Corneel Van Zaelen was born in Willebroek on 20 January 1922. At the start of World War II, he worked as a welder and ship repairer at Union Electric Welding and lived in Donkstraat. In the Antwerp city chronicle “Ship repairers during World War II, a forgotten resistance struggle”, we read about Corneel Van Zaelen: '... On the night of 25 to 26 May 1942, the Nazis also dragged 20-year-old Corneel Van Zaelen from his bed. He was imprisoned in Begijnenstraat, where he was held together with members of the Mercantile Trade Union Committee. On 9 September 1943, he was sentenced to death by the Feldcommandantur for his resistance activities. Via Breendonk, he was deported to the Vught prison camp near 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, where he was executed by hanging on 28 September. The Vught camp website states that he ‘was involved in the resistance in the Antwerp region at a young age. Armed resistance and attacks on factories working for the occupiers were not unfamiliar to Corneel.’ This is probably why he was also accused of being a member of the Armed Partisans, a sabotage group of the Communist Party of Belgium, which from August 1941 onwards targeted the occupying forces' logistics.
