Transitional Justice and Cultural Memory: The Prison Diaries of Ernest Claes and their Literary Adaptation (1944–1951)

ABSTRACT

This article considers the prison writings of the Flemish writer Ernest Claes who was imprisoned after the Second World War on suspicion of cultural collaboration with the enemy. During this period, he kept a diary that he later reworked into his book Cel 269 (1951), a literary narrative of his arrest and captivity. I will illustrate how, through his prison writings, the subject reacts to his captivity as an escape route to humanness and I will frame some aspects of these writings, such as the importance of carceral topography in the captive’s prison experience. I will also show how in Claes’ case ‘life-writing’ is to be understood as a practice in which the distinction between autobiography and fiction are deliberately blurred, with the effect of grounding the narrative in immediate testimony. Yet Claes’ complete diaries, which have since been published, reveal an alternative version of reality. As the prison diaries were only intended for him, their adaptation by the writer into a book was intended for future generations of readers. This intergenerational experience of collective memory lies at the heart of transitional justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Prison diaries
• Ernest Claes
• transitional justice
• Belgium

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Eva Schandevyl is a historian affiliated with the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. She has researched themes regarding intellectual history, migration, and the social and political history of justice administration. The focus of her current research lies in particular in gender and legal history. She has written and edited Women in Law and Law-Making in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe (London: Ashgate, 2014), Tussen revolutie en conformisme. Het engagement en de netwerken van linkse intellectuelen in België, 1918–1956 (Brussels: ASP, 2011), In haar recht? Vrouwe Justitia feministisch bekeken (Brussels: ASP, 2009) and published many book chapters and journal articles (in European Review of History, Journal of Belgian History, National Identities, Historica, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent, Res Publica, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis and European Journal of Cross-Cultural Competence and Management).

Notes

1. Belgium experienced transitional justice after Word War II. During Nazi occupation from May 1944 to September 1944, the ruling German administration relied on the Belgian administrative, judicial and economic structures to control the country, maintain law and order, and make Belgium subservient to the German war effort. Members of the collaborationist Belgian fascist parties, the Flemish National Movement and the francophone Rex, were appointed to leading positions in both central and local public administration (Luyten 49).

2. During German occupation, the Belgian government-in-exile had issued decrees which revised the legal code in order to facilitate the subsequent prosecution of those who had chosen to serve the German cause as well as to ensure that all such prosecutions would be conducted by the Belgian military (rather than civilian) judicial authorities. In addition, in the period that immediately followed the end of the war, the Belgian government adopted several transitional justice measures, in which the issue of loyalty to the Belgian state was central. Former collaborators, defined as citizens who had helped the enemy, were excluded from Belgian political, professional and social life not only by means of court trials, but also by purges. While the military courts judged collaboration, transitional justice was carried out by the state. Sanctions ranged from the death penalty to fines. Because the judicial authorities charged with the investigation of past events were severely constrained by a lack of resources and pressured by the requirements of political authorities and by popular expectations, they could only hope to dispense a rough and approximate justice. Research has shown that post-war justice—with its inevitable miscarriages and inconsistencies in the judgments and sentences passed—was far from perfect, but in the end it served its purpose well.

3. The first two editions together did not even sell 10,000 copies (information provided to the author by Bert Govaerts on 17 March 2016).