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.

He was also risking his life in the missions he undertook into the Soviet zone and which he was blackmailed into by Belgian Intelligence, and more specifically by Lieutenant Van den Plas to whom Juliette refers in her plea. Van den Plas subsequently betrayed Folens by not coming to court to testify to these missions as he had promised.

I am reproducing Juliette's plea to the Court below as it both testifies to her love for her husband and gives an insight into what had really been going on.

Juliette's Plea to the Court

"I, the undersigned, undertake the respectful liberty to invoke your generous intercession in favor of my husband Albert Folens at the moment at St Gilles.

I dare to hope, Mr. Auditor, that you, who have my husband's file in your hands, will see that the mistake he committed in 1941 is largely due to his sad childhood and his great lack of experience in city life; that he had the courage to see soon the purposes for which our Flemish boys were exploited and reacted against this; that my husband only used the post he held at the S.D., division "Press and Literature" to help our people where he could. You have been able to establish, Mr Auditor, that wherever my husband lived, no complaint of any kind could be made against him, how, on the contrary, in Germany he was counted as a friend and support for almost all Dutch, French and Italian prisoners of war or workers.

When the Belgian lieutenant Van den Plas confided in me that my husband risked his life by accepting the assignment he offered him, I was convinced that he was fully committed to this.

He may be the first to acknowledge that the fact of 1941 has made him fall short of the Fatherland, but what more can one give to restore oneself to honor than to risk his own life?

Because of the report of Kr. HOGGE, chief of the F.S.S. in Göttingen, you certainly do not doubt the good feelings with which my husband was inspired and what trust both the Belgian and the English authorities placed in him.

May I hereby ask you, in your own action, to be understanding and mild towards my husband and to let yourself be guided by your feelings of deep humanity towards a young life, which since his l3th year, has known only bare and serious monastic walls, deceit and disillusionment among the Germans and in our short married life the death of our two children. The further fate of my husband is entirely in your hands, you alone can save him from the physical and moral ruin in which he perishes after so many months of confinement. I am convinced that you too are of the opinion that the mistake that my husband committed through naïveness has already cost him more than enough."

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