Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Belgium Lawmaker Compares Islamist Terrorists to Jews Hiding From Nazis

In explaining how terrorists could avoid capture in hiding, Belgium’s vice prime minister compared their situation to that of Jews who hid from Nazis.

Vice Prime Minister Jan Jambon made the analogy last week during an interview with VTM, a Flemish-language television station, the news website Knack reported Wednesday.

Claude Maroniower, a Belgian-Jewish alderman in the city of Antwerp, complained earlier this week on Facebook that Jambon’s comparison was inappropriate, prompting his spokesperson to issue a statement saying he “did not mean to equate in any way” between Holocaust victims and terrorists.

During the VTM interview Jambon said: “Someone who hides and receives support from the population can stay hidden for a long time. I sometimes make the comparison of a large number of Jews during World War II. There are Jews who stayed hidden for four years, and it was a horrible regime that was constantly searching for these people. Luckily, they never found them.”

Jambon has strong ties to Jewish groups in Belgium and recently spoke at a Jewish event in the Netherlands about street celebrations in Belgium following the slaying of 32 people in terrorist attacks in Brussels on March 22. His reference to Jews in hiding was in response to a question on how suspects implicated in the attacks could avoid capture for weeks, and detection for many months.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.