On 6th October 2002, for the first time, a Belgian Prime Minister offered an official apology in his country’s name for the collaboration of Belgian Government officials in the expulsion of thousands of Jews to the Nazi extermination camps during the Holocaust. At a ceremony held to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the start of the expulsions, in the course of which almost one half of the 70 thousand Jews living in Belgium at the time were expelled, the Prime Minister said that his country had to recognize its past actions and to take responsibility for them. “There were too many collaborators in Belgium. We must have the courage to say that, recognize this and bear [the responsibility]”. This apology came about two months after the publication of the findings of a committee of historians set up by the Belgian Government, as was done in other European countries, to examine the collaboration of their respective countries with the Nazi regime.
