Mechelen

In the summer of 1942, the Germans made preparations to deport the Jews of Belgium. To this end, they converted the Dossin de St. Georges military barracks in the city of Mechelen (Fr., Malines) into a transit camp. Mechelen, a city of 60,000, was considered an ideal location for this purpose. Located halfway between Antwerp and Brussels, two cities which contained most of the Jewish population of Belgium, the city had good rail connections to the east.

Map

Mechelen environs, 1942 (Map)

Credits:

• US Holocaust Memorial Museum

The camp consisted of a single three-story building surrounded by barbed wire. It was located in a densely populated area of the town, near the Dijle River. The camp staff was mostly German, with a few Flemish Belgian auxiliaries. The camp was officially under the command of Phillip Schmitt, commandant of the Breendonk camp. The acting commandant was SS officer Rudolph Steckmann.

Map

Mechelen transit camp, 1942 (Map)

Credits:

• US Holocaust Memorial Museum

ID Card

Zigmond Adler (ID Card)

Zigmond's parents were Czechoslovakian Jews who had emigrated to Belgium. His mother, Rivka, was a shirtmaker. She had come to Belgium as a young woman to find a steady job, following her older brother, Jermie, who had moved his family to Liege several years earlier. In Liege, Rivka met and married Otto Adler, a businessman. The couple looked forward to raising a family.

1933-39: Zigmond was born to the Adlers in 1936, but his mother died one year later. His father remarried, but the marriage didn't last. Zigmond's father then married for a third time, and soon Zigmond had a new half-sister and a stable family life. As a boy, Zigmond often visited his Uncle Jermie's family, who lived just a few blocks away.

1940-44: Zigmond was 3 when the Germans occupied Belgium. Two years later, the Germans deported his father for forced labor. After that, Zigmond's stepmother left Liege, giving Zigmond to Uncle Jermie and Aunt Chaje. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews in Liege, some of Uncle Jermie's Catholic friends helped them get false papers that hid their Jewish identity and rented them a house in a nearby village. Two years later, early one Sunday morning, the Gestapo came to the house. They suspected Jews were living there.

Zigmond, his aunt and two cousins were sent to the Mechelen internment camp, and then to Auschwitz, where 7-year-old Zigmond was gassed on May 21, 1944.

The first group of Jews arrived in the camp from Antwerp on July 27, 1942. Between August and December 1942, two transports with about 1,000 Jews each left the camp every week for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Between August 4, 1942, and July 31, 1944, a total of 28 trains carrying 25,257 Jews left Mechelen for German-occupied Poland; most of them went to Auschwitz-Birkenau. This figure represented more than half of the Belgian Jews murdered during the Holocaust. In addition, German authorities sent several trainloads of Roma (Gypsies) from Mechelen to Auschwitz later in 1943 and in early 1944.

The Belgian Jewish underground, assisted by the Belgian resistance, derailed several trains carrying Jews from the Mechelen camp to Auschwitz during 1942-1943. Although most of the Jews on those trains were deported in later transports to Auschwitz, about 500 Jewish prisoners managed to escape. In April 1943, 231 Jews attempted to escape from a transport. Train escort guards shot 23 of the fleeing Jews.

As Allied forces approached, the Germans closed the Mechelen camp in September 1944.