Molenbeersel Inn “Cauterhof”

Inn “In de Dorstige Herten” was run by the Dirkx family. They were members of the resistance, but it remained small acts of resistance. Partisans were also active in the village. They committed armed resistance.

On August 22, 1944, Germans and collaborators conducted a gruesome raid in Molenbeersel. Under heavy pressure, a captured partisan indicated the inn as the place where another partisan who had committed a murder was hiding. The Dirkx family had nothing to do with the murder.

The Germans surrounded the inn and immediately opened fire, without first asking for surrender. Father Lambert Dirkx and his eldest son Willem were shot dead on the spot. Three other sons (Albert, Henri and Jaak) were forced to hang the partisan from a telephone pole opposite the inn. All three later died in German concentration camps. Their names appear on the Chapel of the Resistance in Rotem.

A street was named after the day of the razzia.