Collections

Kazerne Dossin owns a large collection of interviews. Many of these are complemented with files containing a variety of extra documentation. The large majority of the interviews were recorded by Johannes Blum, voluntary collaborator at Kazerne Dossin. He interviewed over 1100 deported and repatriated Jews, anti-fascists, resistance fighters, political prisoners, hidden children, Jewish refugees, their rescuers, etc. as well as the children of people from these different groups. The majority of the interviews were conducted in French, others in German, English, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish or Yiddish. Besides the interviews of Johannes Blum the collection includes interviews recorded by Luckas Vander Taelen, Laurence Schram, Marian Handwerker, Ward Adriaens, Frédéric Molle, Myriam Abramowicz, Steven Gaertner and Herman Van Goethem. The often old-fashioned carriers are being digitised and made accessible for research. This process is expected to be completed in 2017.

This collection is largely composed of copies of important documentaries and the rushes made while shooting the footage. The often old-fashioned carriers are being digitised and made accessible for research. This process will take at least until 2017.

Kazerne Dossin possesses a collection of historical objects connected to the history of the Holocaust in Belgium and the Dossin Barracks. Often these objects have a narrative link with the stories of the persecuted and their persecutors exhibited in the museum (ex. Yellow badges, camp uniforms, SS-militaria)

Kazerne Dossin owns a rich collection of graphic art (drawings, paintings, sculptures, etc.) which were donated by Holocaust survivors or their descendants.

Divers materials such as placards, postcards, pamphlets, underground press, press-cuttings, historical newspapers, German propaganda, etc.

Kazerne Dossin holds a great number of historical, portrait, and family photographs from the pre-war, war, and post-war period (e.g. family life, associations, Jewish enterprises, Jews wearing Yellow Badges, camp survivors, commemoration after the war, reconstruction). Additionally a lot of photographs can be found in the personal archives, the files of the Immigration Authorities and in other collections.

The archive of Kazerne Dossin contains a broad number of collections, archives and documents of private persons who put their collections at the disposal of, or donated them to Kazerne Dossin. For the most part these include personal documents of the pre-war, war, and post-war period in Belgium. The contents of these family and personal archives differ but their importance must not be underestimated. These archives form one of the primary sources for research at Kazerne Dossin.

In 2004 the previous Minister of Interior Affairs, Patrick Dewael, gave the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, Kazerne Dossins’ predecessor, permission to digitise all the photos of deported Jews from the files of the Immigration Authorities. This effort was part of the project ‘give them a face’ , a project which continues to this very day, to give all deportees a visual representation. In 2007 a new agreement was reached for the digitisation of the complete files of all the deportees who had lived in Belgium and were deported from Malines or France. The project was continued after the transmission of the files from the Immigration Authorities to the Belgian State Archive in 2008. In 2013 Kazerne Dossin concluded the project and now possesses a copy of all the files of the deportees.

The anti-Jewish decree of 28 October 1940 dictated that each Jewish man or women from the age of 15 should register in the Jewish register of the municipality where they resided. The individual forms provided the following informations: surname, first name, date and place of birth, nationality, profession, religion, civil state, name of spouse and children, names of parents and grandparents, date of arrival in Belgium and addresses of residence while living there. Kazerne Dossin systematically digitised the preserved Jewish registers of different municipalities. In the first place the Jewish register of Belgium which centralised the information of the smaller Jewish registers, as well as a number of preserved local Jewish registers. The central Jewish register of Belgium received a copy of the registration forms from the local registers.

In principle the Jewish register of Belgium should contain the same information as the local registers but in practice this was not always the case. The Jewish register of Belgium consists of 217 ring binders with registrations forms, to which also other administrative documents were added. In Brussels the registration forms compiled by the Belgian municipalities were centralised. The Jewish Register of Belgium is state property because it was compiled by the Belgian government during the performance of its duty. After the liberation the Jewish Social Services in Brussels were permitted to use the register as it helped them identify members of the community in need of assistance. The Jewish Social Services afterwards gave the register to the Jewish Museum of Belgium for safekeeping, where the register can be found today. Kazerne Dossin digitised the Jewish register of Belgium, compiled an index and guaranteed its professional preservation.

