Albert & Juliette; Love, Loss, Liberty,
by Leentje Folens
(Lettertec Irl., Carrigtwohill, Co Cork, €20.00; contact selfpublish@lettertec.com, phone (021) 488 3370)
Albert Folens was born at Bissegem, West Flanders, Belgium, on 15 October 1916. He was educated by the de La Salle Brothers. In 1928 he joined the order. He trained as a teacher and held teaching assignments at Antwerp and Brussels. Realising he had not a religious vocation he left the order in 1941.
In the meantime Germany invaded Belgium and incorporated it into the Third Reich. For their support the aggressors offered Flemish nationalists independence after the war.
Thousands of Flemish nationalists, including Mr Folens, joined the Flemish Legion. This was to be an independent unit, fighting alongside the Wehrmacht, but it was soon absorbed into the Waffen SS.
Leningrad
It fought mainly in the area around Leningrad. Mr Folens, however, did not see combat as he was hospitalised out of the Legion and transferred to a desk-job with the German Security Service in Brussels.
The author vividly describes the difficult and harsh conditions suffered by the vanquished of World War II. It was a daily struggle to survive. During the last year of the war Mr Folens worked for the Belgium Secret Service. He continued this work in the post-war period carrying out missions in Russian occupied Europe.
After the war the Belgium government rounded-up all who had assisted or collaborated with the Germans and brought them before the courts. At his appearance in court Mr Folens was not able to validate his claim to have assisted the Belgian Secret Service, mainly because his key contact had been killed in a V2 explosion. He received a sentence of 10 years in prison in November 1947.
Mr Folens was incarcerated at Beverlo Prison Camp which he shared with 4,000 other former collaborators. They were all expected to work – Mr Folens taught various classes. Within a year he escaped from another camp to which he had been transferred and fled to safety in Dublin.
The author stresses the warm and generous welcome Mr Folens and his family received from the Irish people they met. She singles out a few of them. Fr Séamus Toohey, a curate in a Dublin parish, and Donncha Ó Ceileachair from the Kerry Gaeltacht.
Fr Toohey was a Peter McVerry, SJ, type of priest – a carer of the homeless, unofficial and very popular chaplain to the Travellers and always in the lookout for the ‘lame duck’.
Donncha assisted Mr Folens to write a book in Irish about the fortunes of the Flemish language.
Gifted
Mr Folens was a gifted teacher and had little difficulty in acquiring the qualifications necessary for teaching in Ireland. Eventually he was able to obtain well-paid teaching assignments.
One of his favourite classes was teaching French in Coláiste Mhuire in Dublin. Finding the teaching-aids supplied to Irish secondary schools inadequate he developed the successful educational publishing company, Folens Publishers.
Juliette Fernanda Devos, Mr Folens’ wife, was just as remarkable as her husband. She lost three of her six children, each at a young age. The author, Leentje Folens, the couple’s youngest daughter describes her memoir as a love story and so it is. The manner in which Mr Folens and Juliette stood together in facing challenges and reverses, few others have ever to cope with, is truly inspirational.
