Sign outside the Breendonk transit camp warning that tresspassers will be shot.

Breendonk(Belgium)1940-1944


 


At the border of Edegem and Mortsel, couple of miles from Antwerp city(Belgium), a factory was founded: the Minerva factory. The one that made those famous Minerva cars.
Lots of people found work and settled nearby. The managerian board granted very good social extra's for those times! Like extra money for holidays, shorter work weeks...
but then the WWI came and the factory got confiscated.
After the liberation the factory started up again, but after the death of the manager (originally a Dutch person) the business went down....
Another WW was announced and again the factory got confiscated.
The Germans who occupied the area saw the advantage of the Antwerp harbour, the nearby Antwerp airport, the railroad that led very near to this factory. They made the plan that their planes would not longer been put on transport to the East for repair, but that they could be repaired here, in what was called now the Erla factory.

The resistance kept close note about what went in and what went out and passed this information to the allies.

It was not without importance that this factory needed to be sabotaged.

The allies chose for a very aggressive attack: instead of sabotaging from within, they chose for heavy bombing.

Hence world wars have one big thing in advantage: the development of new technologies. The Germans had made big process so the allies were working too!

A new measuring equipment was invented. It would help the bomber to calculate where the boms would be falling: the first precision bombing.

It used the coordinates of altitude, edge of descend and speed... a calculation between those gave you the exact coordinates where to drop the bombs. 
That day they flew in... but already from the wrong direction. Their arrival was announced long before they came so the ground defence of the Germans was prepared.

When the planes finally arrived over Antwerp, they were so severely taken under attack that they had to zigzag all the time to avoid the flak launched at them.
A few got hit (later on the Germans took the pilot for a ride to let him see what a real apocalypse they have brought to us).

Due to the avoiding manouvres, the calculations of the targeting machine became completely useless. Nevertheless in this densed populated area they decided to drop all the bombs they had.

The result was catastrophycal! About 2 of the 900 bombs hit the target, the Erla factory, killing the workers and let most of them burn alife.
All the rest of the bombs fell on houses, crowded streets (it was a sunny Spring day) and.... on several schools. In the Sint Lutgardisschool only 18 kids of the hundreds survived the raid. Other schools were  severely hit as well.
That day almost 1000 people died in this little village and a multitude was hurt, some mutilated for life.
Not one family escaped disaster but some of them really got hit badly.

Afterwards it proofed that many of the kids were lucky: the bomb that fell just beneath their classroom didn't exploded.


The survivors were marked for life!

When cities got an iron cross after the war, as a recognizion of being a city having suffered, Mortsel applied for such a cross too.

Guess what? as this was a friendly bombardment, it was denied... 


Friendy bombardment ,5th april 1943

Three volunteer policemen (other caption says volunteer fire fighters) stand outside the opera house in besieged Warsaw. They are watching an air duel over the city. On the column next to the men is a propaganda poster that says: "To Arms. United We Will Defeat the Enemy!"

The picture was taken by Julien Bryan. It is said he was the only foreign journalist in the city during the siege.
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Evillittlekenny