Marguerite Bervoets

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Marguerite Bervoets

Marguerite Bervoets (born March 6, 1914 in La Louvière , † August 7, 1944 in Wolfenbüttel ) was a Belgian resistance fighter against National Socialism .

School and study

She was the only daughter of Jules Bervoets (1879–1958), a tobacco and wine salesman, and Olivia, née Blondiaux (1887–1962), headmistress at the Lycée in Mons .

Bervoets studied philosophy and Romance studies at the University of Brussels with a diploma in 1936. She lived in Tournai during the German occupation from 1940 and taught there at the University of Education, today: Haute École en Hainaut .

Resistance and Arrest

In 1941 she joined the Belgian Resistance . She distributed pamphlets, hidden weapons, supported the Allied intelligence service and coordinated the cooperation of the resistance groups in Lille and Tournai.

On August 8, 1942, she was arrested with the nurse Cécile Detournay (1911-1970) while taking photos of military installations on the Chièvres military airfield . Propaganda materials and firearms were discovered at her home.

Both were imprisoned for several months in Mons and on June 13, 1944 as NN prisoners , deported to Germany under the number NN448 and transferred to various prisons, most recently to the forced labor camp in the village of Mesum .

Imprisonment and execution

You have been tried. On 22 March 1944, it condemned the People's Court , 2nd Senate, he met in empty , to death and Cécile Detournay to eight years of forced labor. On August 7, 1944, 11.00 a.m., she was admitted to the Wolfenbüttel prison , a central execution site , where the executioner Friedrich Hehr carried out the execution . She died at 18:34 without the knowledge of parents under the guillotine . In early September 1944, the US troops arrived in their homeland.

Buried at the Wolfenbüttel main cemetery, she was exhumed after the war and returned to Belgium . She found her final resting place together with 240 other fighters in the Grove of Honor, Mons town cemetery.

In a farewell letter to her parents shortly before their execution, she wrote about the Germans:

I ask you not to hate the German people. It's good, like all the others, and it's peace-loving. I often appreciated his kindness and courage. Like us, it is the victim of a violent eruption, an unprecedented historical volcanism that will end.

Memorials

  • Monument in the courtyard of the former secondary school in La Louvière, Rue de Bouvy, today: L'Athénée Royal de La Louvière , inaugurated on November 17, 1946, life-size statue of a resistance fighter with a rifle by Hector Brognon (1888–1977), dedicated to her and the Resistance fighter Laurette Demaret (1921–1944), both of whom went to school here.
  • Memorial plaque in the entrance of the college of education where she taught, Tournai, Rue des Carmes, formerly: ISEP = Institut supérieur d'Enseignement pédagogique, today officially Haute École en Hainaut .
  • Commemorative plaque with a quote from her farewell letter and a short biography in several languages ​​at the Monumento alla Resistenza europea in Como.
  • Grave slab in the Mons municipal cemetery, memorial: La Pelouse d'honneur, Lieu de repos des ancients combattants , Mons Communal Cemetry.
  • Naming, several streets in Belgium and also in France.
  • Naming, Lyceum in Mons , today: Athénée Royal Marguerite Bervoets , Avenue Maistriau; Here she spent her last three years of school, her mother was the headmistress.

literature

  • Lucienne Balasse-De Guide (editor): Marguerite Bervoets - Une Héroine , publisher: La Renaissance du livre, Brussels 1947, text and image documents.
  • Eliane Gubin: Dictionnaire des femmes belges: XIXe et XXe siècles , Brussels 2006, publisher: Racine, pages 52-53.
  • Shmiel Mordche Borreman: Nostalgie de vivre: Marguerite Bervoets, La Louvière 1914 - Wolfenbüttel 1944 , femme de lettres, enseignante, heroïne et martyre de la résistance en Belgique, hommage, published by the Comité Marguerite Bervoets association , Mons 2004.
  • Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli: Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza Europea , publisher: Giulio Einaudi, Turin 1954, German: Last letters to death condemned , publisher: dtv, Munich 1962, page 21-24: Chronology of the Belgian resistance with background information on the German punitive actions, page 33: short biography and letter.
  • Émile Pequet: Marguerite Bervoets , in the collection: Carnets de la mémoire, published by the ASBL Kulturverein Hainaut, Culture et Démocratie in Nimy , district of Mons , Nimy 2014; a scientific biography.

Web links

Commons : Marguerite Bervoets  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Your diploma thesis is published: Marguerite Bervoets: L'œvre d'Andrè Fontainas , publisher: Palais des Académies, Brussels 1949.
  2. ↑ Address: Mesum Lager Dorf 304 , today: residential area opposite the nursing home, Nasigerstraße 29, memorial for the forced laborers in the old cemetery, Alte Kirchgasse 22.
  3. ↑ Photo of the execution room shortly after it was captured by US troops on April 11, 1945.
  4. ↑ Memorial for the victims of the Nazi justice system, Wolfenbüttel main cemetery, Gräberfeld 13a / b.
  5. ↑ Original: Je vous le demande, n'ayez pas de haine contre le peuple allemand. Il est bon, comme tous les autres, et a l'amour de la paix. J'ai pu souvent apprécier sa bonté et son courage. Comme nous, il est victime d'une éruption de violences, d'un volcanisme historique sans exemple qui finira. Also printed as a facsimile of the original manuscript in a brochure by Shmiel Mordche Borreman, see literature.
personal data
SURNAME Bervoets, Marguerite
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH La Louvière
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1944
Place of death Wolfenbüttel