After the liberation
On 16 September 1944, a week after the liberation of Sint-Niklaas, Colonel Majewski commander of the 10th Armoured Cavalry Brigade reported to Maczek that there were still many collaborators in the city and that the population as a whole was not very friendly towards his troops. They even occasionally had to deal with a Belgian sniper! Majewski himself was billeted in Hotel de Spiegel and was on his guard every time he left his temporary residence.

Chaos in the city
The main cause of this unrest was the friction between three local resistance groups. However, in the municipality of Beveren-Waas it was even worse - a German spy was arrested by the Polish forces. Immediately after the liberation, the resistance movements moved into the premises that had been previously used by the Kommandantur or collaboration groups. They did this without consulting the City Council and did not take into account that the Allies would in principle take over the use of all the buildings previously occupied by the Germans forces. In the city of Ghent there was a similar situation, with problems like those in Sint-Niklaas, because the five resistance groups refused to work together. To make matters worse, in Belgium almost all groups were heavily armed and the local police only had 'moral control'.

Restoration of authority
The end of the fight against the German forces unfortunately did not necessarily mean the end of the fighting in liberated Belgium. Continued conflict was a problem that occurred in many Belgian municipalities and was not unique to the Waasland region. In Sint-Niklaas, the situation eventually changed in the weeks after the liberation. A committee was set up to separate to organise the resistance and at the end of October, civil authority was finally restored.