Monument Abbé Joseph Peters Malmédy

Bust in memory of Priest Joseph Peters, who was beheaded in 1942 for "treason" by the Nazis.

Background

The facts
Joseph Peters was born on June 12, 1894 in Verviers. During the First World War he tried to join the Belgian army via the Dutch border. However, he was arrested and held in detention in Holzminden prison for a while.

At the age of 21 he was ordained a priest. In 1933 he came to Malmédy as chaplain in the Hôpital Sain-Joseph. A few years later, he would also take up the mission of teacher of religion in a girls' secondary school (l'Ecole Moyenne des filles) and be active as a pastor in the small parishes of Chôdes, Géromont and Burnenville.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, he committed to a form of passive resistance. The city of Malmédy was annexed to Germany by the occupying forces and the young men were conscripted into the Wehrmacht. In contrast to many inhabitants of the German-speaking parts of the East Cantons, the citizens of Malmédy were mainly pro-Belgian. Compulsory active participation as a soldier in the German army was particularly traumatic. Abbé Peters will mainly speak against the Nazis and their propaganda. He continued to preach in French instead of using compulsory German. He refused to give the Nazi salute while it was expected in the annexed areas. He advised against the youth to join the Hitler Youth and he tried to dissuade young men from engaging in the Wehrmacht.

These anti-Nazi feelings were also known to the German government. Because they were difficult to prove, a trap was set up by that government: a youth of 15 years old had to approach the priest and ask for advice about recruiting into the German army. The game was played in such a way that a documented charge against Abbé Peters could be built up. On October 1, 1942, Peters was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Aachen prison. There followed a journey of interrogation and torture past several prisons: Dusseldorf, again Aachen and finally Plötzensee prison near Berlin where the Volksgerichtshof sentenced him to death on May 3, 1943 for 'demoralizing German military power, consorting with the enemy and treason. '. On July 2, 1943, Abbé Peters was beheaded.

About the monument
In the years immediately after the war, Joseph Peters was commemorated several times in religious celebrations. In October 1945, rue du Parc in Malmédy, where Peters had lived until his arrest, was renamed rue Abbé Peters. In 1953 a memorial plaque was put up in the girls' secondary school where he had taught. Today it can be seen at the Athenée Royal. In 2002, sixty years after the event, the initiative was taken to erect a statue for Peters on the initiative of Roger Collette, from Malmédy, but long-lived in Spain. Roger Collette had a strong personal motivation for this. After all, it was Abbé Peters who helped Roger's brother, Camille Collette, go into hiding from the German military authorities. Roger Collette financed the statue and the decoration of the small square where this statue was placed. The statue was made by the German company Kunstgießerei Plein in Speicher.

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Source

• Text: Jan Rymenams
• Photos: Jan Rymenams