"The youngest was about... two years old." "The middle child was... five," "and the eldest was six" "Their names were Herman," "Isaac, and the eldest's name was Andries." "Of course, I've dreamt of my children, but that's how it is:" "it's difficult to speak about them." "I had such a beautiful life when I had my three sons." "Did you know that I have a picture of my wife and three sons that I have not yet looked at?" "I have not yet had the courage to look at that photograph since the moment I was liberated." "I don't want to know where it is." "I know where it is, or rather, others know where it is, and I do, too, but I don't want to get it." "I have not yet asked for it, I don't dare." "Even today, I still don't dare." "24.916 JEWS DEPORTED" "1.206 SURVIVORS" ""Today, I shall be a prophet." "WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF CORINNE JABER if international Jewish finance inside and outside Europe should bring about a world war, the result will not be the victory of Judaism, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."" "On 10 May 1940 we heard the news on the radio:" ""...the enemy troops are starting to invade Belgium." "Remain calm, remain in your homes."" "My dad said, "We are not going to stay here." "I know the Nazis, the Krauts, and Hitlers programme by heart." "We are going to leave." As war was declared on 10 May 1940, we packed our meagre bags on the 13th of May and took the train." "What was going on was that the Jews gathered amongst themselves and talked about their fright, their fears." "They knew that the world was going to change, especially for us." "And we tried to console each other, but we knew that we were caught in a vice and it was impossible to get free from it." "We heard the accounts of these German families who had come to tell us what was happening in Germany." "We were aware of events, even though we were very young." "We knew that there had been..." "that Krstallnacht had occurred, and we knew about the discrimination and existence of concentration camps." "So, things were very serious." "But, you know, we continued to hope." "DEMONISE" "REJECT" "Get out and wait for me at the Raumenberg." "I don't want you waiting in this street full of Jews, you hear me?" "Isaac!" "What has this goy dressed up in his Sunday best come to see Oppenheimer about?" "Dressed up in his Sunday best come to see Oppenheimer about?" "Come on, Jacob, cant you guess?" " Oh, right, he's asking for money." "Of course!" "Yes, but he wont have any, I hope?" "Oh yes, our Suss will give him a lot of money." "He knows what he is doing, he's brilliant." "He'll take back what he gives out a thousand times over." "That's it, take, take, take!" "THE JEWISH VENOM" "ENOUGH TIME WASTED" "PUT JEWS IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS" "JEW-FREE GERMANY IS A HAPPY COUNTRY" "At one point I was the only Jew in my class." "And there I come back to the story of the Greek teacher who said," ""So we have in class here a multilingual Jew who surely speaks Hebrew," "Yiddish, and Polish;" "he speaks every language." "But you should know one thing, you guys." "He is not Flemish." "Moreover, his name, Natan, already says it all."" "So, I remember that when I came home, I was humiliated," "I was really at a loss, and I told my father," ""Listen, I'd like to leave school."" "And my father had a reaction that I still think of often." "He said to me, "Listen, a soldier does not desert the front."" "REGISTER" "EXCLUDE" "We were supposed to come ourselves as of the age of 15, when we already had our identity cards." "We went of our own accord." "You know, it was insidious on the part of the Occupying Authority, for it was one of the first laws that set the wheels turning, wheels that would lead us to death two years later." "THE JEWISH REGISTERS" "For my part, I see that in the following way today:" "We were registered in a virtual ghetto, to use a modern term." "Not like in the countries in the east, in Eastern Europe, where there were physical ghettoes, small towns or villages surrounded by walls, but it was a ghetto." "We were registered, but I did not yet realise it very clearly." "What set us thinking were... moments that would remain carved in my heart, in my memory, my whole life." "The first poster that I saw in a shop:" ""Judische Unternehmung', Jewish business." ""Judische Unternehmung', Jewish business." "In school we were still relatively spared these discriminatory practices, but when we learnt afterwards that Jewish hairdressers - there was one in the neighbourhood, Mr Handel, who was deported - could attend to a Jewish clientèle only, that Jewish doctors" "could treat Jews only, so as not to kill or contaminate [Gentiles], as the Nazis claimed they did, we understood that something was no longer right." "LOOT" "HUMILIATE" "When they entered, everyone took fright." "The room was in a panic." "And everyone started throwing the merchandise that they had brought under the tables." "I personally had a batch of diamonds of about 25 carats." "At the time, we counted in florins." "A florin was worth 20 Belgian francs." "I thus threw away more than 500,000 francs." "The room was in a panic." "I saw another diamond cutter, who came from the country, and who, seized with panic - he was drinking a cup of coffee at the time - threw his diamonds in his coffee and swallowed them." "He was dead the next day." ""To overcome the supply problems in Belgium and Northern France, public parks and unused land have been allotted