Drang naar het Oosten

In recent decades, many books and articles about Flemish volunteers on the Eastern Front have been published. These deal mostly with political and military history but also with the social environment of the volunteers, their motivation, the judicial punishment of military collaboration after the war, etc.

Curiously enough, it took until now before the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by Flemish volunteers on the Eastern Front were studied. For many years, it was assumed that volunteers of the Flemish Legion and SS Westland regiment, the Flemish members of the NSKK-vervoerkorps and of the ‘Todt-organization’ were not implicated in the murder of civilians, partisans and Jews in Poland, Ukraine and Russia between 1939 and 1945.

In fact, the opposite is true: the Flemish volunteers on the Eastern Front did commit murders themselves, witnessed mass murder or participated in the German war of destruction in Eastern Europe. These Flemings also launched small-scale initiatives to start businesses and to create colonies on conquered territory with little concern for the original inhabitants. In personal diaries, reports, letters, press articles and procedural documents coming from Belgian, Dutch, German, Polish and Russian archives, witnesses and victims tell about these unknown crimes committed by these Flemings three quarters of a century ago.

"In recent weeks, we have exterminated a majority of the Jews here!"