PANKOVKA - Now aged 83, Oswald Van Ooteghem has lived many lives. When he was 16, he volunteered to join the Flemish Legion and fight alongside the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front in Russia.
He is returning there for the first time now. Van Ooteghem draws extensively on his vivid memory of the past, and by the end of the journey, that past seems very close indeed. He lays flowers on the grave of Reimond Tollenaere, the man who urged collaborationist Flanders to take up arms.
Meanwhile, the digging into the past continues. Literally. The remains of fallen German and Flemish soldiers are being exhumed from Russian soil and reburied in large new war cemeteries.
This report by journalist Peter-Jan Bogaert and photographer Stephan Vanfleteren on their eventful journey into Flanders' dark past was published in De Morgen on Saturday 7 June 2008.
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- Een stuk van de oorlog sterft nooit, De Morgen, 7 juni 2008.
