Filip Dewinter washes himself whiter than white again. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz he mimimizes all connections with the burned collaboration heritage. "We should distance ourselves froom all of those individuals and groups with anti-Semitic tendencies and from Holocaust deniers. I have no connection with these things." With this Dewinter proves once more he can lie through his teeth.

"Filip Dewinter is the current star in the Flemish-national sky. I met him for the first time at a VMO-exhibit in Bruge where he as a youngster stood in awe for the Leader (sic)."

The "Leader", that is Bert Eriksson (°1931), who is quoted here, the leader of the violent Vlaamse Militanten Orde (Flemish Militant Order) (VMO). The VMO was the dominant extreme right formation in the late seventies and early eighties of the twentieth century en a feared fighting outfit. After a trial in 1981 Eriksson was convicted to a jail sentence of one year.

Eriksson wrote the above quote in the afterword of 'Operatie Brevier', a 1992 publisched booklet in which he reports on the clandestine transport of the corps of Cyriel Verschaeve. Priest-poet Cyriel Verschaeve (1874-1949), nicknamed the black chapelan, was a notorious collaborator, nazi and antisemite who was convicted to death after the war. A VMO commando exhumed his remains in the Austrian Solbad-Hall to rebury them in Flanders. Eriksson still is what might be called a self-declared neo-nazi (though the prefix 'neo' is not even necessary). "Of course we are nazis and racists", he told Het Laatste Nieuws in 2001, "Have a problem with that?"

Flemish Legion

Like the neonazi Bert Eriksson, who he admired in his youth, Dewinter also reveared collaborator Cyriel Verschaeve: "My biggest examples are people like August Borms, Cyriel Verschaeve and Irma Laplasse" (Borms and Laplasse were also collaborators, nazis and antisemites who were convicted to death). That is what he decleared at a debate at the Antwerp Ufsia in 1992 and it was published by the VB party magazine in december 1992 without a blink.

Eriksson frequented the Antwerp party headquartes regularly in those days. There are video recordings on which Eriksson can be seen entering it after the election victory of the Vlaams Blok on november 24, 1991 and hugging subsequently Filip Dewinter, Karel Dillen and Gerolf Annemans. Not a casual handshake but a bearhug like only old comrades use to great eachother.

On november 7th 1988 Filip Dewinter is at the German military cemetary in Lommel. Dewinter wants to lay flowers to honour the Flemish who are burried there: 46 Flemish who died in the Waffen SS uniform at the Russian Front.

Dewinter is not alone. Bert Eriksson is there too, as are some dozens of militants of the Sint-Maartensfonds, Voorpost and Vlaams Blok. There is no possible entrance: a vast number of policeman is blocking their way. But Dewinter does not want to back down and waving his newly acquired parlementary card he steps up to the police. Two weeks later the neonazi Deutsche Nazionalzeitung publishes an interview with him. Asked what the greatest battles in history are for him, he answers among other things: "The battle of the Flemish Legion at the Russian Front."

Images exists of the incidents in Lommel as well. Israeli TV can ask them of RTBF-journalist Jean-Claude Defossé, who used them, along with a lot of other historic material on the nazi roots of the VB to make his documentary 'La face cachée du VB'. That documentary was shown on RTBF two times in 2004, but never made it – despite some efforts to that effect – to the Flemish screens. So called because the Flemish viewer knows al that already. Today Dewinter will hurry to declare that that's all in the past and maybe even call it a youths misschief (of a 26-year old member of parliament).

Nazis are idealists

Not all collaborators were nazis or antisemites, Dewinter declares in Haaretz. But he did have strikingly frequent contacts with those who clearly were.

'A true idealist' is the title of a page-size interview with Bert van Boghout (1916-2003) in the VB magazine of march 1990. More correct would have been 'A true national-socialist' because Van Boghout was not just a collaborator: kreisleiter of the National-Socialist Movement in Flanders, active in the antisemite 'Volksverwering' who strove for a pure Arian Flanders by, among other things, publishing lists of jews and freemasons, a Waffen SS volunteer at the east front, convicted to a life sentence after the war, later one of the founders of the Vlaams Blok and a distributor, until late in the 1980's through the Were Di bookservice, of German nazi literature and "historic-documentary long play records" such as 'Das Vaterland ruft' and the very pedagogic 'Wie gewinne ich eine Wahl?', with speeches of Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler at the election congress of the NSDA in 1938. The author of the tribute in the VB party magazine: Filip Dewinter.

More recent, on december 1st 2001, Dewinter is guest speaker at a meeting of the Sint-Maartensfonds. Dewinter knows how to play this audience of old east front volunteers. At the end of his speech he speaks the SS oath "Meine Ehre heist Treue" according to the report in Berkenkruis.

About Staf De Clercq (1884-1942), the much hated (by the Flemish people) leader of the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (VNV), who collaborated enthousiasticly with the nazis, Dewinter says in Haaretz: "He is one of the historic leaders of the party. This is part of the history of the Flemish nationalist movement and it is impossible to deny this. We are the descendants of this movement."

Last year, on september 19th 2004, Voorpost, which is close to the VB, organised a grand Staf De Clercq memorial, only a month after this collaboration leader was also praised at the Ijzerwake. The VB Magazine placed a striking announcement of that memorial, but there were no important VB-mandators present. Filip Dewinter was at about 650 kilometers in the French Bourgogne where all Flemish members of parliament of the VB where having there "fraction days". In no VB publication has there ever been an article condemning the collaboration politics of Staf De Clercq and others.

But what does Dewinter suddenly tell Haaretz: "Many Flemish nationalists collaborated during the war because they thought - and now it is clear that they were wrong - that this would help them achieve independence for Flanders. This is the whole story." In other words: the collaboration was wrong.

That is – it should be emphacised – not the VB view. The program of the party still demands the unconditional amnesty for all collaborators. Without any admitance of wrongdoing that is. If Dewinter is serious about condemning collaboration he should urgently do so, inside as well as outside the party. Otherwise is remains what he is now: an opportunist who, in his march towards the Antwerp mayorship will stop at nothing to get the jewish community on his side. Even if it means rewriting history.