for planting potatoes and vegetables." "The planting of these precious tubers gives the familiar landscape an unusual look."" "NO MEAT" "I went with my dad, and there was a large room where people were queuing." "I went with my dad, and there was a large room where people were queuing." "And there, there were the stamps, seals, signatures, forms, and so on." "And that is where my dad unfortunately, well... they were forced to, had to give their names, addresses, and occupations." "After that, they gave us the awful red stamp, "Juif" (Jew) or, I no longer remember, "Jood" in Flemish." "They went without a qualm." "I do not think that anyone realised, for the round ups were carried out on the basis of that list." "On that list they had the names and addresses of all the Jews who had registered." "Those who were really clever never went, but then they were not considered to be Jews." "So, then they had to procure fake identity cards, and that was not so easy." "With hindsight, you wonder how we could have been so stupid, how we could have gone to register like that, how we could have followed the deportation orders and turned up at the assembly point on our own," "with our suitcases or bags of belongings." "But you have to put yourself in the spirit of the times." "There really was no way out." "Those who do not know them believe that the Jews were forced to become traders because they were banned from the other professions." "It's just the opposite." "They jostle each other to wheel and deal because that matches their characters and their true nature." "The uninitiated onlooker who sees these children bargaining might believe that they are destitute." "Actually, the children are proud to imitate their elders." "His religion forces the Jew to lie and practice usury." "The Aryan man wants to create something of value." "Everything that is of value for the community." "The Aryan man is dominated by a feeling of responsibility." "People went by screaming..." "I don't dare scream like they did, but let me say..." ""You Jews, get out of our country!"" "And then, they weren't Germans, they were Flemings... it was frightening, along their route they broke a window... they set fire to several..." "I saw this synagogue on fire." "The police stepped in, let's say, very late..." "They let the rampage continue... because, it was said, they had two hours to do the job, and when it was complete, they were supposed to stop." "The next day we went, and practically no Jews had come to see." "The next day we went, and practically no Jews had come to see." "They didn't dare." "There were a few Flemings." "The Flemings were rather..." "devastated, but not appalled, it was more devastated." "They were afraid, too, because it didn't look good." "It's possible that it was a slip-up, I don't know." "They vandalised this synagogue and we knew that they had vandalised synagogues in Germany, but that is all we knew." "In any event, it was a very bad omen." "We were informed in December 1941 that we had to leave the school." "As of the first of January." "However, they did us the favour of letting us sit our Christmas exams, so not the school year's final exams but those at the end of the calendar year." "And I remember how truly terrible it was for me, because I loved school." "I thought it was very serious to have to break off my studies." "I was in the next-to-the-last year in high school." "And I remember a French teacher whom I violently hated after that." "The woman counted us off in our class." "There were four or five of us." "She said, "Oh, yes, after the holiday, this one won't be here, and that one... but we'll still have a very good class."" "You know, those are things that I still remember, fifty years later." "Each piece of clothing had to have one, and not just the outerwear, the coat or raincoat, all pieces of clothing," "vests, etc." "And in addition, they had to be sewn on finely, with small, tight stitches." "You mustn't think that we could attach them with two snaps or some system..." "Velcro didn't exist at the time, or some system..." "Velcro didn't exist at the time, but if a system like that had existed, it would have been completely illegal." "As for the rest, when there were police checks and Jews were caught in them, well, one of the things, and I saw it, - they'd grab the lapels and pull to see if it was sewn on securely." "If it wasn't, he was slapped in the face." "There was no escape." "This sign was infamous; it was as if your forehead had been branded with a hot iron, it had to remain." "My father, a tailor, had made his charming little dear- that's me - a navy blue suit with a small velvet collar." "Cute, huh?" "And I kept this little coat 20 years, I believe." "It became shorter and shorter, but my father had made it for me and I kept it." "And then, they had sewn a yellow star on it." "It wasn't very pretty against the navy blue, but I had a yellow star." "And my mother had said, "I'd like you to go buy a bottle of milk at the corner."" "She gave me the money and I went to buy a bottle of milk." "And on the way some woman stopped me and said," ""My poor dear, my poor lamb, it's unbelievable." "It's unbelievable that they are branding them like animals."" ""What was she getting upset about?" "What did she have against the world?"" "And later, much later, I said to myself," ""it was a little girl with a navy blue coat and a small velvet collar and a yellow star and the woman was indignant as I would be today OK?" "OK?" "That was the yellow