radar and you didn't keep written records in a situation like this.

FINDING THE BOOKS

Leentje had got the court records and the tv programme had been long out.

There was one element in the tv programme which disturbed me enormously and the court records seemed to place obstacles in the way of rehabilitating Folens.

WAR CRIMINAL, HONORIS CAUSA

The quote below is an extract from the RTÉ tv programme "Hidden History: Ireland's Nazis" transmitted on 16 January 2007.

But Folens remained an elusive figure. However before his death he gave an interview in a Flemish publication in which he described himself as, and I quote, “a war criminal in an honourable cause”. In this article he made a reference to a controversial interview he had given Irish journalist Senan Molony in 1985 about his wartime activities. This interview has never been published or broadcast before, but it and other evidence raises serious questions about how active a Nazi Ireland's leading educational publisher really was.

This is completely outrageous from beginning to end. Reichsminister Goebbels would have been proud of it.

MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT

WAS GRANDPA A NAZI ?

This book was published in 2012 in French and Dutch. It is a guide to what was going on during and after the war in relation to collaboration with the Germans by Belgian nationals. It explains the épuration (purging) that followed immediately after the war, outlining the process in detail, and it explains how to find out if your granda was one such collaborator. It also gives useful hints on how to trace official records.

The perceived need for such a book shows both how widespread collaboration was in Belgium and the desire of a current generation to dig into or face up to their grandparents' past in this regard.

RTÉ LIVELINE

Make no mistake, the image of Albert Folens, perpetrated by RTÉ in 2007 lived on among the Irish public. As late as 2016 (31 March) on Joe Duffy's Liveline programme, which was dealing with the publication of a book on Otto Skorzeny, a phone-in contributor, Michael Parsons, formerly of the Irish Times, included Folens in his list of Nazis. (25m59s)

[Michael] “and, of course, he [Skorzeny] wasn’t the only Nazi who came here, Pieter Menten, Waterford, Clissman, Folens, two business men in Dublin, Artukovic.

[Joe Duffy] “Don’t the Folens family, of book fame subsequently … and he was … and Albert was books as well wasn’t he initially … don’t they vehemently deny that there was any connection between Albert Folens and collaboration … well … anyway.

[Michael] “That’s another story but there was also Artukovic ...

Factcheck:

The family did not deny that Folens was in the Flemish Legion nor that he worked for the German Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) during WWII. They denied that he was a Nazi, had ever worked in Gestapo HQ in Brussels and that he had never been a member of the Waffen SS. The family were correct in all of this.

A further phone in contribution came towards the end of the programme from Folens' daughter, Leentje. (44m50s)

She had not heard the earlier part of the programme but a relative had phoned her to say her father was being labelled a Nazi. She had the impression that he was being portrayed as a friend of Skorzeny. She came on air in an emotional state and was unprepared for engaging with Joe.

Joe mentioned her father being on the CROWCASS list of suspected war criminals and having been sentenced to 10 years. Also, that her mother had tried to stop a tape of Folens being broadcast.

Leentje defended her father and denied that he was on any list. She didn’t respond to him being a collaborator, but said he wasn’t a Nazi. She didn’t respond to Joe’s assertion that her mother tried to stop a tape of Folens being broadcast. She denied there were ever any allegations against her Dad. She said every single Flemish nationalist was on the list. Joe asks was he not sentenced to 10 years and Leentje ducks a reply by saying she was only born in 1958. She says the allegations made against him were completely untrue.

Factcheck:

Folens was on the CROWCASS list of suspected war criminals. This was basically a shopping list prepared by the Allies for the UN and, in Folens' case, contained material supplied by the Belgian authorities. Inclusion did not mean you were a war criminal. That would be for the courts to decide. Leentje would not have been aware of CROWCASS at that time. She only learned about it when researching her book. Folens' was sentenced to 10 years for treason and collaboration but not for any war crimes. The court took no account of how he ended up in the German military by accident in the first place, and that he was using his collaboration as a cover for clandestinely supporting the Flemish resistance. Leentje was right that the outrageous allegations made against her father, other than serving in the Flemish Legion and collaborating with the Germans, were false and there wasn't a shred of evidence to support them. In fact the opposite was the case.

Her mother, Folens' widow, was not trying to stop the tape being broadcast. She was suing for the right of reply which had been guaranteed to Folens in an agreement in 1985 between himself, the Sunday Tribune, and the journalist who recorded it.

In the course of her contribution Leentje criticised the journalist Senan Molony who had interviewed her father in 1985 and who was a significant contributor to the 2007 tv programme which made Folens out to be a brutal Nazi war criminal.

After the Liveline programme Leentje was contacted by the team and asked to make herself available to face Molony on air on the following day's programme.

However, Molony didn't show and instead Joe Duffy read out the following statement:

“At the close of the programme yesterday comments were made by a contributor about journalist Senan Molony. RTÉ wishes to clarify that those comments were without foundation. Senan Molony is an an informed journalist and an author of the highest integrity and RTÉ regrets any distress that these comments may have caused.”

This is a bit thick. Molony got an apology from RTÉ for Leentje saying her father called him an idiot, but Leentje has never got an apology from either RTÉ or Molony for the vilification of her father on the national airwaves from these two sources.

Since 2016 and particularly in the last few years, Leentje has done a mountain of research and she has now written a book, introducing the real Albert Folens to the Irish people. Albert emerges as a man of honour and integrity, a great teacher and a loving father.

Some people have a lot to be ashamed of.

Update: In checking back on the link in the RTE player today I realised that Leentje's remarks about the journalist had been edited out which, of course, would make a nonsense of the opening statement on the following day, reproduced above. I don't know if this ever appeared on the player as I can't find that day's programme there. Amazing stuff.

Get the book.

The book is available to readers in Europe here, and to those outside Europe, and particularly in the USA here