Citaat:
Oorspronkelijk geplaatst door werkgroep morkhoven
Je moet hier geen misleidende onzin komen vertellen, zoals je dat gewoon bent.
In een interview met de Israelische krant Haaretz verklaarde Philip Dewinter van het Vlaams Belang dat hij zijn partij ziet als de troonopvolgers van het VNV en Staf Declerq.
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Hier is het volledige stukje daarover. De tendens erin is toch wel een beetje anders dan diegene die u ervan maakt.
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What about the party’s past? Many of the party’s founding fathers collaborated with the Nazis. Do you condemn this collaboration?
Dewinter: "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. The overwhelming majority were not Nazis. They collaborated in order to attain independence and because the Church called upon them to go out and fight the Communists - something that Western Europe continued to do for 50 years. Now, in 2005, it is easy to say: `The collaboration was a mistake.’ The collaboration did not help our country at all; we just became a vassal state of Germany. At the time, it was logical, because of the Church, because of communism. But this has no connection with Nazism."
Gustave "Staf" de Clercq, the Flemish nationalist leader during the war, openly collaborated with the Nazis. After the deportation of Jews began, he was said to have remarked: "Now we can breathe easier." Nevertheless, many members of your party revere his memory and participate in ceremonies to mark the anniversary of his death.
"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. Some of the members of the party attend these events because they want to honor the heritage of the Flemish movement. This does not mean that they agree with Nazism. Not at all. I understand that this is hard to understand as a Jew. I respect very much that Jews have a problem with this. But Jews must also understand that this is not as simple as it seems. Not all of the [Nazi] collaborators wanted to kill the Jews in Europe. Most of the collaborators had other motives. I think that if they were living today, most of them would be ashamed of what happened to the Jews. The only thing I can do today is to say that I respect very much the suffering of the Jewish people, to express my sympathy and condolences about what happened and to try to move far away from this. But the Jewish people must understand that not every collaborator was necessarily anti-Semitic."
This does not help those whose relatives perished in the Holocaust.
"That is clear. But we are politicians of today. We should be judged by our actions of today, not by the things others did 60 years ago.""