Belgium got involved in the Second World War when on May 10th 1940 the German army invaded the country. Immediately the Belgian government started detaining people who were previously put on proscription lists as being a danger to the state. Many of those extrajudicially arrested were locked in Bruges’ city prison called “Pandreitje”. On May 15th 1940, 78 of them were put on transport and moved first to Dunkirk, then to Béthune and finally to Abbeville. On May 19th, the detainees were put in custody of the French military who presumed them to be collaborators, members of a Nazi fifth column set on helping Nazi Germany win the war. The French military locked the detainees in the cellar of a bandstand as the city prison was damaged by German bombing.
On May 20th the Germans were about to occupy Abbeville. The French military wanted to prevent the Belgian prisoners from being rescued by the Germans. In batches of four they fetched the prisoners from the cellar and shot them. The executions went on until the French lieutenant Leclabart intervened and put an end to the massacre. 21 prisoners had been executed.
Louis Caestecker, born in Bruges on July 2nd 1912, was a young plumber who wasn’t into politics; he did have communist friends however. He was suspected of being sympathetic to the Soviet Russian cause, who were in those days Germany’s allies. His name was added to the proscription list because of these suspected sympathies. The Bruges police force came to arrest him on May 10th, but didn’t find him at home. Later that day on the advice of his mother, Louis turned himself in, convinced that he had nothing to fear. He was imprisoned however and put on transport to France together with 77 other detainees. He would be executed in Abbeville.
Maria Ceuterick, born in Ghent on August 6th 1879, was the mother-in-law of the Dutch architect Ernst Warris, who was a protestant expat in the deeply catholic Bruges and considered an outsider. On May 10th, Ernst Warris was visiting his mother in Rotterdam, who had fallen ill; his family – mother-in-law, wife and daughter – had stayed in Bruges. Coming to arrest Ernst Warris, the police force didn’t find him at home; they arrested the three women instead and locked them up, first in the police headquarters, located in the Hoogstraat, then in the city prison of Pandreitje. They too were put on transport to Abbeville. Ernst Warris’ wife and daughter escaped death; Maria Ceuterick was dragged out of the cellar by French soldiers, bayonetted and finally killed, her head smashed with a rifle stock. She was 60.
Jan Ryckoort, born in Harelbeke September 1st 1889, was married and father of two. An art painter by profession he was the private secretary of Joris van Severen. Together with van Severen he was put on transport to Abbeville. Accompanying van Severen out of the cellar to negotiate a stay of the executions, he too was shot.
Joris van Severen was born in Wakken, July 19th 1894. During the Great War van Severen was one of the leaders of the Frontbeweging, an activist movement in the Belgian army dedicated to the Flemish cause. After the war he was voted a member of parliament for the Frontpartij, but soon became disillusioned with parliamentary democracy and in 1931 founded Verdinaso, a new order political movement. At the start of the war in 1940 van Severen expressly stated that he and his Verdinaso would follow the lead of king Leopold in the war against Nazi Germany. Hence the government was divided on the question of detaining van Severen, but before anyone could intervene, the convoy of political prisoners had already left Bruges for Abbeville. Accompanied by his secretary Jan Ryckoort van Severen volunteered to parlay with the French soldiers, trying to convince them that the prisoners were innocent, to no avail: both van Severen and Ryckoort were summarily executed.
After the intervention of lt. Leclabart the prisoners were released from the cellar and again put on transport, this time to Rouen, there to stay until the cease fire of June 22nd 1940.
Entering Abbeville on May 21st, the Germans discovered the bodies of the 21 murdered prisoners, whom they buried at the city cemetery. The Germans ordered a military tribunal to investigate the massacre. A court-marshal convened in January 1942. The French officers responsible for the murders, lt. Caron and sgt. Mollet, were condemned to death and executed. Cpt. Dingeon, who had given the order for the executions, had already died in Vichy-France on January 21st 1941 in never explained circumstances.
In 1978 the Belgian authorities recognized the victims of Abbbeville as casualties of war. The remains of Louis Caestecker and Maria Ceuterick were brought back from Abbeville and reburied at the military cemetery of De Panne. The heirs of van Severen and Ryckoort declined the offer: Jan Ryckoort and Joris van Severen stayed buried at the Cimetière communal in Abbeville, where a mausoleum was dedicated in their honour on May 20th 1951.