In the space of 24 hours, far-right Flemish party Vlaams Belang put forward and then retracted a convicted Holocaust denier’s candidacy in the upcoming municipal elections in Belgium.
Roland Raes, the 90-year-old co-founder of Vlaams Belang’s predecessor Vlaams Blok, was listed as the party’s 27th – last – candidate for local elections in Aalter, East Flanders on Wednesday. The party retracted his name following fierce criticism for listing a candidate who was convicted of Holocaust denial in 2010.
Raes was charged for Holocaust denial in 2010 following an interview with TV channel Netwerk in which he questioned the veracity of Anne Frank’s diary, the true intention of assassinating Jewish people during the Holocaust and the nature of life in Nazi concentration camps where over six million Jewish people, Roma people, disabled people and other oppressed minorities were executed.
“The persecution and deportation [of Jews] was systematic. But whether it was planned that they would all die during the war is another matter,” Raes said in the 2001 interview, adding that the number of deaths was “constantly disputed” and that he “dared to doubt” the amount of people who had died in gas chambers.
