Warning against the quadruple and state-led Belgian historical deception around the Second World War

On October 21, 2024, the federal research institute Cegesoma reported in the press that this organization is starting a publicly accessible inventory of all Belgians who submitted a resistance status about WWII. It goes without saying that this initiative is very good news, at least if it starts real scientific research such as we ourselves have been doing since 2005. However, there are no fewer than four forms of historical deception associated with this apparently open and democratic initiative.

1) Of course there were resisting people who were sincere as well as efficient. Serious and thorough research shows that there were also resisting people who simultaneously/before/afterwards also participated in: economic even military collaboration, black market trade, denunciations, murder, theft, arson and extortion (resistance terrorism, especially by the communist ‘resistance fighters’) and then obstruction/manipulation of the Belgian judicial system that lasted for decades as well as falsification of local and national historiography. For some of the aforementioned reasons there have been sincere and efficient resisters who never wanted to apply for a status, because they were too disgusted. They cannot officially be inventoried, but they cannot be ignored.

2) The most important data of the convicted Belgian collaborators (either convicted by the court-martial, or due to legal purge – both systems have been extremely negative from a democratic or legal and social point of view) are, in contrast to this same message from Cegesoma, directly available. They have been inventoried by Cegesoma for at least fifteen (15) years and are available with a specific database. It is a complete lie by a federal or government institution that it will take still a few more years to carry out the same inventory, as is now the case around resistance. We have been able to view – and use – this data at Cegesoma ourselves, for the Belgian city Ronse.

3) The numerically most important resistance in Belgium during WWII was undoubtedly the refusal to work, against the compulsory labour in Germany. This mainly took place in socialist circles. The many – mainly family – helpers (who can also be called resisters) have almost never received an official status, usually not even requested it. Consequently, the largest group of resistant Belgians is completely unknown with this inventory.

4) The most necessary or most urgent resistance in WWII, was without the slightest doubt the saving of the Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and the mentally ill who were persecuted by the Nazis. The Belgian state never devised/issued a statute for these rescuers or moral heroes. This is not surprising because the so-called real very ‘patriotic’ resistance fighters had, with a few exceptions, no interest in this form of resistance. Most names of Belgian Jew rescuers are scientifically well known. Yet they do not appear at all in this inventory. Incroyable – but real.

These – four – undeniable observations testify to essential missteps or one big moral, political and scientific disgrace – by, we repeat, a Belgian federal institution and the only government organization in the country that focuses on the history and historiography of WWII. As a Belgian taxpayer, you are simply laughed at by this federal institution. And as a human being, citizen, child, grandchild and so on, genuinely curious about an extremely important part of Belgian and European history, you are effectively being misled. Why? And for how long?

October 31, 2024,

Jean-Marie De Dijn

(formally studied philosophy, sociology, theology, pedagogy and modern history. Informally also …)