On August 17, 1944, a car carrying the mayor of Greater Charleroi, Oswald Englebin, was ambushed by resistance fighters on a road between the Charleroi district of Monceau-sur-Sambre and the nearby town of Courcelles. Englebin, his wife, and his son were all killed in the attack. Within hours, Rexist militias launched brutal reprisals, pulling civilians from their homes and executing them in what became known as the Courcelles massacre.
Oswald Englebin was born on December 27, 1893, in the small town of Senzeille in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium. During his military service in 1914, he suffered an injury that prevented him from taking part in the First World War. In the interwar years, he married Furphie and the marriage produced a son.
Belgium was entering a period of deep economic and political crisis during this time. The Great Depression brought economic hardship, social tension, and fear of communism, which drove many toward radical ideas. Among them was Rex, a movement founded in the early 1930s by Léon Degrelle. Originally a Catholic publishing group called Christus Rex, meaning Christ the King, it soon evolved into a political force combining religious traditionalism, nationalism, and authoritarianism.
Rex called for the moral regeneration of Belgium, the defense of Catholic values, and the rejection of parliamentary democracy. It denounced corruption, communism, and liberalism, promoting a vision of a disciplined, unified, and devout state. In 1936, the movement won more than 11 percent of the national vote, but the success was short-lived. Inspired by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, Rex grew increasingly fascist and openly sympathetic to Nazi Germany.
The Second World War began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Belgium was attacked on May 10, 1940, and after 18 days of fighting, the Belgian army surrendered on May 28. During the occupation, Englebin aligned himself with the Rexist movement and entered local collaborationist politics.
In October 1941, he was appointed Rexist mayor of Trazegnies, a small town in Wallonia. When the Germans created a centralized administrative district named Greater Charleroi in July 1942, he became the municipal executive in charge of supplies. After the resistance assassinated Prosper Gills, the mayor of Greater Charleroi, Englebin was appointed to succeed him in December 1942.
As mayor, he became increasingly visible at official events staged by the Nazi authorities. In March 1944, he welcomed Léon Degrelle to Charleroi City Hall and praised the Belgian volunteers fighting for Germany on the Eastern Front. A month later, he formally received SS troops who had recently returned from fighting in the Soviet Union, delivering a speech to Degrelle, senior Nazi officials, and Rexist officials.
On the afternoon of August 17, 1944, Englebin left Charleroi city hall in a car heading toward his home in Trazegnies. His son Philippe was driving, with the mayor’s bodyguard Jean Marcel Duken seated beside him and a submachine gun placed between his legs. In the back sat Oswald Englebin and his wife Furphie. The vehicle ran on wood gas due to wartime fuel shortages and struggled up the steep road.
At a place known as Roux, Duken noticed a car stopped on the right side of the road. A man stood beside it, seemingly changing a wheel. In the next instant, four other men suddenly appeared and opened fire with automatic weapons. Duken tried to reach for the gun, but Philippe had already been hit. Mortally wounded, he collapsed forward, losing control of the car. It rolled forward and slipped into a roadside ditch as the attackers continued firing.
Two of the gunmen closed in, ordering the occupants to get out with their hands up. Only Duken could move. The 50-year-old Englebin, his wife, and his son had already been fatally wounded. More shots rang out at close range. Later counts found six bullet impacts in Englebin’s body, 18 in his wife’s, and four in Philippe’s. Duken slipped away to raise the alarm.
When he returned, three Rexist brigade members had already arrived and attempted to pursue the attackers without success. Enraged, they launched immediate reprisals. Believing without any evidence that the attackers might be hiding among passersby, the Rexist gunmen turned on the first civilians they encountered. A truck happened to arrive carrying two men from the Monceau-Fontaine coal mines. Commercial director Paul Vondenbar and works director Jean Lini were threatened with execution. Lini managed to escape, but Vondenbar was gunned down in the street and collapsed mortally wounded.
Later that day, the Rexists widened their reprisals across the region. During the night of August 17, more than 20 civilians were dragged to a requisitioned house in Courcelles, close to the place where Englebin and his family were assassinated. They were locked in the cellar as their captors prepared their execution. Among them was Father Pierre Armi, the dean of Charleroi, known for his outspoken criticism of the Nazi occupiers. Others included lawyers, engineers, and police officers.
At dawn, the Rexists started the engines of their vehicles to drown out the sound of gunfire. One by one, the hostages were led outside. Father Armi reportedly offered comfort to the others before his death. Each victim was shot in the back of the head. Their bodies were dumped without ceremony near the spot where Englebin had fallen. Nineteen were executed this way, the single largest group of victims in the Courcelles massacre.
The killings did not stop there. Later that day, Jean Van Ugarde Deandre, president of the Charleroi Red Cross, was taken away and shot with three bullets to the back. Elizabeth Derida, the housekeeper of a local architect, was also murdered. In total, 27 civilians were killed in Courcelles between August 17 and 18, 1944. Amid the slaughter, two prisoners survived. Marcel Stoka was released before the transfer, while German Gob was spared when a Rexist cousin recognized her.
Englebin had previously stated that he wanted a private funeral. Despite the Rexist leadership pushing for a large public ceremony, his burial on August 21, 1944, was held quietly and without fanfare. Despite the discreet setting, numerous Rexist figures attended.
The massacre at Courcelles did not go unnoticed by the occupiers. German authorities not only tolerated the killings but actively used them for propaganda. Newspapers across Belgium declared that Englebin and his family had been murdered by so-called terrorists. In reality, the victims in Courcelles were innocent civilians chosen precisely to spread fear and strengthen collaborationist control.
Separately, the Germans also carried out their own reprisal, executing 20 hostages who had already been held for earlier resistance actions. Only weeks later, Allied forces liberated Belgium in September 1944. The massacre was still a fresh memory, and the pursuit of collaborators began almost immediately.
Belgian authorities launched investigations into the events at Courcelles. Out of around 150 suspected participants, 97 were identified. Eighty were captured and put on trial. On November 10, 1947, justice was carried out in the city of Charleroi. Twenty-seven Rexists were executed by firing squad, including leading figures such as Victor Matis and Louisie Kolar. Joseph Pvenas, the regional leader and lawyer, also faced trial for his role in organizing the killings.
During the Second World War, around 88,000 Belgian citizens lost their lives, including 25,000 Belgian Jews who were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps. Oswald Englebin chose to collaborate with the regime responsible for those deaths, and in the end, he and his family paid the highest price for that choice.