Marcel Lobbestael was born on 9 March 1924. At that time, the Lobbestael family lived at what is now 8 Louis Leynstraat in Rumbeke.
At the age of twenty, Marcel was arrested for refusing to work for the Germans. Two days later, he was deported to Germany, where he was forced to work at Rautal Werke Wernigerode (a satellite camp of Buchenwald and an arms factory). When he was briefly allowed to return home from there, he went into hiding in Rumbeke.
And now his younger sister Simonne enters the story: this sister, who was a year and a half older, fell seriously ill in the middle of the war and eventually died on 26 June 1944. It is highly plausible to suggest that Marcel did not return to Rautal Werke in Germany because of this dire situation at home: his only sister’s protracted illness and his sense of duty to care for her. His obituary also states that “Simonne wished to be cared for only by her brother”.
A month and a half after her death, Marcel was arrested at home by the Gestapo and taken straight to the ReimaHG camp in Kahla. There, on his 21st birthday, he died of typhus.
Both brother and sister thus died at the age of 21. Their parents were left childless and continued to live in Louis Leynstraat until their deaths (in the late 1980s/early 1990s).
