Father and son Symoens
During the night of 19–20 June 1944, the Nazis also arrested Frederik Symoens, a metalworker at Beliard, and his 21-year-old married son Désiré, who was also a ship repairer at the same company. According to Frederik’s wife, Julia Leemans, among others, her husband was a member of the OF, but from 1944 onwards, the son apparently also carried out operations at the request of the NKB. Both lived in Hoboken, Frederik on Lageweg and Désiré a few hundred metres further on, on Scheldevrijstraat. An NKB operative at Beliard, Frans De Moor, stated after the war that he had instructed Désiré to sabotage railway line 52. This line runs close to Lageweg and connects Antwerp South with Boom and Dendermonde. However, when Désiré was caught on the night of 19 June, he fled to the home of his father Frederik, who had also helped him with that operation. They probably thought they were safe there, but that night they were arrested there anyway, according to one of the documents in Frederik’s file, as a result of betrayal by a colleague at Beliard, namely Gabriel Hol. That man too was sentenced to death after the war as a collaborator and informer; in his case too, the sentence was never carried out.