The Jewish register of Antwerp consists of pre-printed filing cards ordered alphabetically on surname. The original is kept in Antwerp at the General Administration for Jewish Charity (Centrale). Not all fields on the filing cards have been filed in. Kazerne Dossin digitised this Jewish register, compiled an index and guaranteed its professional preservation.

The Jewish register of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek was discovered in the municipal archives and consists of pre-printed filing cards ordered alphabetically on surname. Kazerne Dossin returned the original register to its legal owner, the municipality of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, after digitising the collection.

In 2011 Kazerne Dossin digitised the Jewish register of Jette which was found in the municipal archives. Research at Kazerne Dossin concluded that the handwritten registration, compiled according to the guidelines set in the Decree of 28 October 1940, showed significant differences to the Jewish register of Belgium.

These individual files (or references to files) consist of a file card system compiled by the Sipo-SD. After the war the card system was complemented by the Directorate-General War Victims. The cards give provide detailed information about some 11.400 Jewish persons who lived in Belgium before 10 May 1940, but who for a variety of reasons resided in France in 1940-1944. Among them:

• Predominantly German, Austrian and stateless Jews who immediately after the German invasion on 10 May 1940 were arrested as suspicious elements by the Belgian government and boarded on trains to French internment camps. Later the Vichy regime delivered them to the Germans who deported them to the extermination centres.
• Jews who lived in Belgium and fled to France in May 1940 or fled sometime after.
• Jews related to Belgium who were believed to have fled to France and who after the war formed the subject of an investigation conducted by the Directorate-General War Victims.

Research conducted at Kazerne Dossin concluded that during 1942-1944 some 6000 of these men, women and children were deported from various French internment and transit comps (predominantly from Drancy but also from Pithiviers, Compiègne, etc.) to the extermination centres of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor and Majdanek.

The Directorate-General War Victims is the legal owner and guardian of these files. Kazerne Dossin digitised and took care of the proper conservation of the collection.

The Association of Jews in Belgium (AJB) was established on 25 November 1941 on the explicit orders of the occupation authorities. Initially its main task was to ‘stimulate the emigration of Jews’. Additionally the AJB was forced to organise Jewish education and Jewish charity. The Association was a tool in the hands of the occupier and worked under its complete control. In Brussels the AJB was tasked with the responsibility in May/June 1942 of the sale of the Yellow Badge which each Jew older than six was obliged to wear on his outer garments. Besides this the AJB was tasked with establishing a new count of the Jewish population and, prior to the deportations in August 1942, the Sipo-SD ordered the organisation to compile lists of Jews who were eligible for forced labour. The AJB also distributed the orders to report at the Dossin Barracks (from where they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau). After the deportations the task of the AJB shifted to materially supporting the Jewish community, and especially, to provide for the basic needs of the Jews engaged in forced labour in France and the prisoners of Breendonk and the Dossin Barracks.

From the spring of 1942 onwards each Jewish family had to report in the local office of the AJB where Jewish officials registered specific information: the composition of the family, the address, the space of the residence as well as its ownership, was all carefully recorded. These documents were ordered by municipality and street, after which the file was transferred to the Anti-Joodsche Centrale [Anti-Jewish Station] on the Avenue Louise in Brussels. This organisation was headed by Pierre Beeckmans a Belgian collaborator. In the preserved membership registration of the AJB a few municipalities and streets of Antwerp and Brussels are missing. The Beeckmans files of which the membership registration is a small part are kept at CEGESOMA. Kazerne Dossin digitised and took care of the proper conservation of the collection.

