Episode 4: Town hall

PODCAST - Merchtem during the Second World War: between collaboration and resistance.
Episode 4: The Black Hand – Frans Beuckelaers (symbol on the map: Town Hall Merchtem Nieuwstraat 1 - opposition) - voices: Kyara Deliën, Hannelore Heymans, Femke Vanderveken (6 WeWi A) and Victoria Huaux (6 LaWi):

4.0: Intro: August De Boeck – Piano Concerto

4.1: Welcome to part 4 of the podcast: Merchtem during World War II: between collaboration and resistance. In this part, we talk about the Black Hand.

4.2: interview - 16 March 2023 - Lisa Deremaux and Jade Deterville-François (6 LaWi) - Frederik Van den Broeck (teacher)

Frans Beuckelaers: From basically the lead-up to his membership of [the] resistance group. The activities they did. And then finally the dramatic day when they were so, practically the entire group was arrested. And then especially most of that story is about the captivity. From 27 October 1941, through Breendonk, and finally liberated by the Russian army, slightly below Berlin, in Brandenburg-Görden, 27 April 1945.

4.3: Speaking is Frans Beuckelaers, the son of François Beuckelaers, a member of the Black Hand, a resistance movement that was rolled up as early in the war. We let him tell us how this happened.

4.4 interview - see above

Frans Beuckelaers: So, during late September, early October [... ], several members were arrested while putting pamphlets in the letterboxes, and then after a few days, a few more members. Their big mistake was that they had to sign an affiliation form at the moment of affiliation, even with a passport photo attached, so that was quite a mistake. But then they were going to destroy or burn the membership forms, so that didn't happen, and that fell into the hands of the Germans in September October, so they arrested everyone who had signed a membership form, about 70 of whom were arrested on 27 October 1941, including my father who, as a recently graduated teacher, was actively working at the town hall in the registration department, and he was arrested at the town hall in Merchtem.

4.5: The shuffling of the chairs betrays that Jade and Lise joined them and continued listening with our teacher; it apparently passed from father to son ...

4.6 interview - see above

Frans Beuckelaers: My father did that mainly because he thought or assumed anti-German people were Belgian-minded anyway. With those pamphlets La Libre Belgique, Vrij or another resistance newspaper, he could also get along in the story of resistance to the Germans. I have documents that my grandfather, a first world war veteran, captain commander during the second world war, a headmaster in Peizegem, and a teacher, lived with my grandparents and my unmarried aunt. These documents show that my grandfather joined the Secret Army on 21 February 1941. My father signed his affiliation form with the Black Hand in Londerzeel at the cafe In Hands and swore the oath of allegiance from Clement Dielis, the group leader. That was only June 1941. My grandfather was active in a resistance movement with the Secret Army a few months earlier than my father in the Black Hand. They didn't know of each other whether they were with the resistance, yes or no. That was kept strictly secret. There were probably assumptions.

4.7: By the autumn of 1941, the resistance group had 111 official members. But then things went wrong and the Black Hand was exposed. As many as 109 members were taken to concentration camps by the Nazis, barely 37 youngsters returned home. That's also how young François Beuckelaers was arrested in Merchtem at the town hall by two Flemish SS and two 'Feldgendarmen'.

4.8 interview - see above

Frans Beuckelaers: And then they were taken to Breendonk. So there they stood in the corridor all afternoon. Hands behind their heads and against the wall. Anyone passing guards gave a stomp left and right. And so there they were also interrogated one by one and had to hand over all their personal belongings and in the late evening of 27 October 1941 they were taken to Antwerp in the Begijnenstraat [Antwerp Prison]. He still had in his pocket a note with names of two people to contact that was certainly not to fall into the hands of the Germans. They had not found that when searching in Breendonk and then he was able to tear it into small pieces in his pocket and eat it. But so I don't know who that was about, he never said.

4.9: What does that do to someone so young?

4.10 interview - see above

Frans Beuckelaers: After all they went through, it mainly came down to trying to get on with your life in all its forms. A lot was repressed. My father was scared when the doors were all closed. A door had to be open from the living room to the kitchen at home. He said he felt he had to be able to leave. […] except when we were young. In my upbringing, me and my twin brother, at bedtime, When you are young, you typically put on your pyjamas and take off clothes; you hold your arms upwards and pull the item over your head. In my upbringing, it was typical that my father used to tell my twin brother and me: 'Arms up, the Germans are there. When we told them as children: 'Gosh, I'm thirsty, I'm hungry, I'm cold' then: 'Boys, boys, anyway, you don't know what thirsty, hungry, cold means'. As a child, you don't go into that, but also, while eating, we always had to empty our plates. He would say something like, 'I've been hungry enough, and you leave something on your plate'. My father could still scratch his fork on an empty plate, even though I couldn't see what was left to eat, but you never had to wash his plate because it was already clean, scratched out, those are things that stick with you.

4.11: Frans immediately accepted when he was probed to join the Black Hand and signed his membership at a café in Londerzeel. So what did he do?

4.12 interview - see above

Frans Beuckelaers: He worked in the food supply in Merchtem. The aim was to help people in hiding, helping people with coupons [...], and he could get away with those coupons, cans of pamphlets and newspapers, resistance newspapers. Apparently, he had also collected a weapon. My grandfather also had one. They lived in Peizegem because my father had been arrested, the Gestapo came by with clockwork regularity, my grandfather made that weapon disappear, and years later, when they emptied the cesspools there, that revolver was found ...

4.13: Resistance work had a following even in the camps.

