2024-02-05 23:06:45
Netflix has just added Will to its offering, a film set in Antwerp in the 1940s and based on a book by Jeroen Olyslaegers. It stars two police officers who, after the occupation, try to reconcile their sympathies and support for the Resistance with obeying the Gestapo. Those dark years are still taboo in a country that regularly grapples with its past and has a history full of spies, conspirators, traitors, villains and exiles.
They are perfectly known complicit leadersthose who stayed or those who took refuge in Latin America or Spain, such as Leon Degrelle. The cases of those who for their services to the Third Reich received an official pension from the Nazis and still receive it are documented. There were 50,000 Jews in Blgica in the 1930s and half were exterminated in the Holocaust. And not so long ago, just a few terms, the then Minister of Justice became famous when he said that perhaps it was time to “forget” about collaborationism, within the framework of a debate promoted from Flanders to ask for an amnesty for those who took the side. Hitler’s side.
This 2024 brings various anniversaries. Randy Buelens, a young man from Strombeek, in Flemish Brabant, has gone viral by managing to raise 4,000 euros this week to pay for the trip to Europe for Chester Sloan, better known as Buck, a World War II veteran who participated in the release of Blgica and was seriously wounded in the Ardennes. Buck turns 100 on June 1 and wanted to participate, for the last time, in the celebrations of the Normandy landings, taking advantage of the fact that they have a round number, 80. And now he will be able to do so.
But perhaps the most important publication is another. Following the Traces, by Jean de Selys Longchamps, recently went on sale. A life at a gallop, a biography signed by Marc Audrit and in which the life of a baron, a dandy, a posh, lazy and lively boy who after the invasion became a national hero is addressed. He and his companion, in the service of the British air force, accomplished their mission by attacking a railway line near Ghent. They had to return immediately, but instead, the aristocrat headed for Brussels. He had asked for permission several times, but they had not given it to him. So he decided that it was better to apologize than to insist again.
He entered the capital’s airspace. He located the Palace of Justice, flew over the Royal Palace and turned down the rue de la Loi. He flew, lower and lower, over the Cinquantenaire park and headed towards the bois de la Cambre on the way to his true objective. Once on Avenue Lois, he located number 453, where the Gestapo headquarters were, and shot. The baron killed four Nazis, including SS Sturmbannfhrer Alfred Thomas, who was responsible for sending 18,000 Jews from Mechelen to Auschwitz.
The pilot and his team returned safely and received medals, but seven months later he died in another operation near Ostend. There are thousands of stories, legends, about De Selys Longchamps, but incredibly, no one had written the definitive biography, which arrives 80 years late. It is curious that a people so lacking in myths, epics and heroes does not honor the most recent ones with the paraphernalia that they reserve for lesser things. A couple of busts and a vague memory.
#Heroes #collaborators #veterans #Belgian #drama #darkest