Kazerne Dossin also digitised the original archive of the AJB, originating from Institut Martin Buber and the Independence Front.

Kazerne Dossin conserves the archives of the AJB which were used after the war as evidence during the judicial investigation into the responsibility of the AJB regarding the deportations. The court dismissed the case. Max Gottschalk, leader of the Jewish community in Brussels, entrusted the archive in 1959 to the Centre National des Hautes Etudes Juives, later reformed to Institut Martin Buber. The Jewish Central Consistory of Belgium entrusted these archives to Kazerne Dossin. This extensive archive contains a treasure of information on the Jewish persecution in Belgium, social assistance to Jews, Jewish education, the deportations, etc. It also informs us about the structure and organisation of the AJB and her contacts with the German occupying regime.

The archives of the AJB – Independence Front (IF) contain the original documents which during the liberation were confiscated by combatants of the IF in the Brussels’office of the ‘Service for Special Assistance to Malines’. This AJB-department was responsible for all services provided to the Dossin Barracks, such as distributing food parcels. The Independence Front kept this archive in her National Museum of Resistance in Anderlecht until it agreed to store it at Kazerne Dossin in 2003. This archive includes documents concerning the aid to Jews interned in the Dossin Barracks, lists of names, correspondence, and pieces detailing information on the different departments of the AJB (education, interventions, Special Assistance to Malines, Charity, Migration).

The collection ‘Relics’ consists of envelopes with confiscated documents of Jews who upon arrival at the SS-Sammellager Mecheln (Dossin Barracks) had to hand over their personal belongings. In total the collection comprises of 3048 envelopes of 4250 deportees (individuals and families) from transport XX to XXVI. In the envelopes we find letters, marriage certificates, IDs, diplomas, etc. The personal documents of all deportees from transport I to XIX were systematically destroyed by the camp administration. The Directorate-General War Victims is the legal owner of the collection. The Jewish community Indemnification Commission of the Belgian government deposed the archive at Kazerne Dossin where all pieces were digitised and stored in professional conditions.

On their arrival at the Dossin Barrracks the name of each Jew was added to the deportation list of the upcoming transport compiled by the camp administration. The carbon copies of the lists, hidden by an inmate, were retrieved after the liberation. On the top of the page these transport lists mention the date of inscription and the transport-number, followed by the number accorded to each individual deportee, his/her surname and first name, date and place of birth, nationality and profession. After the war notes were added on the original lists. Besides the 28 lists the file of the Transport lists also includes additional documents with (statistical) information on the transports, the smaller transports (Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Ravensbrück and Vittel) and information on released, escaped or liberated internees.

The Directorate-General War Victims is the legal owner and guardian of these files. Kazerne Dossin digitised and took care of the proper conservation of the collection.

This conserved fragment of an important archive which regrettably had disappeared consists of handwritten and typed filing cards concerning the systematic spoliation of Jewish homes in Antwerp: the Räumung (clearing) by the Möbelaktion. This systematic pillage, under command of and supervised by Franz Mader, was launched March 1942. The possessions of arrested or escaped Jews were collected by Belgian removal companies, stored and later sent to the Greater German Reich. There these goods were reused by German families.

Each filing card mentions the, sometimes miss-spelled, name and address of the robbed Jewish person or family and sometimes the date the spoliation took place. The filing cards also refer to the file number which presumably contained the inventory of the possessions and the destination to which it was supposed to be sent. These files however, have disappeared.

The Räumung-file cards are preserved at the General Administration for Jewish Charity (Centrale) and were digitised by Kazeren Dossin.

Among the documents gifted by Andrée Geulen to Kazerne Dossin a small booklet named ‘Carnet Geulen’ can be found. This manuscript compiled by members of the ‘Children’s Department’ of the Jewish Defence Committee (JDC), part of the Independence Front, which registered the names of children who were placed into hiding by the JDC. The booklet contains clues about their safe addresses and general notes on the children.