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Rexist Leaders, Returning from Soviet Front, Predict Trouble for Jews in Belgium

February 9, 1942
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Inspired by the anti-Jewish propaganda which the Nazis are conducting in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe, Jean Georges and Felix Frank, two leaders of the Rexist movement in Belgium, today delivered violently inciting anti-Jewish addresses over the Nazi-controlled Belgian radio system, at the same time giving eye-witness accounts of the Jewish misery which they saw during their visit to the Eastern front from where they just returned.

“The Jews of the Eastern front live like hunted animals,” Georges, who is the general inspector of the Rexist movement, reported. He then went on to ascribe the anti-Jewish brutalities in the occupied eastern countries to “the hatred which the local population feels toward the Jews.” He threatened the Jews in Belgium with the same fate as “their brethren in the East.”

Felix Frank, the private secretary of Leon Degrelle, the Rexist fuehrer, said in his broadcast that he was “astonished and indignant” on his return from the Eastern front to see “the tolerance and goodness which the Belgian authorities display towards the Jews.” The Jews in Belgium, he said, must expect “a stern awakening” as a result of the trip which the two Rexist leaders made to the Soviet front.

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