Roger Bruneel was born on 5 July 1922. He lived with his father, Maurice Bruneel, at 95 Lindenstraat. During the war, he became a non-commissioned officer in the resistance group known as the Secret Army.
On 22 September 1943, Bruneel was arrested by the Sipo, the German State Security Police, in Biarritz in the south of France just as he was attempting to flee to England to join the Allied forces.
He was deported to Buchenwald as a political prisoner, after spending some time in camps in Bordeaux and Compiègne. Life in Buchenwald was inhumane. The prisoners are forced to perform extremely hard and dangerous labour, quickly become malnourished and are used as guinea pigs for medical experiments. Bruneel manages to survive for several months, but he eventually dies of pneumonia on 13 December 1943.
