Cardinal Jozef De Kesel of Mechelen-Brussels has presented the Church’s apology to Belgium’s Jews for its silence during the German occupation of the Second World War, writes Tom Heneghan. Speaking on the 75th anniversary of the Nazi round-ups in Brussels, Antwerp and Liege, he said he could not ignore the fact that some Catholics who hid Jewish children brought them up as Christians with no knowledge of their Jewish heritage.
The cardinal told a conference on the Holocaust that Jewish parents about to be deported to death camps handed over their children to Catholic institutions and families for safekeeping. Some priests risked their lives to save children, and some made sure they received a Jewish education, but there was also an “unhealthy proselytism” and “baptising hand over fist”, he said on 3 September.
Almost all of the estimated 70,000 Jews in wartime Belgium were not citizens but refugees from elsewhere. Over 25,000 were sent to death camps and only 1,200 survived.
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