What had led the Germans to the inn? Timmie van Diepen unravels a war tragedy in his family

“This used to be café In de Dorstige Herten,” says Timmie van Diepen (36), at a white-painted house at the intersection of two streets. We are in Molenbeersel, in the northeastern corner of our country, a stone’s throw from the Dutch border. The political journalist of The Importance of Limburg grew up in the village himself. “This café belonged to Lambert Dirkx and his family,” says Van Diepen. “He was my great-great-grandfather.”

There is a plaque on the side of the building with Lambert’s name on it. His son, Willem Dirkx is also mentioned. He was Van Diepen’s great-grandfather. There are three other members of the Dirkx family on it. This place was the scene of a terrible war drama on August 22, 1944, in which nine victims were killedit is written. It is the darkest page in the history of Molenbeersel.

“It was seven in the morning,” says Van Diepen. “The family was sitting at the breakfast table when there was a knock at the front door. My great-great-grandfather Lambert opened the door and was immediately shot. The Germans had surrounded the inn on all sides. After the first shot, they opened fire on the entire building. My great-grandfather was sitting at the kitchen table – at the back of the inn – and was shot dead through the window.

“My great-grandfather’s three brothers then brought them outside. They held their hands above their heads and were placed against the wall near the front door. Then the Germans went to fetch three men from the resistance, whom they had arrested in the tram depot further away.”

Van Diepen now points to a street sign across the street. There was an electricity pole there in the summer of 1944. “A partisan was arrested at the tram depot, who was put against the wall here with the three brothers,” says Van Diepen. “His name was Mathieu Swennen. The Germans went to the cafe to get a rope and tied it around his neck. They forced the three brothers to hang him from the electricity pole.”

The Germans apparently wanted to make an example of Swennen. They placed a cardboard sign on his body, with the text: ‘This is how they punish the murderer of a German soldier.’ The brothers, together with three other arrestees, were deported to concentration camps and would never return. Yet another partisan was shot from the roof of the tram depot. That brings the balance to nine deaths.

Between Maas and Kempen

The plaque has only been hanging there since 2019. Until then, there was no trace of that ‘blackest page’ in this place. When Van Diepen was growing up, it was not discussed within the family. He first came into contact with the drama when, as a child, he went to the library to borrow books about the war past. In War between Maas and Kempen he found a photo and the name of Willem Dirkx. One evening, sometime in the 90s, he went to ask his grandmother if she knew him. “He was my father,” she replied. Van Diepen always remembered what she said shortly afterwards. “It was a mistake, they had nothing to do with it.”

As a child he didn’t question it. He also felt that his grandmother did not want to talk about it. Why would he open that old wound? But what did his grandmother actually mean? Why was the murder of her father and grandfather a mistake? Later, those questions started to haunt his mind more and more. It wasn’t until his grandmother passed away in 2013 that he realized there were no more opportunities to ask her about it.

“Five people from the same family who were murdered by mistake… I no longer believed the story,” says Van Diepen. “In a war, things sometimes happen by accident, such as a bomb landing in the wrong place. But this raid seemed very targeted. Why did the Germans specifically target my family?”

His grandmother was buried in the church of Molenbeersel, a few hundred meters from the inn where the drama took place. Directly opposite, a second cousin of Van Diepen runs a cafe. When we walk from the parking lot, Van Diepen stops at the corner of the street, opposite the church. “It was here,” he says. “This is where Max Günther got out. He looked around for a moment and then drove on to the inn. He is the man who led the raid against my family.”

Günther belonged to the German secret police, who had opened the hunt for the resistance. His real name was Emiel Van Thielen. He would become one of the most feared Belgian war criminals. “A real psychopath,” says Van Diepen. “After the brothers had hanged the partisan from the electricity pole, he entered the room of the inn with his shirt unbuttoned. He and his accomplices started pouring beer from the taps and he said, ‘We’re going to get things going here.’”

Key witnesses

It took Van Diepen years of research to accurately reconstruct the raid. He started his search with his own relatives. But they too were in the dark. “I thought I would find the truth if I came across key witnesses who live nearby,” says Van Diepen. “But in the end it turned out not to be that easy. I interviewed a total of sixty people for the book. Usually I just rang the doorbell. Here in Molenbeersel it helped that I speak the local dialect. This way I could quickly gain trust.”

