The Germans had in this university, as in the others, imposed upon the students compulsory labor. This we already know. But what I am going to read has to do with an additional requirement which is altogether shocking.
The Germans wished to oblige the Rector of the University, Monseigneur Van Wayenberg, to give them a complete list with the addresses of those students who were liable to compulsory service and who evaded it. They wished, therefore, to impose upon the rector an act whereby he would become an informer and this under threat of very severe penalties. The Cardinal Archbishop of Malines intervened on this occasion and on 4 June 1943 addressed a letter to General Von Falkenbausen, Military Commander in Belgium. I should like to read this letter to the Tribunal. This letter is to be found in a book which I have here and which is published in Belgium, entitled “Cardinal Van Roey and the German Occupation in Belgium.” I do not submit this letter as a document. I ask the Tribunal to consider it as a quotation from a publication. This is what Cardinal Archbishop of Malines writes:
“By an oral communication, of which I have asked in vain for the confirmation in writing, the Chief of the Military Administration Reeder has informed me that in case Monseigneur the Rector of the Catholic University of Louvain should persist in refusing to furnish the list with the addresses of the first year students, the occupying authority will take the following measures:
“Close down the university; forbid the students to enroll in another university; subject all the students to forced labor in Germany and, should they evade this measure, take reprisals against their families.
“This communication is all the more surprising, as a few days previously, following a note addressed to your Excellency by Monseigneur the Rector, the latter received from the Kreiskommandant of Louvain a notification that the academic authority would have no further trouble with regard to the lists. It is true that the Chief of Military Administration Reeder informed me that this answer was due to a misunderstanding.
“As President of the Board of the University of Louvain, I have informed the Belgian bishops, who make up this board, of the serious nature of the communication which I have received; and I have the duty to inform you, in the name of all the bishops, that it is impossible for us to advise Monseigneur the Rector to hand over the lists of his students, and that we approve the passive attitude which he has observed up to now. To furnish the lists would, in effect, imply positive co-operation in measures which the Belgian bishops have condemned in the pastoral letter of 15 March 1943 as being contrary to international law, to natural rights, and to Christian morality.