The Independence Front (FI) (in Dutch: Onafhankelijkheidsfront – OF) is a movement of the Belgian Internal Resistance founded in March 1941 by Dr Albert Marteaux (member of the Communist Party of Belgium), Abbé André Boland and Fernand Demany (also a Communist). The aim of this organization was to bring together the resistant Belgians of all opinions and tendencies, but the only political party that joined it as such was the Communist Party of Belgium. In 1942-43, the Independence Front was at the origin of Victor Martin’s mission at Auschwitz. This sociologist returned with a report on the fate of the Jews deported from Belgium which enabled the Belgian Resistance to become aware of the exact meaning of the deportations.
Three thousand Jewish children were thus hidden and saved in Belgium by a compassionate population.
During the war, the National Committee of the Independence Front brought together representatives of a large number of resistant organizations such as:
- The Belgian Army of Partisans (Armée belge des Partisans Armés (PA)),
- Milices Patriotiques (MP),
- Solidarité
- The Trade Union Struggle Committees,
- Free Wallonia,
- The Jewish Defence Committee (CDJ),
- LOMO (Professors of Official Secondary Education in Flanders),
- The clandestine newspaper Front
- Österreichische Freiheitsfront, an anti-fascist organisation created in Brussels by Austrian and German communist refugees.
Thanks to these various organizations as well as the help of the SOE which provided them in 1943 with Welrod silent pistols enabling them to discreetly eliminate a target, the Independence Front sets up sabotage operations, escape chains, a fake document service, and broadcasts two hundred and fifty different clandestine publications. This essential aspect of the war, the information war, came to fruition in the publication by the Independence Front on November 9, 1943, of the fals newspaper the “Faux Soir”.
Source: Wikipedia