4.14 interview - see above

Frans Beuckelaers: Once in Wolfenbüttel warning sirens were heard because of Allied bombing raids. At that time, they were working in a workshop. In a workshop, because in Wolfenbüttel, they were working for the firm of optical devices Voightländer, which still exists. They had cameras, I think. It was a factory from Braunschweig, where they had to assemble the pieces in the workshop of the Wolfenbüttel camp. My father did the final inspection of the Richtkreis, an optical device with which you can measure which position your canon should have to reach your target, but they sabotaged that. A Richtkreis has a prism. They had to see with a scope, with a light source. Two lines had to coincide, and then they had to fix it. They found that if they set that prism and loosened that screw a quarter turn, it looked OK at first, but at the first shot on the battlefield, the prism shifted and was no longer usable. Thus they all returned from the front to the Voightländer company, and in the long run, they threatened the saboteurs with execution. Then that company installed a gunner in the camp itself, so before those Richtkreisen went out, they first had to be put in the gunner and then checked again if they were still in the correct position to counter the sabotage.

Frederik Van den Broeck: The resistance inside the prison.

Frans Beuckelaers: The resistance inside the prison. And according to things I've read, that happened a lot, and practically all political prisoners were engaged in war industry in camps.

4.15: But those acts of resistance did not outweigh the misery the prisoners were experiencing or the calamity that threatened.

4.16 interview - see above

Frans Beuckelaers: In Vorst Sint-Gillis, my father and 24 others, pretty much the leaders of the Black Hand, were in Einzelhaft (solitary confinement), so they were on a different floor from the other group. From the beginning of March till July 1942, he was in Einzelhaft, which he hated, those months alone in the cell with no one in contact. It was also his birthday during that period, and he felt this was his saddest birthday.

4.17: We can only try to imagine what it meant to have such a birthday. An endless series of camps followed where François Beuckelaers did not necessarily follow the course of the other members of the Black Hand, but everyone went through hell. But as it turns out, François had a strange guardian angel.

4.18 interview - see above
Frans Beuckelaers: Then they were placed on transport towards Wuppertal. In Wuppertal, they were all back together, and 25 group members had to stand in the Volksgericht in Essen, sitting in the Wuppertal police prison. But my father was suddenly not among those 25, which has always intrigued me. My grandfather and my aunts say that my father was arrested when he was still in Forest. They say they were approached by a German officer, who would have received a substantial sum, with the promise that my father would survive. That was nothing, […] I don't know if that had any influence that my father was no longer among those 25 who were then tried by Roland Freisler in the trial of Von Stauffenberg and also Hans and Sofie Scholl of the Weisse Rose, even though in the end, as a resistance group, they hadn't done that much.

4.19: François Beuckelaers even underwent an actual death march.

4.20 interview - see above
Frans Beuckelaers: They went out without food or drink for 4 to 5 days in open coal wagons. When they arrived in Magdeburg at one point in the evening, they were led to a clearing in the forest, and they all had to take off their outer clothes. Colonel Michotte, who had been imprisoned with my father the entire time, but wasn't from the same resistance group, as he was a professional soldier, who later did searches; all n&n prisoners were kept far away from other resistance groups and were to be kept out of the hands of the Allies, following Himmler's directives. If that was no longer possible, they were to be moved from one camp to another that was further from the front line, and if that was no longer possible, they were to be handed over to a local police force, with orders to have them liquidated in a remote place and without leaving any traces. Luckily that time, the liquidation commander did not show up. And then the guards, the SA men and the SS men made them put their clothes back on and continued walking.

4.21: 1279 days, 27 October 1941 liberated 27 April 1945 - a Russian tank drove into the main gate - only got home on its own 4 June 1945, had to wait, handed over to the Americans on the Elbe by the Russians. He did not finally get home on his own until 4 June 1945.

4.22: In François Beuckelaers' memoirs we read:

After 8 May 45, V-day, "peace processions" went everywhere. The municipality of Merchtem had also planned its procession. In that procession, the now world-famous "stiltwalkers of Merchtem" made their first appearance. The parade was scheduled for 10 June, coincidentally the Sunday after I returned home. It left from Peizegem and then drove through the streets of Merchtem. There was also a car with an open roof between the various groups and wagons. In that car was Droesbeke. Next to our house, the car stopped, and I had to sit next to him—a tribute to the two political prisoners of Merchtem.

4.23: Each podcast ends with a short literary excerpt. Will you listen in for a while?

Literature excerpt no 4 - The Sorrow of Belgium by Hugo Claus, p.515-514 (1983), by: Lucas Urban (6 LaWi)

Omdat Meerke zo’n vileinig wijf was zei Louis toen Tante Violet hijgend aan tafel neerplofte en naar Gerhardt vroeg, dat zij duidelijk slanker was geworden, dat hij het meteen had gemerkt.

‘Ja, zij is gesmolten. Zij is vel over been,’ zei Meerke schamper.

‘Is het waar? Is het waar? Ik dacht het ook,’ zie Tante Violet. ‘Ik dacht nog: zou ik op de bascule in de gymnastiekzaal durven staan? Het is van de zenuwen. Met die pastoor Mertens die ons aan het kloten is.’

Dat uitdagende, roekeloze blije van Tante Violet had natuurlijk te maken met de aanwezigheid in huis van de blonde officier. Vroeger had zij nooit het woord ‘kloten’ gebruikt.

‘Pastoor Mertens heeft zich nu openlijk tegen ons gekeerd, Louis. Tegen Meerke, maar nog méér tegen mij.’

‘Het is uw eigen schuld, Violet. Een Duitser embrasseren waar Madame Vervaecke van de Bond van Liberale Vrouwen bij staat!’

‘Moeder, ik ben meerderjarig. En daarbij dat embrasseren is in alle eer en deugd. Lijk broer en zuster. […]’

4.24: Outro: August De Boeck – Piano Concerto