Our Lady Chapel

This chapel was founded in 1946 by Joseph Vandermeersch in thanks to Our Lady for his return on June 29, 1945 as a political prisoner in Belgian prisons and German concentration camps during the Second World War.

He was born in 1914 and was a teacher in the primary boys' school opposite the chapel.

Analogous to the 1914-18 war, there was a gradual collaboration with the occupying forces during the occupation years from 1940 onwards. As a reaction and aversion, various resistance groups arose in Belgium, with 'The Secret Army' becoming the main one. This group was secretly founded by Belgian soldiers. Some compatriots who survived the horrors of the First World War joined one of the movements, but also young people did this, such as Joseph who joined 'The secret army' in 1942.

The German secret police services (SD) followed these developments with suspicion. Through denunciations and in-depth investigation by the SD, this led to raids and arrests. In July 1942 Joseph was arrested.

After extremely severe torture in the Ghent prison, he was transferred in early 1943 to the prisons of Bochum and Essen in Germany, followed by that of Sonnenburg (now Slonsk in Poland) to arrive in early December in Sachsenhausen, which was a subsidiary camp of the Oranienburg concentration camp.

In January 1944 he was transferred to Oraniënburg where he was put to work as a forced laborer in the Heinkel aircraft factories. In early September 1944, he underwent his first six-day death march from Oranienburg to Schwarzheide, a transit camp for Jews, 30 km north of Dresden. He had to help restore the camp, which had been partially destroyed by bombing.

After the extremely heavy bombardments of the Allies in February 1945 on the city of Dresden, he underwent his second extremely murderous three-day death march to the concentration camp in Neustadt, located on the current Czech border (fleeing the advancing Red Army) in the middle of winter.

On May 8, he was liberated by the Red Army. He weighed 45 kg at the time. After 7 weeks, after difficult negotiations between the Allies and the Red Army, he was handed over to the American army in Riesa/Elbe, and after much ado in the café 'Stad Torhout' on June 29, 1945.

As a result of the hardships in the concentration camps and his war disability, he died an untimely death in May 1981 at the age of 67.

Willem Vandenameele