{"id":47691,"date":"2017-08-03T17:08:27","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T17:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/e-h-jozef-de-vroey-1912-1999\/"},"modified":"2026-11-08T23:39:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T23:39:10","slug":"e-h-jozef-de-vroey-1912-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/e-h-jozef-de-vroey-1912-1999\/","title":{"rendered":"Rev. Jozef De Vroey (1912-1999)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>REV. JOZEF DE VROEY ( 1912-1999)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-67 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/1-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"430\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/1-1.jpg 430w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/1-1-215x300.jpg 215w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 430px) 100vw, 430px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-69 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"452\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/3.jpg 452w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/3-226x300.jpg 226w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 452px) 100vw, 452px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-70 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"516\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/4.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/4-300x206.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/4-508x350.jpg 508w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-71 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/5-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"776\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/5-1.jpg 776w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/5-1-300x232.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/5-1-768x594.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/5-1-508x393.jpg 508w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 776px) 100vw, 776px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-72 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/6.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"751\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/6.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/6-240x300.jpg 240w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/6-508x636.jpg 508w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-73 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/7.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"440\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/7.jpg 440w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/7-220x300.jpg 220w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 440px) 100vw, 440px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-74 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/8.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"446\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/8.jpg 446w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/8-223x300.jpg 223w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 446px) 100vw, 446px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-75 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/9.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"476\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/9.jpg 476w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/9-238x300.jpg 238w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 476px) 100vw, 476px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-76 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/10.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/10.jpg 474w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/10-237x300.jpg 237w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-77 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/11-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"750\" height=\"468\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/11-1.jpg 750w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/11-1-300x187.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/11-1-508x317.jpg 508w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-78 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/12.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"572\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/12.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/12-300x286.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/12-508x484.jpg 508w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-79\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/13.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"369\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/13.jpg 369w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/13-185x300.jpg 185w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 369px) 100vw, 369px\" \/> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-80\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/14.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"396\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/14.jpg 396w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/14-198x300.jpg 198w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 396px) 100vw, 396px\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><i>text from: Het Oude Land van Aarschot<br \/>Volume XXXIV, Number 2, June 1999, by Brigitte Raskin<\/i><\/li>\n<li><b>IN MEMORIAM JOZEF DE VROEY (1912 &#8211; 1999)<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Throughout his long life, the priest Jozef De Vroey bore witness to the event that left a deep mark on that life: the massacre the Germans carried out among the people of Aarschot on 19 August 1914. He wanted us, his fellow townspeople, to imprint that day on our collective memory and to draw lessons from it. What he told, I want to tell, and we must tell from now on, now that at the end of March we had to take leave of this driven, fascinating, kind man.