Veerstraat 36
Rumst
Antoine De Winter was born in Rumst on November 14, 1902. He was a teacher at the state secondary school for boys in Boom for many years. Antoine De Winter was married to Emilie Josepha De Bruyn and the couple lived with their son Paul in the Veerstraat in Rumst.
He valued personal freedom and freedom of thought and speech. He could not bear to see fellow countrymen around him serving the Nazi occupier. Antoine did not mince his words, he openly expressed his convictions and patriotism.
Antoine De Winter was also a member of LOMO, an illegal teachers' union of the resistance movement Independence Front. LOMO mimeographed thousands of pamphlets and leaflets against the occupier and Nazism, which found their way to school centers, companies and private individuals. He was also a member of the Secret Army, the largest Belgian resistance movement. He was sector commander with the rank of captain.
These activities were not without danger, because between the summer of 1942 and April 1943 the organization was almost completely wiped off the map by waves of arrests. The secret army loses a total of 4,000 of its members. This high number can be explained by the involvement of members in the underground press, escape lines, intelligence networks and even armed resistance groups.
Antoine De Winter became the victim of the most cowardly shameful act, denunciation by a fellow villager. On February 7, 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo in his home in Rumst. His son Paul witnessed the brutal and violent arrest. Both his parents had to stand with their faces against the wall with their arms in the air, while father Antoine was hit with gun butts. Mother had just made jam and the jars were full on the table, the Germans knocked them off the table with their guns and they fell to the ground.
Antoine eventually ended up in the Flossenbürg concentration camp in the Oberpfalz (Bavaria) region of Germany.
Until 1945 there were 40,000 prisoners in Flossenburg, of which 11,000 were women. The prisoners were used as forced laborers in the quarries and in the arms industry. Fellow prisoners later testified about the horror camp and the inhumane camp regime in Flossenburg. Stealing, fleeing or refusing work was punishable by death. Flossenburg has a strict regime, getting up at 4.30 am, beating and stomping while dressing and washing, roll call outside and then 'breakfast', one cup of ersatz coffee for those who could get one. In the afternoon there was thin soup, usually of red cabbage, but there were only 200 bowls per thousand men. In the evening they received one slice of bread. Many prisoners lost weight noticeably, dropped their heads and wasted away completely. During the day there was heavy forced labor, earthworks and stone cutting, sawing logs for the crematorium under appalling conditions. The service in the crematorium, where the naked bodies of the patriots, resisters, saboteurs and work refusers lie, was a gruesome work. They were loaded onto wagons in packs of 30 or 40, stacked like cattle to begin their final journey to the furnace. Men who died of typhus and tuberculosis, men who were beaten to death, strangled or hanged.
The intellect and youth of Europe who fought, suffered and died for freedom. Antoine De Winter was one of these silent heroes, he was one of the 1693 Belgians who lost their lives in Camp Flossenburg. He died there on March 16, 1945.
The date of death of Antoine De Winter was initially communicated as March 27, but according to a judgment of the court of first instance, this was later corrected to March 16, 1945.
In December 1945, a solemn memorial service for Antoine De Winter took place in St. Peter's Church in Rumst. Later, a memorial plaque was unveiled for him at the state secondary school in Boom and in Rumst Antoine De Winter received a street name as a tribute.
이곳에서 기억되는 사람
이곳의 돌이 손상되었거나 없어졌나요? 이메일로 알려 주기
