Liberté chérie
Liberté Chérie is the only Masonic lodge established in a penitentiary camp and on the grounds of a concentration camp during the Second World War . In 1943/44 resistance fighters from France, Belgium and the Netherlands were imprisoned in the camp .
The lodge
According to a letter from Luc Somerhausen, around November 15, 1943, the seven Belgian resistance fighters and Freemasons Paul Hanson, Luc Somerhausen, Jean De Schrijver, Jean Sugg, Henry Story, Amédée Miclotte and Franz Rochat founded barracks 6 for foreign night-and-night Fog prisoners of Emsland Camp VII ( Esterwegen ) the Masonic Lodge Liberté Chérie (freedom, beloved - the name from two nouns according to lodge custom, derived from the sixth stanza of the Marseillaise ). The seven chose Paul Hanson as their master of the chair . Then the seven initiated the Belgian Fernand Erauw. The brothers gathered around a table for their box work in Barrack 6, which otherwise had to be used for sorting cartridges. Catholic priests stood guard so that the Freemasons could hold their meetings, and vice versa, the Liberté Chéries brothers protected the Catholics when they secretly celebrated their Holy Mass.
Luc Somerhausen describes Fernand Erauw's acceptance as a Freemason:
- “… A ceremony as simple as it was secret , which consisted of welcoming the profane Fernand Erauw, who had been proposed to join the founders and who had approved the proposal. This ceremony, which the community of priests had been asked to help keep secret, and who in turn received assistance from us with their prayers, took place around one of the dining tables according to a very simplified ritual, the individual components of which were explained to the newly admitted and the henceforth participated in the work of the lodge. "
The lodge life of the eight prisoners was difficult. More than a hundred prisoners were locked in barrack number 6 almost around the clock and were only allowed to leave it for a half-hour walk a day under supervision. During the day, half of the warehouse had to sort cartridges and radio parts. The prisoners in the other half of the camp were forced to work in the most dire conditions in the surrounding peat bogs . The diet was so poor that the prisoners lost an average of four kilograms every month. After the first ritual meeting with the admission of the new brother Fernand Erauw, further meetings were thematically prepared. One was dedicated to the symbol of the Almighty Builder of All Worlds , another to the future of Belgium, and finally to the position of women in Freemasonry. Of the members, only Luc Somerhausen and Fernand Erauw survived imprisonment. Therefore, the Liberté Chérie Lodge stopped its masonry work at the beginning of 1944 .
Liberté Chéries brothers
Paul Hanson , justice of the peace in the canton of Louveigné-Grivegnée south of Liège , was arrested by the Germans on April 20, 1942 and soon afterwards brought to justice. Two months earlier, in a trial by the CNAA, a collaborative association for social and economic rule of the National Socialists, founded in 1940, he had denied legality and fined it. The verdict against Hanson was announced on March 13, 1942 in Louveigné and had a tremendous echo. Paul Hanson was imprisoned first in Saint-Léonard, then in Aachen and Bochum and finally in Esterwegen .
Despite the ban on leaving the camp, Paul Hanson repeatedly gave secret lectures for the prisoners in the various barracks. When the city of Essen , to which Hanson had been moved, was bombed by the Allies on March 26, 1944, the prisoner died in the ruins of the prison.
On March 13, 1947, a memorial stele was erected in the Louveigné Court of Justice in honor of Judge Hanson with the most important passages from his verdict of March 13, 1942. They are framed by an acacia branch, the main symbol of the master masons.
Dr. Franz Rochat , university professor, pharmacist and director of an important pharmaceutical laboratory, was born on March 10, 1908 in Saint-Gilles. He was an employee of the underground press and the resistance paper "Voice of the Belgians"; he belonged to the resistance movement "ARA" and the lodge "The Philanthropic Friends". Franz Rochat was arrested on February 28, 1942 and imprisoned in Saint-Gilles and later in Bochum.
Franz Rochat came to Untermansfeld in April 1944 and died there on April 6, 1945.
Jean Sugg , pharmaceutical representative, was born in Ghent on September 8, 1897 , of German-Swiss origin. He worked together with Franz Rochat in the dissemination of the underground press, translated German and Swiss texts for it and worked on underground newspapers such as "La Libre Belgique", "La Légion noire", "Le Petit Belge" and "L'Anti-Boche" . He supported crashed bomber pilots and provided people who evaded forced labor with money and food vouchers. Like Franz Rochat, Jean Sugg was one of the “Philanthropic Friends”. Jean Sugg was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp and died there on February 8, 1945.
Dr. phil. Amédée Miclotte , teacher at the secondary school in Forest / Vorst , was born on December 20, 1902 in Lahamaide and belonged to the SGRA with Luc Somerhausen. He was the brother of the “Union et Progrès” lodge. He was arrested on December 29, 1942 and imprisoned in Saint-Gilles / Sint-Gillis and later in Essen. Amédée Miclotte was brought to Groß Rosen and reported missing on February 8, 1945. He was last seen in the camp hospital ward.
