Word: belgians
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...heart of Father Pire -"the heart open on the world." In 1938 he set up a nationwide organization to help the poor, during the war ran holiday camps for children who had been evacuated from the cities, and at night served in stealth as a chaplain with the Belgian resistance. Then, one day in 1949. he heard a lecture by a U.S. UNRRA official describing the plight of Europe's D.P.s. "It was such heartbreak," recalls Georges Pire, "such despair that it suddenly seemed to me that there was nothing I could do-except do everything I could...
...displaced persons ("Our century has probably created no image more terrible than the one evoked by that expression"), he set up a network of godparents who "adopted" D.P. families. Relying solely on gifts, he opened a home for aged refugees in Huy. later opened three more in other Belgian towns. But he soon came to realize that providing food and money was doing next to nothing to cure "the malady...
Missing Parts. To plumb this jungle mystery, the Belgian district officer at Ponthierville assigned a native policeman named Bumba, who journeyed among the native tribes-the dominant Panamoli and their rivals, the Basua-and the scattered river fishermen who are born, live and die in their pirogues, made from tree trunks scooped out with fire. There had been a number of unexplained disappearances along the river, many more than could be accounted for by accidental drownings or by voluntary departures to go to the city, or farther into the jungle, or to escape a nagging wife. The crocodiles...
...week's end Léon Pétillon, Minister of the Belgian Congo, a veteran of 17 years in Africa, was able to say soothingly to a huge crowd in Léopoldville: "Be not upset about your future. Have care for it, but not fear: Belgium is conscious of the needs of your nascent political state. Cast a backward glance at all that has been accomplished during the last 50 years. Why should the future be less generous to you than the past?" The only unanswered question: Would the future be as generous to Belgium...
...King Leopold II. In the 1880s, when Europe was busy dividing up the continent of Africa, he laid personal claim to the largely uncharted Congo Free State. But Leopold's rubber gatherers maimed, tortured and oppressed the natives to such an extent that world revulsion caused the Belgian government to annex the King's domain...