Slate from World War II

Thanks to a golden tip from two colleagues at the In Flanders Fields Museum, we tracked down a special piece of slate: a roof tile from the Belfry on which a German soldier had carved his name and place of residence: Fritz Margraff – Querfurt. British author Chris Lock had mentioned this piece of slate in his book “The Liberation of Ypres”. The Ypres Museum asked the contractors restoring the Belfry to look for the slate in question. Now the Ypres Museum is the proud owner of graffiti from the Second World War.

Would you like to know more about Ypres in the Second World War? Then we can recommend the two books by Chris Lock, which are available in our museum shop.

The Liberation of Ypres. Chris Lock

This book is about General Maczek's First Polish Armoured Division, which liberated Ypres in 1944. In this book, you can read how this unit consisted not only of Poles but also of a few Czechs, and how the liberation of our city progressed hour by hour and street by street.

Of particular interest is the list of traces of the Second World War that are still visible today: tank tracks, bullet holes and our scratched roof tile.

The House of the Broken Wings. Chris Lock.

This book is about the Regina Hotel as a base for the resistance and an important stop on the escape route for Allied pilots.