Garden Victor de Laveleye, Creator of the V(ictory) Sign

Victor de Laveleye had a doctorate in law from the ULB and competed as a tennis player in the 1920 and 1924 Summer Olympics. He became a lawyer professionally.
He also wrote articles on international politics in the newspaper Le Soir.
In 1926 he was elected councilor of Saint-Gilles on behalf of the Liberal Party. From October 1936 to April 1937 he was party chairman of this party and in this position conducted a fierce campaign against the fascist party Rex.
From April to July 1937, Laveleye became Minister of Justice.
He then sat in the Chamber of Representatives from 1939 until his death. After the Liberation, he was Minister of Public Education in the Pierlot VI and the Pierlot VII Governments from September 1944 to February 1945.
He was one of the Belgian contributors to the drafting of the United Nations Charter.

After the German invasion of May 1940 during the Second World War, he went to France with the Belgian government. In Limoges he voted for the continuation of the war. Then he left for England.
In London he was appointed director of the Belgian French-language broadcasts on the BBC (1940-1944). The first broadcast took place in September 1940.
On January 14, 1941, he called on all Belgians to use the letter 'V' as a sign of resistance. The 'V' stood for "victoire" in French and for "vrijheid (freedom)" in Dutch. During the BBC broadcast, de Laveleye said that when the German occupier sees the sign again and again, he will realize that he is surrounded by a mass of civilians eagerly awaiting the first moment of weakness, the first failure. Within weeks, V's started appearing on walls all over Belgium, the Netherlands and northern France.

This was the beginning of the V campaign, which soon spread across Europe.
The V sign became world famous when Winston Churchill used it during a speech on July 19, 1941.

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Source

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