In the village, the cause of the massacre was blamed on the resistance, Van Diepen heard during his conversations. The Germans were out for revenge because the resistance had shot a German soldier in Kessenich. When the German column entered Molenbeersel, a resistance fighter – who was hiding in the inn – fired a shot from an orchard, after which German soldiers invaded the building in blind rage. Albert Conen was the name of the resistance fighter. He was held accountable for decades because he allegedly committed a massacre. “Conen was my great-grandfather’s brother-in-law,” says Van Diepen. “So he would have initiated the murder of his own family?”

When the first shots of the raid rang out, witnesses saw him running away, leading them to believe he had fired. But while everyone believed he was hiding in the inn, he was actually in a house down the road. Conen had never been to the spot that everyone pointed to as the place from which he had shot. On closer inspection, the story didn’t add up. “In my book I show how collective memory works,” says Van Diepen. “Rumors and gossip have taken on a life of their own, even if they were not true.”

‘In my book I show how collective memory works. Rumors and gossip have taken on a life of their own, even if they were not true’

Van Diepen started his quest just in time. Ten years ago there were still people alive who played an active role in the story in 1944 and wanted to help him. He was still able to speak to Willy Gielkens. The ninety-year-old was the last resistance fighter in Molenbeersel. Gielkens was a member of the partisans during the war. That movement was originally communist inspired. But ideology was not the reason why members joined in Catholic Limburg. “They often didn’t think much of communism,” says Van Diepen. “They were mostly farm boys who wanted to get into it. They were one of the most active, but also one of the most violent, organizations during the war.”

The entire province had ended up in a spiral of violence during the last summer of the war. Actions by the resistance were followed by reprisals from the German military administration, with the Germans calling on Flemish collaborators. According to some historians, the situation in the province resembled a full-blown civil war, pitting family members, friends or acquaintances against each other. Gielkens took Van Diepen to a café in Maaseik where, as a partisan, he had to kill a collaborator. The man turned out to be an old schoolmate. “I asked how he could kill someone he knew like that,” says Van Diepen. “He replied that he had been completely radicalized at the time, brainwashed by propaganda.”

During his search, Van Diepen also spoke to the ‘other side’. One of his most special encounters was with a woman who was a collaborator at the time. Milia Laveaux lived far away in Helmond in the Netherlands and spoke very politely. But when she went back deep into her memories, she started speaking in the Molenbeersel dialect again. “She worked in the border office during the war,” says Van Diepen. “When the Germans arrested smugglers, it was her job to search the women.”

Laveaux was then a girl around 20, who, according to some, had amorous escapades with the German soldiers. “I don’t want to judge it,” says Van Diepen. “I think as a young girl she wanted to enjoy life. By working with the Germans, she also fared slightly better. During the war she was the only one in the village who could get washing powder.”

However, the family found it difficult to read the passages about her. But Van Diepen believes it is important to include them so that readers get a full picture of that time. Milia Laveaux’s brother was murdered by the resistance just before the liberation. Tensions are sometimes still palpable in the village. Molenbeersel never completely left the war behind.

“We think about that period in terms of white and black,” says Van Diepen. “But reality does not fit into such a framework. I think it’s good that the resistance is now getting more attention. I applaud the initiative of the non-profit organization ‘Heroes of the Resistance’, which wants to breathe new life into the commemoration. But I personally find it very difficult to talk about the resistance with the paradigm of heroes versus villains.”

Green light

But what had led the Germans to the inn? There was no answer to this in the many conversations Van Diepen had. The only hope lay in the files of the court that had investigated the raid and attacks in the region. But those files remained under lock and key. Only the families of convicts are usually allowed to view them.

Van Diepen received support for his research from several experts, such as Ghent University historian Koen Aerts. They have written letters asking for Van Diepen to have access to the documents. He finally got the green light in 2019. For the first time in about seventy years, he was able to loosen the strings tied around the files. By plowing through thousands of papers, Van Diepen discovered the ins and outs.

The Germans had been misled by a partisan, who hoped to save a hiding place from the resistance by sending them to the inn. So in a sense it was a ‘mistake’. “I have talked to historians about it,” says Van Diepen. “The Germans hardly did anything to summarily execute and hang people in Flanders. These were scenes that you previously saw on the Eastern Front, where the Germans committed such atrocities. The fact that it happened to my family had to do with figures such as Max Günther who wanted to fight the partisans with such methods, but also with the spiral of violence that had arisen in Limburg.

“For my family, the publication of the book will be an emotional process. In August we travel together by bus to Breendonk and to the German camps, in the wake of the three brothers who were deported. There are still many questions within the family. I think the trip will be an important moment for processing.”

Timmie van Diepen, The raid: the true story behind a hushed-up war drama, Pelckmans Publishers, 320 pages, 29.50 euros