Front de l'Indépendance
The Front de l'indépendance (FI) (Independence Front, in Dutch: Onafhankelijkheidsfront – OF) was a Belgian resistance movement during World War II, founded in March 1941 by Dr. Albert Marteaux of the Communist Party of Belgium, Father André Roland, and Fernand Demany, another communist. The aim of the organisation was to unite Belgian resistance groups of all opinions and political leanings; nonetheless the only political party that that was affiliated as such was the Belgian communist party.
By the end of the war, the Front de l'indépendance contained representatives from a large number of organisations, including:[1]
- The Partisans armés (PA, armed partisans),
- The Milices patriotiques (MP, patriotic milita),
- Solidarité (Solidarity, founded in 1942 as the social service of the F.I. to help victims of the Nazi repression and their families, those who refused to go in Germany under the Service du travail obligatoire, foreign illegals etc.; the Belgian section of the Secours Rouge continued within this clandestine organization[2]),
- The Comités de lutte syndicale (Unions' committee for the struggle)
- Wallonie Libre (Free Wallonia),
- The Comité de Défense des Juifs (Jews' defense committee)
- LOMO (Dutch: Leraren Officieel Middelbaar Onderwijs, Middle school teachers of the public network in Flanders), whose leader Aloïs Gerlo (1915-1998) was an activist of the Communist Party between 1940 and 1956[3]
- Front, the underground newspaper
- The Österreichische Freiheitsfront, an antifascist organisation created in Brussels by communist refugees from Austria and Germany.
Through these various organisations, the Front de l'indépendance established sabotage operations, escape routes and a false document service, and distributed 250 different underground publications. This essential part of the war, in the area of information, found a culmination of sorts in the publication by the Front on 9 November 1943 of Faux Soir, a spoof version of the Le Soir newspaper circulated under the noses of the occupation authorities.
In February 1943, the Front de l'indépendance sent the sociologist Victor Martin on a spying mission in Germany to search for reliable information about what happened to the Jews deported to Germany. He came back in May with the first reliable report on their fate, as well as with detailed information on the functioning of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
References
- ^ "Le CEGES acquiert les archives du Front de l’indépendance" (in French). Centre d'études et de documentation guerre et sociétés contemporaines. June 2008. http://www.cegesoma.be/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=201&Itemid=63. Retrieved 2009-10-30.
- ^ "1940-45 La section belge du SRI se fond dans 'Solidarité', la 'Croix-Rouge du Front de l'Indépendance'" (in French). Le Secours Rouge. http://www.secoursrouge.org/histoiresri.php. Retrieved 2009-10-30.
- ^ Van Minnebrugen, Hugo (Wednesday 03 March 2004). "Het OF/FI organiseert zich" (in Dutch). http://www.verzet.org/. http://www.verzet.org/content/view/358/37/1/1/. Retrieved 2009-10-25.