star." "The first time I wore the star, I hugged the walls nevertheless, for it was truly a sign of infamy at the time." "And then I reached the school." "And straight away, before the first hour of classes, the teacher assembled everyone and called for silence." "I was the only one wearing a star, and probably the only Jew in the class, and he made a little speech, firm rather than moving, along the lines of," ""The first one I catch laughing at Lachterman' " "I was still called Lachterman at the time " ""is in for..." "you'll see what you'll get, because that's how it is' and then he softened up and explained why things were the way they were, etc... and the class became very quiet, although we were all somewhat rather rumbustious seven-year-olds." "There wasn't a single reaction in the class and there never was in the weeks that followed." "But I left the school rather quickly, for my parents placed me [with another family]." "When we strolled along De Kaiser Avenue, where we noticed above all one of the truly big cafés, one of the best ice cream parlours, where it was written:" ""Verboden voor honden en joden,"" "meaning "No dogs or Jews'." "Dogs came first, and then Jews..." "We weren't allowed in the swimming pools." "We weren't allowed in the cinemas after a certain time, or in any public place..." "Not in the park" "We were not allowed on the trams, only on the first platform of the trailer." "So, we couldn't take the lines that had no trailers." "I don't know if it was with or without my yellow star, but one day I was on the tram's platform keeping a very low profile, and a German yelled at me, "Raus, Jude!" I can still hear it..." "ROUND UP" "DEPORT" "Basically, the Jews who received these orders were caught up in a tragic fate from which they saw no escape." "And when they went to one or the other committee asking what they should do, they were told that they should comply." "And the good shepherds who said that they must comply so as not to jeopardise all the other people's lives were very numerous at the time." "And when one or the other charismatic figure in the neighbourhood left - that was the case of a Mr Bloch of Antwerp, who was the conductor of the Jewish theatre's orchestra, who gave music lessons in the city " "when he left, carrying his violin, with his baggage loaded on a cart pushed by other members of the community, people said, "if Bloch is leaving, that means that we can go."" "it was sort of anchored in the thinking of the time." "To date and until the end of my days I will not understand why my thirteen-year-old sister was the only one targeted, whereas I had a nine-year-old sister, my mother was 42 and my father 45." "I never understood." "So it's with a heavy heart I still see my parents, my mother packing Bertha's case, a small case, and we took the case, my sister, and all five of us went down the stairs into Coenraets Street." "We went to Theodore Verhaegen Street, below, just before Fonsny Avenue, and there," "I'll never forget it, there was a tram stop." "I see Bertha getting into the tram with her little case and my parents crying and my little sister crying and me, with a lump in my throat." "And I'll never forget my mother who told her," ""Bertha, don't forget to write to us, to send us news..."" "Here, the whole street was rounded up." "Here, rounded up." "This part, Provinciestraat: rounded up." ""Rounded up" meant coming and waking you up in the night and carrying you off as you were to the lorries for the deportations, in which ninety-five percent died." "And they didn't just round up people to put them to work, they rounded up everyone." "That meant, naturally, that they wanted to kill everyone." "That's what the truth was." "Someone rang the bell around 5 in the morning." "My mother went to the window." "They were policemen." "Excuse me, they were Flemish policemen, Antwerp police officers?" "Absolutely, oh yes, undeniably." "I think they were from Deurne or Borgerhout, I'm not sure..." "In any case, they weren't Germans?" " Oh, definitely not!" "No, they were Antwerp policemen." "There was not the slightest doubt about that." "They gave us twenty minutes to pack up everything and accompany them." "A police officer felt it was necessary to remain in the bedroom while my wife got dressed." "The overall mood was one" "The overall mood was one of sadness, for we did not yet know exactly what they intended to do with us." "We reach Dossin." "The small lorry stops." "The traps are opened, we have to jump, to get out of the lorry and sit on the ground, ordered by some young SS under some SS officers." "And it was terribly humiliating for me to see my father, a fifty-six-year-old man with a heart condition, having to sit on the ground and obey the orders of a cocky little upstart like that." "It was terrible, it was..." "You know, it's a scene that I have not forgotten." "Schmitt was in the habit of coming in the evening, and he stayed part of the night." "And he got his greatest kicks from frightening people, and not just frightening them..." "He entertained himself by letting his dog loose on people and having it bite them." "People were searched violently." "The women were dragged behind a screen where they were subjected to internal and external searches, conducted by men who checked that they had not hidden one or the other object on their persons." "Their aim was to take as many objects as possible." "After these searches, they called the roll." "We had to line up in the inner courtyard of Dossin