Jean-Baptiste De Schrijver
1893-1945
Jean-Baptiste De Schrijver, a lieutenant colonel and resistance fighter, was arrested in 1942 and disappeared under the Nacht und Nebel decree into the Nazi camp system. He died on 9 February 1945 in Gross-Rosen, after a life of military service and resistance.
On the eve of the Second World War, Jean-Baptiste De Schrijver from Ghent was a lieutenant colonel in the Belgian army. After the occupation, he joined the underground resistance, specifically the Geheim Leger (Secret Army).
In September 1942, disaster struck: he was arrested on charges of espionage and illegal possession of weapons. De Schrijver was deported to the Esterwegen concentration camp as a Nacht und Nebel prisoner.
The Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) decree, issued on 7 December 1941 by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel on Hitler’s orders, was a brutal response to growing resistance activity in occupied Europe. Thousands of resistance members disappeared without a trace into a network of German camps. Family and friends were left in complete uncertainty. Many endured the horror of Vernichtung durch Arbeit—systematic exhaustion through slave labour, with death as the intended outcome.
At Esterwegen, together with fellow prisoner and former Ghent alderman Henri Story, De Schrijver became a member of the clandestine Masonic lodge Liberté Chérie in February–March 1944. Shortly afterwards, he was transferred to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.
Jean-Baptiste De Schrijver died there on 9 February 1945.
Sources: