Introduction or preface

Belgians collaborating with the Germans were punished after the Liberation in September 1944 by the military justice system. The instrument was the penal law and since September 1945 the civic purge for minor acts of collaboration. Convicted collaborators lost a set of rights. Punishment of collaboration was a bone of contention between left (socialists, liberals, communists) and right (catholics) and later between the Dutch and French speaking part of the country. Amnesty was never granted, but as a consequence of measures for mitigation starting in 1948, the real effects of the post war purges were gradually wiped out.