Barracks, in Mechelen, where we had been taken." "Then we were filmed." "They formed a group of several Orthodox Jews whose beards had been clipped in various places while they had been undergoing the body searches." "They had to put their yarmulkes or hats back on and walk round the courtyard, rubbing their hands to symbolise the Jews greediness." "It was an old train, divided in compartments, but there was room for ten people in those compartments and there were at least twenty-five of us stuffed in, with children." "For three and a half days." "It was horrible." "The children cried." "We had no room." "The small children slept in the luggage nets." "The other children slept on the floor." "The train, with the children, was already a tragedy." "With nothing to eat, nothing to drink" "if I close my eyes," "I can still hear them marching in the street and I hear the women's cries." "And I hear the screaming and above all the rifle butts banging on the doors." "So you can understand that the sixteen-year-old child that I was," "I'm not speaking for the others, but from my point of view... when I heard the knocking of the rifle butts on the doors drawing closer," "I said to myself, "They know very well where to knock!"" "And we went down these steps driven by blows from the rifle butts and insults" " I'll spare you the insults." "I went out into the street and I saw a crowd." "I lived on the corner, Merode Street, Coenratz Street." "It was a crossroads, and the people were assembled in the crossroads." "They were all weeping, crying, screaming people with their meagre rags in hand and small bundles." "And all around the entire neighbourhood was surrounded by dogs and armed Germans." "I had an uncle who lived a little farther down, across the street, farther down the street." "His name, in Yiddish, was "Motke", Maurice..." "Deported..." "Never seen again..." "With the family, of course." "I had another aunt in Tanners Street, a little farther down, who was a cobbler." "A little farther, there." "Well, there, I remember, was a house where there was a sewing machine shop." "I had a friend there called Anatole." "I never saw him again." "Well, there, I had" " I said it earlier- a friend whose father was a furrier... it is still very moving for me..." "Now I have to make a great effort to control myself, because it is very moving." "FLEE" "RESIST" "We were on the tram with some friends and a German boarded the tram." "He grabbed two of them by the neck and made them get off the tram rather brutally." "And made them get off the tram rather brutally." "As of that moment we took off our stars." "We never wore a star after that." "And I dyed my hair blond to look less Jewish, and I wore a large cross." "I have a snapshot." "There you are." "How could you expect us, with the meagre pittance that we had, that we earned..." "We had to live." "Now, buying on the black market..." "You have no idea how much an egg cost." "One egg, I believe, cost one dollar at the time." "But that was a fortune!" "You had to have ration stamps to buy food." "You didn't get food just like that!" "So, I was thus able to get ration stamps thanks to my forged marriage certificate." "Anyway, we didn't go out." "Only when strictly necessary, that's all." "The shop was already closed." "So, with all that, we were outside little." "And then there was one's grandfather, and the cousins;" "they all came to the house." "Then we spent our time reading and playing cards." "It was a strange life." "The Belgian Jews, perhaps a bit more naïve than the others because they had not been affected by the dramatic measures taken since July 42," "may have been filled with a sort of lack of concern, saying," ""if we do everything that we are asked to do, that's to say, the curfew, not going to public places, etc., wearing the star and complying with the German ordinances," "we are likely to see the war through under those conditions."" "I say naïve, but I say that today, because today I know how the Jews of Poland were treated and, as of '39, how the Jews of Czechoslovakia were treated, how the Austrian Jews were treated already in '38." "So, I say today, therefore, that that must have been a little naïve..." "One could say that they could find you easily." "Absolutely." "The great majority of Belgian Jews lived at their official addresses." "We were sent to an address where the parents were calling for help." "Then I would say, "Pack a small case, get their clothes ready," "I'll come for the child perhaps tomorrow, or perhaps the day after tomorrow, as quickly as possible." "But then I'd be gripped with fear, fear of arriving too late, as I told myself," ""The child might be taken tonight in a raid."" "That once happened." "I went for a child and he was no longer there, because the neighbours told me, "He was taken away last night."" "At that moment, you are terribly aware first of all of the role that you are playing, of the importance of how urgently you need to hide those children." "Perhaps the hardest thing, the emotionally most intolerable thing, was when you had to go fetch the children from their parents, but the children also had to accept all of a sudden to take on a new identity in this new municipality," "the mythical municipality, as I called it, to have another name." "The birth dates matched their own, but all the documents we gave them were fake." "But there was yet another thing, that is, the child could tell no one where he was staying what his real surname was." "And that was