Agnello van den Bosch

Agnello van den Bosch OFM ( religious name ; actually Charles) (born September 22, 1883 in Roubaix ; † March 9, 1945 in Dachau concentration camp ) was a Roman Catholic religious priest who died in the Dachau concentration camp during the National Socialist dictatorship.

Life

Charles van den Bosch was born as one of twelve children of a Belgian family in Roubaix, France, and entered the Franciscan monastery in Thielt , Belgium after primary school , took the religious name Agnello and was ordained a priest in 1906 . As a medic he took part in the First World War and lost sight after being seriously wounded in 1915. Shaped by his own experience of the gas war , van den Bosch devoted himself to caring for the blind after the war. He founded an institute for the education of the blind, gave lectures and conferences on long trips and founded the Belgian national association of the blind as early as 1923 . He also worked as an editor of the blind newspaper Dem Licht , founded educational homes for blind children in Duysbourg and Namur , became president of the Belgian charity for the blind and played an important role as president of the Belgian war blind at the level of international associations.

Arrest and death

During the Second World War , van den Bosch ran a school for the blind in Ganspoel, Belgium . On July 9, 1942, he was welcomed at the choir prayer in the Franciscan Church Woluwe-St. Pierre arrested, imprisoned for eleven months in St. Gilles prison, then taken to prison camp VII in Esterwegen , where he was severely mistreated.

On October 12, 1943, the Oberreichsanwalt brought charges against van den Bosch, the priests Victor de Sloovere and Paul de Roux and seven other Belgians at the People's Court . The allegation was that a Belgian resistance group had been formed . Father van den Bosch is said to have made rooms available for conspiratorial activities in his school for the blind . It is uncertain whether main proceedings were even opened against him. It is confirmed that he was separated from his fellow prisoners and transferred back to Esterwegen, while the other co-defendants were sentenced to death on February 18, 1944 and executed in Wolfenbüttel on June 7, 1944 . Van den Bosch himself was taken to the Dachau concentration camp on February 12, 1945 on the basis of a special order and died there on March 9, 1945 as a result of the imprisonment and abuse.

literature

• Josse Alzin: Martyrologist 40–45. Le calvaire et la mort de 80 pretres belges et luxembourgeois , Éditions Fasbender Arlon 1947.
• Benedicta Maria Kempner : Priest before Hitler's tribunals . Unchanged reprint of the 2nd edition from 1967. Bertelsmann, Munich 1996, ISBN 978-3-570-12292-1 , p. 37-39 .