The Belgian Jewish community has decided to initiate legal action against an extreme right-wing politician who resigned his office within days of winning a municipal election.
Daniel Leskens resigned last Friday following the broadcast of a videotape showing him urinating on Jewish graves during a neo-Nazi gathering in Germany in February.
Leskens, a member of the far-right Belgian National Front, was elected Oct. 9 to serve on the city council of Anderlecht, a working class suburb of Brussels.
The incident follows last week’s municipal elections, which were marked by large gains for far-right parties in the Flemish and French-speaking parts of Belgium.
Expressing concern over both the results of the Oct. 9 election and the Leskens affairs, Jewish communal leader David Susskind said, “This time we must quickly react, because the situation is beginning to look like the situation before World War II.”
According to the report on Belgian public television, Leskens had participated at a gathering of former SS officers and Belgian neo-Nazis. Following a meal at which he told neo-Nazi jokes, he went to relieve himself on a grave at a nearby cemetery. The headstone of the grave bore a Hebrew inscription. Leskens was expelled from his party as a result of the incident.
The Coordinating Committee of Belgian Jewish Organizations, said in a statement that it had decided to lodge a complaint against Leskens for racism and for inciting racial hatred.
“Daring to soil Jewish graves is an unspeakable act,” the group said. “We will no longer tolerate this.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
