Belgian Senate Recognizes Country’s Role in Holocaust
A Belgian Senate committee adopted a resolution acknowledging the country’s complicity in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust.
The Senate’s committee on institutional affairs voted in favour of the resolution on Jan. 9, according to Belga, a local news agency.
“Some Belgian authorities practiced collaboration unfitting of a democracy,” the resolution read, “with tragic consequences for the Jewish population.”
The resolution also encourages the Belgian government to “examine the possibility of giving a statute” to Jews and Roma who were “deported for racist reasons” and to orphans of the Holocaust. It does not specify what that statute should be.
As the factual basis for the statement, the resolution referenced a 1,100-page report entitled “Obedient Belgium,” completed in 2007 by the Center for Historical Research and Documentation on War and Contemporary Society. The Senate tasked the federal research body with compiling the report in 2002.
An article in the newspaper La Libre Belgique cited political instability as the main reason for a six-year delay in the adoption of the report.
To come into effect, the resolution needs to pass in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, where it is expected to receive the support of a large majority.
Last year, the mayors of Antwerp and Brussels for the first time apologized for their municipalities’ role in the deportation of Jews from Belgium in 1942.
Some 66,000 Jews lived in Belgium when Germany invaded in 1940, according to Yad Vashem. Of them, 34,801 were imprisoned or deported. More than 80 percent of those deported died.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
