As countries across Europe this week held their traditional commemorations for the end of World War II, the role of organized labor in resisting fascism was all too often overlooked. But it was the most principled, militant parts of the working class that led some of the most powerful revolts against the war and its effects — including the “Strike of the 100,000” in Belgium.

On Saturday, May 10, 1941, exactly one year after the German invasion of that country, a group of women walked out of the Cockerill steelworks in Seraing, near the city of Liège. From the largest local metallurgical company, the movement spread like wildfire throughout Belgium. At the peak of the eight-day-long strike, sixty thousand workers across the industrial belt of French-speaking Wallonia were on strike. The action also spread to Belgium’s Flemish region, in towns such as Aalst.

The strikers’ main grievance was the shortage of food provisions. But their protest was the spark that ignited one of the largest-scale wartime labor protests in Belgium — and a high point of resistance in occupied Europe.