Memorial Résistance Fighter Marcel Demonceau

Marcel Demonceau studied economic and financial sciences in Brussels.
In the autumn of 1940, he joined a clandestine organization of the ULB, whose military structure, as a reserve officer, he helped establish.
Through his wife, he became a member of the Luc-Marc intelligence service from March 1942.
From November 1942, he prepared critical and counter-reports for the agents of all sectors of this network. The same month he had to go into hiding and he and his men from the Committee on Surveillance took direct action.
From the fall of 1942 to the spring of 1943, one sabotage and seal theft followed after another.
He even prepared an attack on Léon Degrelle with a team of Partisans. The plan leaked out and on 4 May 1943 he narrowly escaped being arrested in which he shot a German policeman and his wife was arrested.
She was taken to Germany but would survive the hell of the concentration camps.
On June 30, 1943, he was surrounded with his men in a house in Ixelles, but was able to escape again after a long firefight with a dozen dead at the German police forces. Demonceau, who also participated in an escape network for Allied soldiers and Belgian patriots, was finally arrested on 10 July 1943 in La Hulpe.
He was imprisoned in Breendonk but managed to escape from his cell on December 24, 1943 and to knock down a guard, a first in the history of the camp, but a patrol surprised him.
After 8 months of abuse, he was finally executed in Breendonk on February 22, 1944.

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Source

• Text: Marie-Christine Vinck
• Photos: Marie-Christine Vinck