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Son of a Brewer : a memoir

by Armand De Clercq, edited by Dennis Mc Closkey

    GSPH, Ontario, Canada, 1997, 116 pp

In 1997 publiceerde Armand De Clercq, de zoon van de laatste brouwer dit hoogst amusant boekje over zijn jeugd in Sint Maria Latem. Een van de merken die er gebrouwen werden heette Fidoel, naar de hond van de familie.

Een markante, weze het niet echt geloofwaardige passage handelt over het bezoek van niemand minder dan Adolf Hitler aan de brouwerij in Latem.

One day in 1941 Adolf Hitler came to Ghent to participate in a victory parade through the empty streets of the city. He was disillusioned an frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm from the people who hid behind closed doors. Having heard about the Roman ruins, he insisted on seeing them. One of the generals summoned my father, the mayor to meet the Führer.Very reluctantly, my father followed him and suddenly came face to face with the monster.

Hitler told him he was a great admiror of the Roman warrior and admired Caesar's tactics, especially his invasion of England. My father remained cold and silent. He tried to charm my father by offering a compliment : "Outside of Germany, Herr burgomaster, your beer is second to none". It was faint praise coming from a teetotaller. My father didn't say a word but mumbled silently to himself "Herr Hitler, i hope you burn in hell" (Indeed, Hitler's corpse was burned five years later outside his bunker in Berlin, just before the Russians arrived)

I was nearly eighteen years old when the infamous visit took place and I was kept at a distance by "The little Corporal's" S.S. bodyguards. But i could hear his long animated conversation and at one point I heard the dictator say he was thirsty and hungry. There were no decent eateries in the vicinity, so he was led to my fathers brewery. Since he was not interested in drinking beer he had a glass of milk and hungrily ate a plate of boar stew covered with small white turnips. Later he declared that he had never tasted any better game, except maybe once in the Black Forest.

After Hitler left, my father admitted he had been tempted to sprinkle a lethal dose of rat poison in the dictator's bowl but changed his mind out of fear of drastic reprisals against family and brewery workers. Little did my father realize he could  possibly have shortened the duration of the war and saved a million allied soldiers' lieves by an earlier demise of the mass murderer. What an unfortunate, missed opportunity".

Wie twijfelde nog dat de IJzerkotmolen het centrum van de wereld was ?