Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and Research Institute, has opened an investigation into revoking the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" from a Belgian official credited with saving hundreds of lives during the Holocaust.
The Commission which designates the Righteous decided to review the case of Robert de Foy in response to a complaint from an American Jew, Estee Yaari, a spokesperson for Yad Vashem, told AFP.
She said the procedure would be long because it requires a thorough investigation.
The Commission is composed of Holocaust survivors, historians and researchers.
This title, which is bestowed upon non-Jews who took great personal risks to protect Jews during the Holocaust, has been revoked six times since it was first granted in 1963.
Robert de Foy (1893-1960) was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations posthumously in 1975 for saving Jews in Belgium during the German occupation by helping to produce false documents when he was Secretary General of Department of Justice from 1943.
But Sonia Pressman Fuentes, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, who produced to Yad Vashem new elements, said the title had been usurped.
She said de Foy was at best a xenophobe, and at worst an anti-Semite who blocked many Jews trying to flee the Nazi regime before the outbreak of WWII— including her own family.
More than 25,000 Jews were deported to death camps from Belgium between 1942 and 1945.
To receive this title, candidates whose case is often presented by people they have saved or their descendants, must have risked their lives to prevent the deportation of Jews without receiving payment for this act and have not been involved in war crimes against other Jews.
Since the creation of the commission, Yad Vashem presented the award to about 24,000 people from 44 countries, including 1,584 from Belgium, according to the website of Yad Vashem dedicated to the memory and the study of the Holocaust.