Frans’s parents lived at number 8 Euphrosina Beernaertstraat in a building owned by the Valcke family. He worked at the Valcke firm in Kapellestraat, where his mother was the caretaker of the building.
During the Second World War, Frans joined the Resistance as an Armed Resistance fighter from the very beginning. He was a member of the Secret Army, for which he recruited members, distributed underground newspapers and provided military intelligence.
But he was betrayed.
On 7 March 1944, Frans was arrested in Ostend on suspicion of involvement in a secret movement. He was transferred to Ghent prison but was released after a month due to lack of evidence. He returned to Ostend. On 4 May, the Gestapo Feldpolizei arrested him again, this time on charges of espionage. He was first sent to Bruges prison, then to that of Saint-Gilles near Brussels.
On 11 July, they put him on a train bound for Bayreuth in Germany, to work in a penal colony. There he had to work in a suitcase factory and later sorted clothing. He was assigned to the ‘Nacht und Nebel’ punishment category. This meant that members of the resistance were secretly transported away and subsequently disappeared without a trace.
On 11 March 1945, he was transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. There he worked in the Messerschmitt factory, where he was treated very badly. On 20 April, the camp was evacuated and the death march began to Cham in Germany. On 23 April, liberation by the American army followed.
He received initial medical care in Pösing from the French Red Cross and spent fourteen days in the hospital in Cham. After visiting hospital camps in Amberg, Nuremberg and Würzburg, he returned to Belgium on a hospital train.
A week later, he arrived in Ostend. On 17 May 1945, he was finally back home after thirteen months of captivity. There, as a 29-year-old father, he was reunited with his family. He was 1.76 metres tall, but weighed only about 38 kilograms at the time.
For the rest of his life, his walking stick was indispensable. He was a member of several patriotic associations and became National Vice-Chairman of the Federation of Political Prisoners of the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp.
As a war invalid, he died in 1981 at the Military Hospital in Ostend. He is buried in the plot of honour at the cemetery in Stuiverstraat. He was 65 years old.
