EU president removes Nazi sympathizer’s poem from site

The president of the EU removed from his website a poem written by a Flemish Nazi collaborator, after a protest from a Belgian Jewish organization.

Herman Van Rompuy claimed that the poem, “The Seagull,” written by Cyriel Verschaeve, was a favorite of his mother-in-law’s, the Daily Mail reported Tuesday.

Verschaeve, a Catholic priest, was a leading Flemish nationalist, and long admired German imperial culture. After the Nazi occupation of Belgium, he recruited soldiers for the volunteer SS Flemish Legion, and was appointed by the Nazis to head the Flemish cultural council. He met with Heinrich Himmler in 1944.

After the war, he fled to Austria, and was sentenced to death in absentia by a Belgian court. Verschaeve died in 1949, and his remains were transferred to Belgium in 1973. Radical Flemish nationalists continue to celebrate his legacy.

In his political pamphlets, Verschaeve compared Jews to “weeds” and vermin.

The Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism (LBCA) welcomed Van Rompuy’s decision, thanking him in a statement Tuesday for “having listened closely to the mutual exchanges of the last few says, as well as agreeing to the request by the LBCA to take the poem ‘The Seagull’ off his website.”

The LBCA conceded that the poem “contains no anti-Semitic references, and was on Herman Van Rompuy’s website for personal reasons unconnected with the political convictions of the author.”

Van Rompuy was Belgium’s prime minister from 2008 to 2009, and is currently in his second term as president of the European Council.