I go home in the evening and we are stopped on the way three times, once to search for terrorists, who are said to have fled, the other times to see if our papers are in order. At last I get home without anything serious having happened to me.
I might say here that only at 9 o’clock in the evening can we give a sigh of relief, when we turn the knob of our radio set and listen to that reassuring voice which we hear every evening, the voice of Fighting France: “Today is the 189th day of the struggle of the French people for their liberation,” or the voice of Victor Delabley, that noble figure of the Belgian radio in London, who always finished up by saying, “Courage, we will get them yet, the Boches!” That was the only thing that enabled us to breathe and go to sleep at night.
That was an average day, a normal day of an average Belgian during the German occupation. And you can well understand that we could hardly call that time the reign of happiness and felicity that we were promised when the German troops invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940.
M. FAURE: Excuse me, M. Van der Essen. The only satisfaction that you had was to listen to the London radio; this was punished by a severe penalty, if you were caught, I suppose?
VAN DER ESSEN: Yes, it meant imprisonment.
M. FAURE: Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Are you finished, M. Faure?
M. FAURE: No more questions, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: General Rudenko? The American and British prosecutors?
[Each indicated that he had no question.]