the most difficult thing of all." "As agreed, I tap three times softly on the ground floor window" "A visibly pregnant woman comes to open the door." "I say, "I am Andrée, I've come for the child."" "She says, "I know, I was told ahead of time."" "Charly then comes over." "I pick him up and tell his mother," ""Let's be quick, it's better."" "She asks me, "Where are you taking him?" "'" ""To the country, to some nice country folk."" ""Will I be able to go see him?" "' "No." "But I'll come and give you news."" "She weeps softly." "Before leaving her, I tell her as gently as I can," ""Let me know when the baby is born, I'll come for it."" "She looks at me, sad and desperate." "How could I be so cruel?" "I take the child's little hand in one hand and pick up the heavy case with my other hand." "I think that things went quickly since Andrée's way wasn't to say," ""Give a great, big kiss to your dear little mum, whom you are not going to see for God knows how many years!" "'" "Rather, it was, "We're leaving, give me your hand and walk!"" "Rather, it was, "We're leaving, give me your hand and walk!"" "Short and sweet." "It was a good way.." ""Your name will now be 'Annie', etc."" "But the toughest moment was the separation." "And strangely, the children did not cry." "Even today, I cannot explain why." "But the children did not cry." "The older ones tried to reason with their mothers and the youngest ones trusted us." "I, for one, would tell them, 'You know, you are going to the country, you are going to see little pigs, little cows, little chickens, and then you are going to be on holiday.'" "A two-and-a-half-year-old child does not know why he is being taken." "A two-year-old child does not know that he is Jewish." "Without the ordinary village curates, without the ordinary parish priests, without the humble nuns in their convents, be they the convents of the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul or other orders, we would never have been able to hide 3,000 children." "Most of the children were hidden in convents, sometimes well, sometimes poorly," "I'm not saying that they were all in paradise and I'm not saying that things were not difficult for them to have to go to church overnight and follow rules that they did not know, but their lives were saved." "I told myself, "But Robert, you are completely mad."" "I had failed two tests in college." "I was a little angry with myself." "And I told myself that way, at least, I wont have failed everything." "The risks were enormous." "At that time, the Germans did not shoot." "I was, let's say, gripped by a little emotion for a second, and then, trampling on my possible fear, well," "I mustered my courage and I went and opened the rail road cars." "I said, "No, Philippe, I'm sorry!" "I'm staying with my father." "He is sick, he is dying." "I can't leave him." I didn't know if he was dying." ""He is in a coma." "He no longer knows what he is saying." "He is delirious." "He no longer recognises me, but I'm staying with him."" "Then Philippe influenced me and said, "You know that your sacrifice is vain." "You know very well that at Auschwitz they'll separate you from your father." "You know very well that he is not going to live." "You know very well that you are lost." "Jump!" I said, "No, you jump if you want to, I won't."" "He tried to influence me, and I said, "Leave me alone, I want to sleep."" "And Clairette slept, I don't know, maybe two or three minutes." "And for a brief moment something went through my mind, I started to doubt." "Was I going to jump alone?" "I didn't want to jump alone." "And then, at the very moment that I was asking myself these questions, she got up and she said..." "I said, "Philippe, I'm going to jump now!" "Now, quickly." "Because if I take a minute to think about it, I will no longer jump." "Now's the time."" "And then Philippe helped me to jump, he helped me to take the right position and I left my father there." "I never saw him again." "Dear compatriots, the hour for which we have lived for the past five years has now come." "All of Belgium, in a surge of immense gratitude and a feeling of joy, pays tribute..." "Let us deserve the peace as we deserved victory by imposing respect from our allies of this day, who will be our partners tomorrow" "Nothing will impress them more than our unity."" "I have not forgotten a single detail about my children." "I still calculate each day how old they would have been and how many children they would have had and the family that I might have had." "And that question never leaves me." "How did they die?" "What did they go through, my wife with those little children, in that gas chamber?" "Here, it's a very, very... a place... where... that will remain, despite everything, carved in my memory" "throughout the little time that remains for me to live." "And yet, it is as if this is the place where I can pray over their graves, for this is where their graves actually began, because these kids were murdered right away." "So... and there, in Auschwitz, where they were truly murdered, everything has been totally erased." "But here, these rails still talk, these rails, these rusty tracks that, as you can see, are no longer used for anything." "They served solely for the path towards death."" "Murderer" "Murderer of my mother and my sister"" "23.710 JEWS DEPORTED FROM BELGIUM DIED IN AUSCHWITZ" "ONLY 1.206 DEPORTED JEWS RETURNED" "AMONGST THE SURVIVORS, THERE WERE ONLY 12 CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 15."