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Chair Traces of the Resistance

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Arnaud

Arnaud Fraiteur

1924-1943

As a teenager, Arnaud Fraiteur joined the Partisans Armés and took part in the 1943 assassination of collaborator Paul Colin. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested, tortured, and hanged at Fort Breendonk—he was not yet 19 years old.

Arnaud Fraiteur was born on 23 May 1924 in Ixelles and attended the Royal Atheneum and the Municipal Atheneum of Uccle. At the end of his secondary schooling, he became involved in the resistance and, from 1942 onwards, attended the clandestine courses organised by ULB professors and students, while officially enrolled as a civil engineering student at the University of Liège.

Under the pseudonym “Max,” Fraiteur had been active since 1941 in the Armée belge des partisans, better known as the Partisans Armés. On 14 April 1943, he took part in the assassination of the notorious collaborator Paul Colin, director of the collaborationist newspapers Le Nouveau Journal and Cassandre. The attack took place in the Le Nouveau Journal bookshop on Rue de la Montagne in Brussels, where Colin and his bodyguard were shot.

After the operation, Fraiteur and his companions André Bertulot and Maurice Raskin were arrested. Following interrogation and torture, Fraiteur was hanged at Fort Breendonk on 10 May 1943, alongside his two comrades. He was just shy of 19 years old.

In a note about Fraiteur, his biographer Jean Plainevaux remarked that the attack had its intended effect: Cassandre toned down its aggressive rhetoric and ceased its public smear campaigns and personal denunciations. Other collaborationist journalists also began to act more cautiously.

In honour of Fraiteur, a street, a bridge, and a bus stop in Brussels bear his name. A commemorative plaque at his former home at Rue de la Concorde 60 in Ixelles stands as a tribute to his life and courage.

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