1943 in Belgium

← 1942 1941 1940 1943 in Belgium → 1944 1945 1946
Decades:	1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s
See also:	Other events of 1943 List of years in Belgium

This is a page of the events in the year 1943 in Belgium.

Incumbents

• Monarch: Leopold III (prisoner)^[1]
• Prime Minister: Hubert Pierlot (in exile)
• Head of the occupying Military Administration in Belgium and Northern France: Alexander von Falkenhausen
• Head of the administrative staff of the Occupation: Eggert Reeder

Events

• 13 January – Cardinal van Roey issues a pastoral letter condemning terrorism.^[2]: 854
• 17 January – Léon Degrelle declares that Walloons are ethnically Germanic.^[2]: 854
• 20 January – Solo airstrike on the Gestapo's Brussels headquarters by Jean de Selys Longchamps.^[2]: 855
• 27 February – 750 Belgian police officers and gendarmes placed in detention by the occupying forces.^[2]: 856
• 7 March – Decree obliging students to spend six months as labourers.^[2]: 854
• 10 March – Decree confiscating church bells to be melted down for metal.^[2]: 854
• 15 March – Cardinal van Roey issues a pastoral letter condemning the seizure of church bells.^[2]: 854
• 5 April – Americans bomb Mortsel, killing over a thousand civilians.^[2]: 855
• 19 April – Members of the Resistance briefly stop a deportation train carrying Jewish prisoners to Auschwitz concentration camp.
• 20 April – Resistance attack on the office for conscription of compulsory labour destroys a large part of their files.^[2]: 855
• 16 July – Honoré Van Waeyenbergh, Rector of the Catholic University of Leuven, sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment for refusing to give the occupying forces access to university enrolment records.^[2]: 855
• 6 August – Occupying forces confiscate 60% of Belgian textile stock.^[2]: 854
• 7 September – Bombing of Brussels destroys over a thousand buildings.^[2]: 856
• 9 November – Resistance distribute an uncensored counterfeit edition of Le Soir^[2]: 856
• 6 December – Occupying forces requisition 129,000 tonnes of agricultural produce.^[2]: 854

Arts and architecture

Performances

• 17 March – First performance of Georges Sion's comedy La Matrone d'Ephèse in the Palace of Fine Arts, Brussels.^[2]: 854

Births

• 6 March – Noël Devisch, businessman
• 23 March – Marva Mollet, singer
• 5 April – Miet Smet, politician
• 14 April – Norbert De Cuyper, politician
• 25 April – Jean-Jacques Cassiman, geneticist
• 3 June – André Ernotte, film director (died 1999)
• 2 July – Walter Godefroot, cyclist
• 5 July – André Smets, politician (died 2019)
• 1 September – Claude De Bruyn, road safety advocate (died 2020)
• 1 October – Raymond Langendries, politician
• 5 October – Josly Piette, politician
• 1 November – Salvatore Adamo, singer
• 25 November – Victor Albert, politician (died 2005)
• 1 December – Danny Huwé, journalist (died 1989)

Deaths

• 27 January – Louis Fonsny, collaborationist newspaper editor.^[2]: 854
• 15 April – Paul Colin (born 1895), collaborationist art critic
• 10 May – Arnaud Fraiteur (born 1924), resistance fighter
• 16 August – Jean de Selys Longchamps (born 1912), fighter pilot
• 8 October – Gustave De Smet (born 1877), painter

References

1. "Leopold III, king of Belgium". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 28 March 2019.
2. Alain de Gueldre et al., Kroniek van België (Antwerp and Zaventem, 1987).