The President of the European Union Council, Belgian Herman Van Rompuy, has removed a poem from his personal website after complaints that the author was a well-known Nazi.
The poem, titled ‘The Seagull’’, was removed after the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism (LBCA) mentioned him that the Belgian poet, Cyriel Verschaeve, was sentenced to death for collaborating with the Nazis during WWII.
Van Rompuy was quoted as saying that the poem was his mother-in-law’s favourite text.
Cyriel Verschaeve, a Flemish priest who had been promoted by the Nazis occupiers of Belgium as head of the Flemish cultural council, compared Jews to 'vermin' and 'weeds' that needed exterminating.
When Belgium was liberated by the allies, he fled to Austria where he died in 1949.
He was sentenced to death by a Belgian court but the sentence could not being carried out as Austria did not agreed extradite him.