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.

In the case of Albert Folens, it was known that he had been a collaborator so that was not in question. The value of the book in this case was to explain the court process relating to his trial and the various penalties imposed by the courts.

As it turned out in his case, access to his court records came through the direct help of a Belgian national, Erik Tys, who currently works in the prison from which Folens escaped in 1948.

I had been aware of the Dutch version of the book but only realised it was also available in French, which I can read, after Leentje had got the information on how to trace Albert's records.

The process is quite strict. The records are still under seal to the general public and are released to family only. And that not just to one family member on a whim. The agreement of all siblings has to be obtained before the records are released and they don't come for free. Albert's file consisted of a modest 400 pages (200 jpegs), but I'm sure some other files are multiples this with a corresponding cost.

The approach adopted when the records were received was first to draw up an index. The material came as jpegs with each jpeg having from one to three pages/documents. Both Google Translate and the translation facility in Word were a great help ultimately, but for the index, Google translate with the camera on the phone did the initial donkey work. At that stage it was just a question of identifying a document rather than evaluating its content. The index, drawn up in Word, and therefore searchable, was indispensible.

The next step was to go through the index and identify the most relevant documents. These generally turned out to be a series of biographical statements by Albert drawn up at different stages from his falling into British hands (June 1945) to the lead up to his trial (November 1947). There was also the formal court charges and verdict, a plea to the court from his wife, and varied correspondence between his solicitor and the court.

Admission and transfer dockets from the various prisons facilitated the drawing up of a timeline and there were occasional once off documents including a letter from an Irish journalist seeking more dirt on Albert.

Some items appeared shocking until further perusal of the records provided a benign context.

For example, a letter in August 1944 from Albert to Lode Zielens, the man he claimed had been his resistance contact since 1942 which appeared to prove that Albert had never met the man. This proved really tricky but was perfectly understandable when put in context.

There were letters from Albert signed Heil Hitler, which at first appeared shocking until you considered the context. Albert had to retain the confidence of his bosses in the Sicherheitsdienst if he was to be of any use to the Resistence. Failure to sign letters in this way would have made him a marked man.

Albert's inability to prove his resistance contacts in court was initially disturbing until complemented by a V2 rocket attack on Antwerp. He could not confirm his contacts with Lode Zielens because Zielens had been killed in a rocket attack in November 1944.

This left Albert relying on his Belgian Security Service controller, Van den Plas, to testify on his behalf. But then there was the revelation that Van den Plas was actually a renegade, did not have any basis for the authority he excercised over Albert, and was likely to have been forbidden by the Security Service to testify on Albert's behalf at his trial, even though a significant part of that trial was held in camera to spare embarrassing the Belgian Security Service.

So the court records added a huge element of excitement and mystery to what was already a page turner of a book.

Get the book..

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