"It is two months," he said, "since we
had a church." The parish priest and the curate had been interned in a
concentration camp.
Thousands of Belgian citizens have in like manner been deported to the
prisons of Germany, to Munsterlagen, to Celle, to Magdeburg. At
Munsterlagen alone, 3,100 civil prisoners were numbered. History will
tell of the physical and moral torments of their long martyrdom.
Hundreds of innocent men were shot. I possess no complete necrology; but
I know that there were ninety-one shot at Aerschot and that there, under
pain of death, their fellow-citizens were compelled to dig their graves.
In the Louvain group of communes 176 persons, men and women, old men and
sucklings, rich and poor, in health and sickness, were shot or burned.
In my diocese alone I know that thirteen priests or religious were put
to death.[6]
[Footnote 6: Their brothers in religion or in the priesthood will wish
to know their names. Here they are: Dupierreux of the Society of Jesus,
Brothers Sebastian and Allard of the Congregation of the Josephites,
Brother Candide of the Congregation of the Brothers of Mercy, Father
Maximin, Capuchin, and Father Vincent, Conventual; Lombaerts, parish
priest at Boven-Loo; Goris, parish priest at Autgaerden; Carette,
professor at the Episcopal College of Louvain; de Clerck, parish priest
at Bueken; Dergent, parish priest at Gelrode, and Wouters Jean, parish
priest at Pont-Buule.
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