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.

For our part, let us just parse it for the fun of it.

I wouldn't call it "elusive". The only thing elusive here was hard evidence. The journalist did come away from the interview with Albert Folens admitting he had been in the Flemish Legion and that he had worked as a translator for the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst in Brussels. There could be no disputing that. The journalist had it from the horse's mouth.

What was elusive was any admission from Folens that he did any more than he already admitted to and any shred of evidence that he had done more.

"Before his death" makes this sound like a teeing up for a deathbed confession. The so called "interview" with the Flemish publication was given in 1988/9 and Folens died in 2003. The Flemish publication was a book by a bona fide Flemish man called Robert Houthaeve. He was writing a book about Flemings in Ireland, came over to seek them out and talk to them, and Albert was one of these. He spent time with Albert and the result was a mixture of quotes, indirect speech, and commentary.

Albert is indeed reported as saying that he was a "war criminal honoris causa" which the programme has mistranslated as "war criminal in an honorable cause". Another travesty, but to appreciate its full significance we need to add a bit of context.

In the original interview in 1985 the journalist set out to show that Albert was a war criminal and it is to this that Albert is referring when he describes himself as a "war criminal honoris causa". The meaning of "honoris causa" here is that the title was honorific. In other words, Albert had not fulfilled the conditions required to earn it i.e. committed war crimes. It had been bestowed on him by the journalist and the programme was now attempting to use it as evidence of the fact. This is outrageous.

In the Flemish publication Albert did refer to the 1985 interview. Why the programme bothered mentioning that is not clear as it didn't draw any conclusions from it. Perhaps I could give them a dig out here. Albert referred to the original 1985 interview to pour scorn on the journalist who had not impressed him one whit.

An Irish journalist from the Sunday Tribune wanted to interview him. But the publisher set conditions, namely that they had to know something about it first! He had the reporter sign a note, that he would publish the truth and show the result before going to press, and that Folens would add his opinion at the same time.

So Albert insisted that the journalist be informed in advance of the background to the questions he was going to ask. That was a reasonable request as the whole business of collaboration and occupation was quite complex, as was the earlier history of the Flemings and the Walloons, and indeed of the Belgian state itself.

Well that didn't quite work out. The journalist kept trying to get Albert to admit to his "war crimes" and at the same time was not up to speed on the context. Albert finally tired of this. Albert then asked the journalist a question:

«What language is spoken in Belgium?» The answer was: French in Flanders and Dutch in Wallonia.

That answer really did for Albert. He had put up with this journalist for long enough only to find out he was a one trick pony.

Note carefully the sign off in the quote at the head of this post. The disasterous 1985 interview and "other evidence" are supposed to make us think that Albert did some really awful things. There is no other evidence. That is a lie. And Albert admitted in the 1985 interview to what he did, no more and no less. Nothing to see here, move along now.

And, just by the way, if Albert had really wanted to say he had been a war criminal in a noble cause, the whole phrase would have been in Flemish with no Latin tag.

So to sum up. Albert did not admit to being a war criminal as the programme would have you believe. It was not an admission but a criticism of the journalist who had bestowed the title on him without a shred of evidence. And it is difficult to fathom why the programme referred to Albert mentioning the 1985 interview at all, if not to puff the journalist's ego. It was very careful not to reproduce the full context of that reference as this would have blown the programme out of the water.

And, by the way, I know exactly what "honoris causa" means, I am after all myself a "Bruggeling honoris causa".

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