Belgian Brigadistas
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- Title
- Belgian Brigadistas
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This photo was sold as a postcard in support of the Spanish Republic and displays Flemish members of the Edgar André Battalion within the 11th Brigade. Some of them can be identified. Standing, first from the right: Lodewijk Cornand of Aalst. He was killed in February 1937. Fifth from the right, still standing: Jean La Broye of Ledeberg. Seventh from the right: Willy De Coninck of Ghent, political representative of the Flemish communist party in Spain and brother of resistance fighter professor Lucien De Coninck. Next to him stands Jean-Marie Van Boecksel. He was also killed in February 1937. To the left of Van Boecksel is Gustaaf Lampaert of Ghent. The third from the left, standing at the front, is Wilfried Wouters of Antwerp. He attended the officers' school in Pozorrubio and was later sent back to Belgium to lead the Wollweber sabotage group. Arrested at the end of 1940 and sent to a German camp of prisoners of war, he was executed in September 1943. At the bottom, second from the left, we see Etienne Walraevens of Zottegem, and partially hidden as the fifth from the left, Jean Pirot, the leader of the communists of the Patershol district in Ghent. -
Some Brigadistas of La Louvière and Soignies. -
Political commissar of the Pierre Brachet Company, André Houllez of Saint-Gilles in Brussels. -
Some Belgians at the Jarama front in February 1937. -
Fernand Stevens (second from the right, standing) with a group of volunteers from the 15th Lincoln Brigade. -
The early days of the Republican Air Force, initiated by writer André Malraux. The group poses in the summer of 1936 in front of a French bomber, the Potez 540. Second from the right is Paul Nothomb, great-grandson of one of Belgium's founders and brother of former minister Charles-Ferdinand. Paul was a graduate of the Royal Military Academy and later became a communist. After the Second World War he would gain fame as a writer, just like his distant cousin Amélie Nothomb. -
December 1938, in front of the exit of Brussels South Station. A group of Belgian Brigadistas returns home and is welcomed by a reception committee. In the photo, we recognize the tall man on the left in the foreground, wearing a dark coat and a light-colored hat, as Paul Nothomb. In the middle, wearing a bow tie, is Julien Lahaut, and on the far right, carrying a large suitcase, is Albert De Coninck of Mechelen. He was one of the Brigadistas.