The parrot is not dead: Secret agents Albert Deweer, Albert Mélot and Albert Wouters-Ghent 1944

Ghent 1944 Marc Verschooris, associate researcher at CEGESOMA, puts three secret agents in the spotlight: Albert Deweer, Albert Mélot and Albert Wouters. Based on numerous hitherto unknown archive documents, including family archives, he reconstructs their acts of resistance. Many previously unpublished photos show the fearless heroes of that time. Secret agent Albert Mélot is parachuted in on 11 April 1944 and is given Ghent as his field of work. In the dark night of the 'new moon of May', his radio operator, Albert Wouters, also jumps out of the plane. A week after D-Day, it is all over for Mélot: the Germans take him to the Ghent prison where another secret agent is being held: Albert Deweer. The resistance wants to free both of them at all costs. On 15 July 1944, Mélot is freed from a German prison van in the Papegaaistraat in Ghent. The consequences of this act are dramatic. About 100 people, including the Mélot family, are arrested. A large number are imprisoned in concentration camps. The death toll is about sixty people. Albert Deweer is released through bribery. The money is made available by an economic collaborator who counts on future clemency. In October 1945, Deweer will spectacularly get his 'rescuer', sentenced to death, out of the same prison and take him to France where he will make history as an inventor. Albert Wouters is less fortunate. In the first month of liberation and on the road with the radio, he meets the very last Germans, who kill him mercilessly. With more than 100 photos, often previously unpublished