Up to 2,500 Belgian ex-Nazis may be receiving German pensions

A Belgian minister has voiced concern that as many as 2,500 Belgian ex-Nazis are receiving German pensions.

Belgian survivors of Nazi persecution appealed to the government to stop the payments of German pensions to as many as 2,500 Belgian ex-Nazis.

Pensions minister Daniel Bacquelaine told the group he shared their indignation, but indicated the government had no official figures since Germany managed the payments.

After the country’s liberation from Nazi occupation in 1945, 57,000 Belgian collaborators were convicted.

Belgians were recruited into the German SS and Wehrmacht, while collaborators also helped the Nazis to send Jews and resistance fighters to concentration camps.

The petition to stop the German pension payments was the initiative of the Memorial Group – Belgians who survived the Nazi camps and who say they want modern Belgium to remember the wartime occupation.

The group's president, Pieter Paul Baeten, told Belgian broadcaster RTBF: “It’s sad. Belgium can’t get hold of the information (on pension recipients), or doesn’t want to. But I don’t understand how, in today’s Europe, Belgium and Germany can’t manage to exchange this information.”

It is not clear if those receiving the pensions are all living in Belgium.

A detailed investigation by Belgian historians concluded in 2007 that Belgian collaborators worked closely with Nazi officials to persecute Jews after the German invasion in 1940. Anti-Semitism was widespread in the Belgian establishment at the time, they said.

In a parliamentary answer in 2012 the German government said it could not confirm the 2,500 figure for Belgian ex-collaborators alleged to be getting German pensions.