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.

If the Germans had become aware of Zielens membership of the Resistance he'd have been sent to a camp and probably topped. If they had become aware of Albert's connection with Zielens, a member of the Sicherheitsdienst in contact with a member of the Resistance, Albert would have been shot on the spot. And to cap it all, Zielens had been killed in a V2 rocket attack on Antwerp on 28 November 1944.

As Albert himself put it in his final statement to the Court:

Lode Zielens risked his life through his cooperation with a member of the SD , which provided him with information, just as I also risked my life with it. Providing S.D. intelligence and to an outsider, particularly to a resistance member, for the Germans was punishable by death, which was always carried out.

The Court did not impress in this matter. They made enquiries among Zielen's family. Needless to say the family knew nothing of Zielens' resistance work nor had they ever heard of Albert Folens. Albert had regularly met Zielens away from the latter's house but in Antwerp. However, on one occasion, in an emergency, he had arranged to meet Zielens in his house and was able to prove this to the Court by drawing a ground plan of Zielens' house from memory. The Court however seems to have been unimpressed.

As Albert himself put it,:

When I told my first Auditor that Zielens was a resister, Mr. Auditor Delhaise proceeded to question Zielens father, his sister and his wife. As if one is going to chat about the war to women that one is a member of the resistance. If Zielens lived in physical fear, should he make his blood relatives also live in terror?

As far as Zielens' membership of the Resistance was concerned, all Albert could do, in addition to quoting a member of the secret service to the effect that they knew Zielens was in the Resistance, was to draw attention to a book, where one contributor stated very clearly that not only was Zielens in the Resistance, but he was in touch with the Belgian government in exile in London. There is no indication that the Court had followed up this reference despite Albert having given a copy of the book to the prosecutor and having specified the relevant pages.

This is how Albert had put it in his statement to the Court:

Lode Zielens was in written involvement during the war with London and with the former Prime Minister and present Minister of Education, Camille Huysmans. This is clear from Page 86 of the book "Lode Zielens in Memoriam", which appeared in 1946, and a copy of which I made available to Mr. Auditor Carlier .

I have been fortunate enough to get my hands on a copy of the book and it looks pretty convincing to me. If the Court had quizzed the book's contributors rather than Zielens' family, they might have come to a different conclusion.

Albert's main reference is to page 86 of the book where the relevant text (in translation) reads as follows:

Or he [Zielens] comes to whisper to me how and by whom A.M. de Jong was just murdered, where P.H. Ritter Jr. sits and what other news reached him, by safe channels, from Holland, Vos had said, how it went at the monthly meeting of the confreres and that a letter from "Burger”, alias Huysmans, has arrived.

The critical reference here is to "Burger" alias Huysmans. Huysmans initially formed a Belgian government in exile in London but that seems to have been replaced fairly early on. However, it seems that Zielens remained in communication with Huysmans. After the war, Huysmans led the Belgian government as Prime Minister. That government only lasted seven months and he was Minister for Education in the succeeding government. His code name "Burger" was apt as in the years leading up to the war he was Burgermeester (Mayor) of Antwerp.

That text quoted from the book is in the contribution of Gerard Schmook, another well known Flemish author, who has written the longest contribution and appears to have been a confidant of Zielens.

In a further contribution to the book by Franz de Backer, on page 98 he reassures Zielens posthumously:

No, I no longer have your dangerous letters. Destroyed them before the enemy searches.

Very few people, if any, knew that Zielens was in the Resistance, so the fact that Albert could inform his Belgian Security Service controller of this in late 1945 should surely be another indication of the truth of Albert's claims.

Leaving aside the matter of the Resistance as such, it does emerge in the book that the Germans had it in for Zielens arising from his writings which were openly anti-German. Here is one example from the contribution of Gerard Walschop on page 52:

In the first months after May '40, Zielens was formally threatened. Lode Baekelmans had the courage to take him into the museum of Literature, and courage was needed at that time, for he was immediately ordered by the Germans to dismiss him. Baekelmans, himself persona non grata with those gentlemen, went to the Stadtbürgermeister and managed to obtain that his protégé could stay.

And from the same contributor on page 51, it emerged that some native institutions were anticipating action by the Germans and were "cleaning up their act":

In the first months after May '40, we were concerned that that sound would be silenced. Lode was one of those "red pigs" (roode varkens) who were then slaughtered and the "Jews and Freemasons" were shut down, among other things, by the Association of Literary Scholars. Rats and thugs who thought their moment had come and feared that something would happen that they would not attend, tried to get rid of as many as possible, the main ones first, of course. It was rumored that the Germans had anti-Nazi articles by Lode from the Volksgazet in their files. At least they had bitten on him.

My own impression, particularly after reading the above passages in the book, is that Albert was very brave to have been in contact with Zielens who was already in the German spotlight because of his anti-German writings.

And just to keep you in the picture, so to speak:

Lode Zielens

On his death bed after the V2 rocket attack

Plaque at Lode's house in Antwerp

in dit huis
werd geboren op
13 juni 1901
LODE ZIELENS
een van vlaanderens
verdienstelijkste romanschrijvers
ons door het oorlogsgeweld
tevroegontvallen
op 28 November 1944

in this house
was born on
June 13, 1901
LODE ZIELENS
one of Flanders
most deserving novelists
on us through the violence of war
dying prematurely
on November 28, 1944

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