Mecheln (Malines) SS Deportation Camp

Scope and content

The collection contains primarily:

Transport lists, deportation lists (Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Ravensbrück), correspondence between the German Red Cross, the International Red Cross, the Portuguese Red Cross and police authorities; catalog of persons (liberated persons, deceased persons, persons who had fled), list of names of repatriated women who were deported to Internment Camp Vittel, list of names of persons who were imprisoned in forced-labor camps in northern France

History of SS-Assembly Camp Mecheln (Malines) 1942-1944:

On 27 July 1942 the SS ordered a central assembly camp for Jews be erected in the Belgian city of Malines (dt.: Mechelen) in an old Dossin barracks; from this camp the Jews should be deported further East. At first only foreign Jews were targeted by the deportations. The Head of the Belgian Civil Administration, Eggert Reeder, had no objections to disclosing Jewish foreigners and refugees; on the other hand, however, he did want to protect the Belgian Jews. But from September 1943 on, these, too, were no longer safe from possible arrest or deportation. Until the liberation of Belgium in September 1944 a total of 24,916 Jews and 351 Roma and Sinti from the assembly camp Malines were deported for the most part to Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Fewer than five percent of those deported survived. Some Jews managed to hide themselves and could survive in the underground; others joined the resistance movement.

Source: Wetzel, Juliane: Belgien, in: Lexikon des Holocaust, ed.by Wolfgang Benz, München 2002, p. 26 and http://www.memorialmuseums.org/denkmaeler/view/77/Jüdisches-Deportations--und-Widerstandsmuseum [Latest access: 2012-08-02].