BRUSSELS (Brussels Morning) – May 8 – the day on which Nazi Germany surrendered in 1945 and the Second World War ended – is an official holiday only in Brussels. The May 8 Coalition, a partnership of trade unions and civil society organisations among others, wants to change that. “It is time to give May 8 again the place it deserves, as an additional Belgian holiday,” the announcement reads.
In several countries, such as France, May 8 is a public holiday. In Belgium, school children were given time off on that day for a long time, but that was abolished in 1974. Since 2019, 8 May has been an official holiday only in the Brussels Region. That day is also the regional holiday, the Iris festival.
The Flemish holiday falls on 11 July, the commemoration of the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302 in Kortrijk. The Brussels Region had not set a date for a public holiday for a long time. The Iris Festival was celebrated on a different date each year, around the time when the iris blooms.
In 2003, a fixed date was finally chosen: May 8. The bloom of the iris is thus still an important reference, but Brussels also wanted to “make it clear that we are building a Region that is open to all cultures and that resists all forms of extremism.”
The idea of turning that day into a statutory holiday was part of a series of measures designed to improve well-being at work for Brussels civil servants and was primarily an initiative of Fadila Laanan (PS), then State Secretary responsible for the Public Service.
The May 8 Coalition is calling for May 8 to be a national holiday. The coalition is an initiative of Ellen De Soete, one of the witnesses in the Canvas series “Children of the Resistance”. Her mother was part of the resistance during World War II. “Today the memory of May 8 has faded with us,” says De Soete. “Many people no longer know what fascism is and start to downplay historical facts.”
Many other persons and organisations support the appeal, such as the trade unions ACV and ABVV, civil society organisations such as 11.11.11, the Women’s Council and the League of Human Rights, and a number of historians, artists and other people from the cultural sector.
VUB professor and Brussels expert Eric Corijn also supports the idea. “We want to make the end of the Second World War at least as important a day as the end of the First World War – which has been a holiday for a long time. The defeat of Germany was above all the defeat of the Nazi regime.”
According to Corijn, this commemoration is important in the current political context. “With the rise of the extreme right and increasing nationalistic thinking in Europe, Belgium and specifically Flanders, we must not forget May 8, the victory over fascism. And especially in the context of the current war it is about the defence of democracy against authoritarian regimes.”
It is not surprising, according to Corijn, that 8 May is the Brussels public holiday. “Such a holiday refers to unity. In Flanders and Wallonia, unity is based on communality. Brussels is the most diverse city in Europe. There is no question of ‘one people’. All Brussels residents come from somewhere else, so that unity is based on diversity.”
Although Corijn does mention that many Brussels residents are not aware of the reference to the end of the Second World War. That is why he is one of the signatories to make May 8 a national holiday.
To reinforce the demand, the May 8 Coalition is organising a commemoration on Sunday May 8 at 11 a.m. at the monument ‘De Weerstander’ at Fort Breendonk. The fortress south of Antwerp was used by the German occupier during the Second World War as a Nazi prison for mainly political prisoners.