<\/p>\n<p>Below I quote what I wrote about 19 August 1914 and Jozef De Vroey in my book De Eeuw van de Ekster. The dramatic events I am speaking of were preceded by the German capture of Aarschot. Several German regiments were quartered in the town, and the highest-ranking officer, Colonel Stenger, took up residence with Mayor Tielemans. His house stood on the corner formed by the Peterseliestraat, now the Martelarenstraat, and the Grote Markt. Unrest reigned in the town, shots were fired and fires were set.<\/p>\n<p>Colonel Stenger also heard the bangs in the early evening. He came out onto the balcony to see for himself. On the other side of the Grote Markt, diagonally opposite the mayor&#8217;s house, flames were leaping up. The German cavalry captain had had a house set on fire there because, in his view, snipers were hidden behind the windows, even though none were smoked out. Shouting and uproar rang out in the street, shots were fired back and forth. In all that chaos the colonel was suddenly struck by a bullet. Stenger collapsed, mortally wounded. It was later established that one of his own men had used the wild shooting to take out the bully Stenger with a well-aimed shot. (&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is going to be serious for me,\u201d said Tielemans when Stenger had been hoisted over the windowsill and laid out on a bed with his head under a towel. The mayor was right. Within half an hour a reign of terror broke out that turned his town into a place of widows and orphans in a single night.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the century there is still one person living in Aarschot who experienced the war drama of 1914 at close quarters: Jef De Vroey. As a boy of two he stared uncomprehendingly at the events and then saw them worked over again and again in his nightmares. In an attempt to exorcise the trauma, he investigated his town&#8217;s wartime past down to the bone, but in doing so became more than ever the witness.<\/p>\n<p>The father of Jef De Vroey, like so many people of Aarschot, worked at the Tielemans brewery and lived with his wife and five children in the Peterseliestraat in the town centre. On that fateful Wednesday they were all together in the living room. Fear had gripped them when they had seen German officers shooting at passers-by for fun from a bedroom window at the neighbours&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Around seven o&#8217;clock the commotion in the street grew. Soldiers drove everyone outside. They tore little Jef from his father&#8217;s arms and pushed him against his mother. The women and children had to stand by the pump in the middle of the square, while the men and older boys were herded into a corner. Before darkness fell, more than eighty men were marched off to the Leuvensesteenweg. On the way three of them were released: a tailor on crutches, a sickly man and an old man who could not keep up. At the caf\u00e9 \u201cAu repos des cycliste\u201d three boys were allowed to run for it. The prisoners were then seventy-eight in number.<\/p>\n<p>They were pushed across a ditch into a meadow. There the German rage against Aarschot erupted in a horrific massacre. The seventy-eight had to walk across the meadow three abreast. The executioners shot the praying, weeping and cursing men in the back. As confusion grew, they fired wildly. A neighbouring house that was on fire lit everything up, yet three men were still able to flee into the darkness. One rammed the soldier next to him in the stomach and leapt forward, another ducked the bullets and plunged headlong into the dark, the third screamed and sprinted away. He would lie in a ditch the whole night and hear groaning all those hours and sometimes a coup de gr\u00e2ce, the euphemistic name for a second execution.<\/p>\n<p>On the square, little Jef had stayed pressed close to his mother. While his father was taken away, he watched wide-eyed as the town burned, a hell stoked by devils in uniform around the doomed at the pump, who had to remain silent as if murdered instead of screaming out their fear and horror.<\/p>\n<p>The first group of men had barely left when the next was already being brought in. This time the prisoners were bound, hands behind their backs, with ropes that cut like copper wire. Around eleven o&#8217;clock Mayor Tielemans, his son and his brother were also brought to the square. His wife, standing by the pump, saw her husband&#8217;s gaze scan his house and the crowd in search of his wife and daughter. She did not make a sound, only watched the three of them go as they, in their turn, were marched off with dozens of men to the Leuvensesteenweg.<\/p>\n<p>The bound men had to sit down in a potato field, while the Tielemans appeared before a \u201ccourt martial\u201d in a farmhouse. The so-called judges considered a popular uprising proven and sentenced the three instigators and their accomplices to death. The complicity of the people of Aarschot was estimated at one in three. For that reason twenty-five of the almost eighty prisoners were singled out in the potato field. The fifty who were spared had to turn towards the road while behind their backs the Germans took revenge on the people of Aarschot with a mass execution. (&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>The seventy-five dead were thrown into the ground hastily and in disorder by German soldiers. The twenty-eight others were laid in a large grave respectfully and carefully by fellow citizens, who had been picked up in the neighbourhood and brought to the potato field, where they found a horrific tangle of corpses, the memorial of all wars in all times.