Jean De Schrijver , colonel in the Belgian army and from 1940 head of cabinet at the Ministry of Defense, was born in Alost on August 23, 1893 . He was the brother of the “La Liberté” lodge in Ghent. On September 2, 1943, he was arrested for espionage and possession of weapons and was held in Leuven , Breendonk and Saint-Gilles. Colonel Jean De Schijver was first brought to Groß Rosen and died in Groß Strelitz in February 1945 .
Henry Story , industrialist and aldermen of Ghent, was born in this city on November 27, 1897, he was the brother of the local lodge “Le Septentrion”. He belonged to several resistance groups: the "Service Socrate", the "Service Zéro" and the "Service Luc". It was through him that the independence front came into contact with London . He was admitted to Ghent prison on October 22, 1943 and later transferred to Essen. Henry Story was brought to Groß Strelitz via Rosen and died there in the prison camp on December 5, 1944.
Luc Somerhausen , born as the brother of the politician Marc Somerhausen on August 26, 1903 in Hoeylaert, was a journalist and reporter at the Senate . He served in the resistance with the General Intelligence Service, the famous SGRA, a conspiratorial predecessor of the State Security Service. Somerhausen was arrested in Brussels on May 28, 1943 and imprisoned in Saint-Gilles and later in Essen. He belonged to the "ACSO III" lodge and was a member of the Grand Orient of Belgium in the function of deputy secretary.
Fernand Erauw , a graduate in administrative science at the Cooremans Institute and assessor at the Court of Auditors, reserve officer in the grenadiers and member of the secret army, was born on January 29, 1914 in Wemmel . (The secret army consisted of active soldiers and reservists in the underground. It was recognized as legal by the Belgian government in London and carried out covert military operations for the Allies.)
Fernand Erauw was arrested on August 4, 1942, escaped torture by the Germans as an officer and finally found himself in Esterwegen in 1943 after an odyssey through various Belgian and German prisons.
Survivors
The survivors Fernand Erauw and Luc Somerhausen met again in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944 and remained inseparable from then on. Both survived the "death marches" initiated by Heinrich Himmler in the spring of 1945 . Fernand Erauw, 1.84 m and previously with the stature of an athlete, still weighed 32 kg on May 21, 1945 in the Saint-Pierre hospital in Brussels.
In August 1945, Luc Somerhausen sent the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Belgium a detailed report in which he traced the history of the “Liberté Chérie” lodge. This report, for which Somerhausen received an acknowledgment of receipt, is considered lost.
Luc Somerhausen died in 1982 at the age of 79, Fernand Erauw at the age of 83 in 1997. The last survivor, Franz Bridoux, recalled the history of the lodge in February 2014 in the Belgian magazine Vif L'Express . He died on January 14, 2017 at the age of 93.
Liberté Chérie monument
The memorial created by the architect Jean De Salle for this event on the Emslandlager memorial in Esterwegen ("Esterwegen burial site") has existed since November 2004 .
The roughly hewn, cubic, half-man-high granite stone of the monument is surrounded by bent steel mesh, symbolizing the barbed wire. Double the size of a palm, the main Masonic symbols, square and compass, are attached to the top left. The monument stands on a - in Masonic parlance - "musivischen pavement" (checkerboard pattern), the symbol for the contrasts of life. It was unveiled in the presence of seven foreign grandmasters and grand representatives as well as hundreds of Freemason sisters and brothers on November 13, 2004 at a masonry commemoration, with Peter B. Dörfler speaking for the German grand lodges.
Movie
- Karin Ludwig, Michael Erler: Temples, lodges, rituals. The Secrets of the Masons. Germany 2008, 45 min., Documentary film.
Among other things, the film reports on the persecution of Freemasonry, which took place on a massive scale from 1936. Mention is made of the establishment of the Masonic Lodge by prisoners in a German concentration camp. Their gatherings were protected by fellow Catholic prisoners.
See also
literature
- É. Froidure: Le calvaire des malades au bagne d'Esterwegen. Pax Éditions, Liége 1946.
- L. Somerhausen: Une loge belge in un camp de concentration. In: Feuillets d'information du Grand Orient de Belgique. No. 73, 1975.
- Fernand Erauw: L'odysée de Liberté Chérie. 1993. (Telling the story of this lodge)
- Pierre Verhas: Liberté Chérie: Une loge maçonnique dans un camp de concentration. Bruxelles, Labor, 2005, ill., 62 p.
- Franz Bridoux: Liberté Chérie - In night and fog. Foundation of a Masonic lodge in the Esterwegen concentration camp. Leipzig, Salier, 2015, 102 pages, ISBN 978-3-943539-46-2
Literary processing
- Christian Jacq : The monk and the master. Novel, ISBN 3-499-22430-5 (fictional treatment of the subject)