“My name is Louis Gihoul, I was born in the town of Seraing in Belgium on the 14th of November 1923. My father was an engineer, director in the Cockerill steel mill in Seraing, my mother worked as a professor at a lyceum. My maternal grandfather led a railway construction in China. (…) I studied engineering, first at a high school, then at a specialised college (Collège industriel supérieur).”
“I started my studies again. In 1942 the Germans issued an order saying that students must go work in Germany for a year. I refused to go. At that point I joined the resistance movement, in 1942. We lived in the forest, we did what they call attacks. We would blow up electricity poles, railway tracks, and carried out various other small attacks. In 1944, after Americans disembarked and got to Liège, I voluntarily joined a Belgian division that was subordinate to the Third United States Army.”
“We were very happy, how can I say this, that we arrived to a friendly country. That we left Germany and got to a country that has experienced Hitler’s occupation, just like our country has.”
Louis Gihoul was born in 1923 in the industrial town of Seraing (located near Liège). His father was an engineer who worked his way up to the position of director at a steel mill. During the war, Louis started studying at an engineering university. In 1942 he refused to go to work in Germany and joined the resistance movement instead. After Belgium was liberated by the United States army, he joined the 17th Airborne Division which was deployed together with the Third United States Army. In May 1945, Louis got as far as western Bohemia (Holýšov). Following the demobilization, he finished his studies, and in 1947 he left to work for the colonial governmentin Belgian Congo. He lived in Congo until 1962, and then moved to Canada (the Québec province). He returned to Belgium in 1992, and has lived there ever since. He enjoyed coming back to Pilsen for liberation celebration events and had been an honorary citizen of the town of Holýšov since 2008. Louis Gihoul died on June 30, 2022.