<\/p>\n<p>Jef Devroey was two when his father was murdered and not yet ten when his mother died. After her death he was raised by an aunt and uncle. He became a priest and teacher in Antwerp and Leuven, but remained first and foremost a man of Aarschot. He wrote a book about the war drama and ended it with a letter to the Germans, which he signed \u201cone of the two hundred and thirty-four war orphans of Aarschot 1914\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>His faith dictated that he \u201cforgive and forget\u201d, he told the Germans, but it sounds teeth-gritted.(&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>In his living room hangs a collage: beneath a drawing of shooting spiked helmets, falling victims and a portrait of his father, the son stuck cartridge cases found on the Leuvensesteenweg and the rope that bound Mayor Tielemans&#8217;s hands. \u201cForgive yes, forget never,\u201d it says above. The drawing is also by his hand. From his youth he preferred to pick up a pencil or brush rather than a pen. The silhouette of the church of Aarschot, flags and monuments became his stencils. There is often blood on his work. His Germans are all soldiers and have a caricatured \u201cugly mug\u201d. Their helmets, hands and boots are extra large. The spiked helmets of 1914 and the swastika-bearers of 1940: they all look the same. After the Second World War his motto became \u201cAarschot, besides a martyr town, also a hero town\u201d. The martyr he draws as the man who was shot in the back and collapsed, his father; the hero as the man who straightened his back and raised his head, my uncle Joseph, when he faced the Nazis in 1943. (&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>In the sixties it all became too much for Jef De Vroey, and he flared up in righteous indignation at the neglect of the meadow of rage and the potato field of revenge. About the Leuvensesteenweg he wrote: \u201cWith us in the Peterseliestraat, where all the fathers were killed, that name had nothing to do with a highway: it had become a concept over which our mothers&#8217; voices stumbled.\u201d Hammering at oblivion, De Vroey cried murder and fire. He campaigned for a church to be built \u201con the site of the tragedy\u201d, and so it happened: the Sint-Rochuskapel (Saint Roch Chapel).(&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>De Vroey&#8217;s book about Aarschot in 1914, less than four months after the horrific events, when the German occupation and Aarschot&#8217;s wartime life had taken settled form, saw the mass graves being dug up. A tense moment, because here and there people still hoped that a missing man had fled rather than been shot down. Emptying the pits would give certainty and the dead could be buried decently in the cemetery. A contractor was in charge of the works, priests and notables were witnesses, and the people stood nearby for three days. (&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>The bodies were unrecognisable, but were identified by means of objects they had in their pockets: a house painter&#8217;s scissors, an angling champion&#8217;s fishing lines, pipes, watches, keys that relatives could take home. (&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>Like a litany, Jef De Vroey put into words the eternal story of people who pass away and things that remain. He numbered, named and honoured the victims one by one, writing among other things the following: \u201cMy late father was the sixteenth body to be recovered. He was 44 years old. Father was recognised by his wedding ring. He was also wearing his rosary, a wallet, a penknife and a handkerchief. On his chest he wore a large medal of the Sacred Heart through the middle of which the bullet had passed. That pierced medal is our most sacred possession.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jozef De Vroey insisted that this medal be buried with him. He also insisted that we call the Sint-Rochuskapel the Sint-Rochus Memorial. Let us please do so, in memory of him, of his father and of all the martyrs of 1914.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Brigitte Raskin<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Het Kabinet - E.H. De Vroey\" width=\"620\" height=\"349\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/I-ltFHEkLiA?list=PL_EbsUAK1AyR0kyV2-KVucyBFPeIWmb42\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/thumbnail_IMG_5594.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-3191\" src=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/thumbnail_IMG_5594-677x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"938\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/thumbnail_IMG_5594-677x1024.jpg 677w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/thumbnail_IMG_5594-198x300.jpg 198w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/thumbnail_IMG_5594-508x768.jpg 508w, https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/thumbnail_IMG_5594.jpg 710w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008080;\">Richard Vermaelen was the brother of my great-grandmother, Josephine Van Kerckhoven Vermaelen.  Richard Vermaelen was a bespoke shoemaker at Peterseliestraat number 28.  He was married to Louise Van Cappellen of Aarschot, the daughter of a school inspector. The couple had six children.  One of the sons became parish priest of Laeken and married my parents in 1961.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008080;\">Pieter Van Kerckhoven<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>REV. JOZEF DE VROEY ( 1912-1999) \u00a0 text from: Het Oude Land van AarschotVolume XXXIV, Number 2, June 1999, by Brigitte Raskin IN MEMORIAM JOZEF DE VROEY (1912&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","category-uncategorized-en","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49079,"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47691\/revisions\/49079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.museum-aarschot.be\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}