Animation filmmaker Raoul Servais lived through World War II. This had a great impact on his life and oeuvre. Now he shares his personal memories with us.

Raoul Servais (b. 1928, Ostend) is one of the most innovative Belgian filmmakers of the twentieth century. In late 2019, Servais donated a large selection of drawings, backgrounds and animation cels to the King Baudouin Foundation, to preserve his archive and make it available to a wider audience.

Servais experienced the Second World War as a young lad, escaping death on several occasions. He also grew up hearing his mother’s and uncles’ tales of the First World War. Both wars determined the course of his life. They turned him into a lifelong pacifist and served as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for his work as a filmmaker, animator and visual artist.

Later in life, Servais decided to retrospectively put his memories of the war on paper and to illustrate them with drawings. A unique and personal testimony, which he now shares with us! Pieter Trogh, of the In Flanders Fields Museum elaborates on some parts of Servais’ writings, placing them in their historical context.