THE ASCENT

The stories of a Belgian “Jew-hunter for the Waffen-SS,” his family, and their home are reassembled through a combination of historical fact and the author’s imagination.

“In the first year of the new millennium, a book came into my hands from which I learned that for twenty years I had lived in the house of a former SS man.” So begins Flemish author Hertmans’ coolly intriguing re-creation of the life and circumstances of Willem Verhulst, whose commitment to Flemish Nationalism led to an allegiance with Hitler and the German Reich. Son of a “Bad” Fleming, the book that revealed the house's connection to the Nazis, was written by Verhulst’s son, Adriaan, and lends much detail on the father’s shameful story, as do various other sources, including the diaries of Adriaan’s mother, Mientje, and the reminiscences of his two sisters. Verhulst’s early life is quirky but inauspicious. The sight in one of his eyes is damaged in a convulsion. He studies horticulture in Brussels and takes a Jewish lover, Elsa Meissner, marrying her before her divorce is complete. Elsa succumbs to cancer, but before she dies Verhulst is already flirting with devout Mientje, who, as wife No. 2, will suffer worse from her husband’s promiscuity. Resident in Ghent but often absent, Verhulst’s politics align him so that when war begins and the Germans invade Belgium, he’s happy to work for the occupiers and reap the benefits. Hertmans precisely locates Verhulst in the Ghent house, where Mientje forbids him to wear his SS uniform indoors though a bust of Hitler sits on a mantelpiece. His crimes are more outlined than specified, but the mood and the corruption are nicely mirrored in the rotting, tainted house Hertmans later buys and inhabits. As much a story of the family and the setting as of the horrible yet ludicrous figure at its center, the book, while overlong, delivers a haunting, detailed record of people, place, and atmosphere.

A ghostly evocation of faded but eternally repulsive history.