About

A Belgian premiere =

A Belgian premiere

Wikibase Resistance is the fruit of a pilot project of the State Archives in Belgium carried out by CegeSoma. This platform enables research about more than 150,000 persons who were involved in one form or another in the different resistance activities led in Belgium during the Second World War. The database contains structured and multilingual data that can be read be humans and machines and allows for simple search queries as well as advanced transversal research in a plenitude of information on the basis of a name, a date of birth, an address or the denomination of a resistance movement or network. It is geared towards the large public as well as seasoned researchers and historians, and intended as a complement to the topical portal site Belgium WWII about the Second World War in Belgium. In the long term, an even more user-friendly research interface shall be developed that enables easier acces and more thorough research in the data.

Thousands of data

The platform houses thousands of data and shall be fed continuously in the course of the coming months through supply and verification of the remaining data. Today, the data contained in the individual files opened by the State Security Service (Sûreté de l’Etat/Staatsveiligheid) about intelligence and intervention agents (46 340) and the files opened by armed resistance movements for the recognition of their members as armed resitants (35 130) are conserved by CegeSoma and have been integrated into the database.

Data from the following records will also be added:

• 25 247 personal files about the Status of resistance fighter of the underground press conserved by the Archives Service for War Victims, and an additional 15 247 preparatory files from Union de la presse clandestine and Front de l’Indépendance.
• 44 076 personal files about the Status of civil resitance fighter conserved by the Archives Service for War Victims, and 5 183 forms filed by the Front de l’Indépendance.
• ~140 000 personal files of the Office de la Résistance about the Status of armed resistance fighter conserved by the National Archives.

A long-term collaboration project

The project was launched in spring 2021 and is coordinated by Anne Chardonnens and Fabrice Maerten (CegeSoma); it is based on the work started in autumn 2019 for the publication Papy était-il un héros ?

Wikibase Resistance is the fruit of a multidisciplinary team assisted by several volunteers, trainees and student workers as well as personnel of CegeSoma. See the dedicated project webpage for further information.

Help

Questions about Wikibase Resistance? Do you need assistance for your research? Please consult the FAQ for further information. A number of predefined search queries are also at your disposal: Link .

Access to data

The infrastructure that hosts the data is based on the Wikibase software suite. Open and re-useable data are at the core of this project. They are saved in a structured format that can be accessed in three different ways:

• Via simple search query with a search term (name of a person or a movement etc.)
• Through software using an [api.php|API] (+ Links)
• Using SPARQL queries for advanced searches (+ Links)

Terms of use

Would you like to re-use or publish contents from Wikibase Resistance? Please consult our practical information page to make sure to re-use contents in the correct manner.

Contributors

We would like to thank everyone involved in the data feeding and processing work:

Maximilian Amerstorfer, Sirine Aki, Martin Bagnoud, Eléonore Bastogne, Roland Baumann, Dora Beullens, Zeyneb Buchal, Bernard Burton, Marie-Hélène Calicis, Moritz Clodi, Hedwig Degelaen, Emile Dejehansart, Yves Delvaux, Marc De Win, Jonathan D'Haese, Matthias Domsgen, Julie Douley, Mathilde Fabri, Clémentine Flament, Samuel Frieling, Francesca Giuffredi, Julian Hagenauer, Hilde Keppens, Luc Ketels, Florian Kössler, Monica Lacanale, Zakaria Lamarti, Francis Lambrechts, Adil Lasouad, Fouzia Mahi, Darren Manouvrier, Yvette Martin, Mohamed Taieb Mokkadem, Pierre Mortier, Felix Oberhüber, Noah Plattner, Maximilian Pröll, Hasna Richa, Cecilia Saerens, Ilias Sari, Julika Schulze, Jula Skomski, Alexandre Stroinovsky, Jacques Sweers, Nico Theunissen, Felix Thurner, Kathleen Vandenberghe, Sarah Vanreybrouck.

Publications

• General articles about the Resistance in Belgium and portraits of resistance fighters can be found on the patform Belgium WWII.

• For a global overview about the Resistance, its remembrance culture, the national recognition status and archive fonds with personal files about resistance fighters see: Fabrice Maerten (dir.), Papy était-il un héros ? Sur les traces des hommes et des femmes dans la Résistance pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Tielt, 2020, 352 p. [out of print].

• For a bibliography about the Resistance in Belgium see: Resistance in Belgium (1940-1944). Selected bibliography.

• For a critical assessment of the sources about the Resistance see Fabrice Maerten, "Les archives de et sur la Résistance. Par-delà leurs limites, une richesse propice à de nouvelles perspectives" , in Revue belge d'histoire contemporaine/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis, 2022, no. 1-2, p. 226-240, available online.

• The descriptions of most underground journals published between 1940 and 1944 in Belgium can be found in the following guide: José Gotovitch (dir.), Guide de la presse clandestine de Belgique, Bruxelles, Centre de Recherches et d'Etudes historiques de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, 1991, 214 p., available online (in French). A digitised version of some of these journals can be found on The Belgian War Press.

Contact

For content-related questions or if you would like to participate in the projet as a trainee/volunteer, please contact Fabrice Maerten. Technical questions or comments can be addressed to Anne Chardonnens.