The Simon Wiesenthal Centre called on Acting Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme to remove Justice Minister Stefaan De Clerck who voiced support for an initiative to give amnesty to the country’s Nazi collaborators during WWII and suggested that it may behoove the government to "forget" its Nazi past.
In a television debate on the French-speaking television RTBF, De Clerck, a member of the Flemish Christian-Democrat party, said that Belgium should not focus on the crimes it committed as it was already in the past.
A proposal to give amnesty to Belgian Nazi collaborators was brought to the Senate by the extreme-right Flemish party Vlaams Belang.
In a letter to Leterme, Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Director for International Relations,. Shimon Samuels, charged that "in the absence of a government, your
caretaker cabinet is hardly taking care when your 'Justice' Minister reportedly calls to amnesty World War II Belgium Nazi collaborators."
Samuels added, "no wonder anti-Semitism and other hate-crimes grow unchecked in Brussels - "The Capital of Europe" - and across Belgium, when your chief lawman allegedly advocates on national television 'to forget Nazi crimes as they lie in the past'".
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre urged the Prime Minister "to caucus all parties, in and out of the coalition, French and Flemish, to investigate and condemn De
Clerck for his apparent betrayal of history, his obfuscation of its lessons and his contempt for the very concept of justice", adding that " such an appointee must be promptly removed from his Ministry, his party and shunned from the political arena."
"To remain silent would be perceived as complicit in De Clerk's apparent endorsement of genocide," added Samuels.
The Belgian Jewish community said it was “scandalized” by De Clerck’s comments.
"We cannot forget that Belgian collaborators have contributed, often with zeal, to the stalking of men, women and children doomed to deportation by the Nazis. It is those non repentant Nazi and Fascist Belgians that the Justice Minister seeks to absolve through amnesty," said CCOJB, the umbrella group of Belgian Jewish organizations, in a joint statement with CCLJ, the Jewish Secular Center in Brussels.
On Monday, the minister issued a statement saying that he "didn’t intend to minimize" the acts of collaboration perpetrated during WWII.