10 May 1940. Nazi Germany invades Belgium and quickly occupies the industrial city of Charleroi. The occupiers impose strict control with new rules, propaganda, and a local administration willing to work with them. As resistance groups form, members of the Rexist movement step in to run the city for the Nazi authorities.
Among them is a local collaborator who rises quickly through the political ranks and becomes mayor of Charleroi. He appears at official events, oversees wartime supplies, and tries to control a population growing increasingly hostile. By mid-1944, especially after the Allies land in Normandy, tensions in the region are extremely high.
On 17 August 1944, as he travels home with his wife and son, resistance fighters ambush their car and open fire. All three are killed. Within hours, Rexist militias launch brutal reprisals, pulling civilians from their homes and executing them in what becomes one of the deadliest acts of the occupation, the Courcelles massacre. The name of the assassinated Nazi collaborator is Oswald Englebin.
Oswald Englebin was born on 27 December 1893 in the small town of Seneffe 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, which lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918.
In the interwar years Englebin married Flore Philippe, and the marriage produced a son. At the same time, Belgium was entering a period of deep economic and political crisis. As the Great Depression hit Belgium, the country descended into economic crisis and political unrest.
Economic hardship, social tension, and fear of communism 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 defence of Catholic values, and the rejection of parliamentary democracy.
It denounced corruption, communism, and liberalism, instead promoting a vision of a disciplined, unified, and devout state. In 1936, the movement shocked the country by winning 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, causing Degrelle to lose the support of moderate Catholics and conservatives who had once backed him.
The Second World War began on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Belgium was attacked on 10 May 1940, and after eighteen days of fighting, the Belgian Army surrendered on 28 May. During the occupation, Oswald 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 in July 1942 the Germans created a centralized administrative district named Greater Charleroi, he became the municipal executive in charge of Supplies. After the resistance assassinated Prosper Teughels, 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.
These public displays of loyalty placed him firmly at the centre of collaborationist authority in the region. On 17 August 1944, just after noon, Englebin left Charleroi City Hall in a car heading toward his home in Trazegnies. His son Philippe was driving, with the mayor’s bodyguard, gendarme Marcel Duquesnes, seated beside him and a submachine gun placed between his legs. In the back sat Oswald Englebin and his wife, Flore Philippe.
The vehicle, running on wood gas due to wartime fuel shortages, struggled up the steep road between the Charleroi district of Monceau-sur-Sambre and the nearby town of Courcelles. At a place known as Rognac, Duquesnes 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. Duquesnes tried to reach for the gun, but Philippe had already been hit. Mortally wounded, he collapsed forward, losing control of the car. It rolled backward 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 Duquesnes could move. The fifty-year-old Oswald 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, eighteen in his wife’s, and four in Philippe’s. Mrs.
Englebin was slumped forward, her face turned toward the door. Englebin lay still beside the car. Philippe remained stretched across the seat. Duquesnes 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 Van den Berghe and works director Jean Ligny. Threatened with execution, both tried to flee. Ligny managed to escape. Van den Berghe was gunned down in the street and collapsed, mortally wounded.
This killing marked the beginning of the reprisals that would soon culminate in the Courcelles massacre. Later that day, the Rexists widened their reprisals across the region. During the night of 17 August, more than twenty civilians were dragged to a requisitioned house in Courcelles, close to the place where Oswald Englebin and his family were assassinated. They were locked in the cellar as their captors prepared their execution.
Among them was Father Pierre Harmignie, the dean of Charleroi, known for his outspoken criticism of the Nazi occupiers. Others included lawyers, engineers, and police officers, respected figures who had served as pillars of their community. 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 Harmignie reportedly offered comfort to the others before his death, saying: “I die, and we all die, so that peace may reign in the world, and so that men may love one another.” Each victim was shot in the back of the head, their bodies 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, Germaine Van Hoegaerden-Dewandre, president of the Charleroi Red Cross, was taken away and shot with three bullets to the back. Elisabeth De Ridder, the housekeeper of a local architect, was also murdered.
In total, twenty-seven civilians were killed in Courcelles between 17 and 18 August 1944. Amid the slaughter, two prisoners survived. Marcel Stoquart was released before the transfer, while Germaine Gobbe was spared when a Rexist cousin recognized her. For the rest, no mercy was shown. Englebin had previously stated that he wanted a private funeral.
Despite the Rexist leadership pushing for a large public ceremony, his burial on 21 August 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. Entirely separately, the Germans also carried out their own reprisal, executing twenty hostages who had already been held for earlier Resistance actions.
It was a brutal reminder that under occupation, both the collaborationists and the Nazis used terror as a weapon of control. 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 10 November 1947, justice was carried out in the city of Charleroi. Twenty-seven Rexists were executed by firing squad, including leading figures such as Victor Matthys, who had served as interim leader of the party, and Louis Collard, his successor.
Joseph Pévenasse, 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.
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