Directorate-general War Victims, Brussels ; USHMM, Washington DC
Directorate-General War Victims, Brussels. The list of transport IV was lost and has been recreated using the index cards of the Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst (Sipo-SD).
The name index of the Transportlisten series is accessible at the Kazerne Dossin documentation center. Research conducted by dr. Laurence Schram, senior researcher at Kazerne Dossin, has revealed the names of several persons deported from the Dossin barracks whose names are not mentioned on the original deportation lists.
SCHRAM Laurence, 1942-1944. Histoire d'un, doctoral thesis, Brussels, lieu2015. (publication to follow) SCHRAM Laurence, La caserne Dossin à Malines, 1942-1944. Histoire d'un lieu, doctoral thesis, Brussels, 2015. (publication to follow) SCHRAM Laurence and VANDEN DAELEN Veerle, Transports from Mechelen. EHRI Document Blog, 2018. (https://blog.ehri-project.eu/2018/10/10/transports-from-mechelen/)
No further accruals are to be expected.
Contact Kazerne Dossin Documentation Center: info@kazernedossin.eu
Service Archives for War Victims, Brussels - digitised by Kazerne Dossin
The SS-Sammellager Mecheln (Dossin barracks) opened its doors on 27 July 1942. Three non-Jewish secretaries from Mechelen were hired to help at the Aufnahme. The other employees of the camp administration were recruited among the young Jewish girls who arrived at the SS-Sammellager on 27 July. Work at the Aufnahme was divided into two sections : the administration of the camp led by SS-Hauptscharführer Max Boden and the confiscation of Jewish property led by representative of the Brüsseler Treuhandgesellschaft Erich Crull. The employees at the Aufnahme, mostly inmates themselves, worked day and night to register all Jewish prisoners arriving at the SS-Sammellager. They also drafted the deportation lists, distributed cardboard identification tags, physically searched newly arrived detainees and completed confiscation forms. The Aufnahme continued to operate until the liberation of the SS-Sammellager (Dossin barracks) on 4 September 1944.
The Transportlisten were drafted by employees of the Aufnahme (camp administration) at the SS-Sammellager Mecheln (Dossin barracks) between July 1942 and September 1944. The lists of transports XVI and XVII are exceptions. Three Jewish inmates who worked at the Aufnahme were taken to the Organisation Todt camps in the north of France where they enlisted all Jewish forced labourers on the spot. Upon arrival at the SS-Sammellager Mecheln, the camp administration registered all information regarding the new prisoners and added it to index cards. In a second work phase the Transportlisten (deportation lists) were drafted, based upon the decisions made by Hans Rodenbusch, a researcher who specialised in Jewish matters and who administered the file card system. Of each deportation list at least four copies were created : the original was sent to the Sipo-SD in Brussels, a second one was kept at the Aufnahme, a third one was given to the staff of the deportation train and a fourth one was sent to Berlin. The copy that remains today is probably the one kept at the Aufnahme. When liberation drew near, before departing the SS-Sammellager Mecheln, Commander Frank ordered all documents of the Aufnahme to be burned, but Maurice Van Rees, a Jewish clerk of that service, managed to save the Transportlists from destruction. He hid almost all of them (Transport IV is missing) under a shower tray in the barracks. This is how they escaped destruction. After liberation in September 1944, the Aide aux Israélites Victimes de la Guerre, which took over the care of the camp, drafted additional lists of the remaining detainees. A combination of the lists was later on used by the Ministry of Reconstruction and the Service for War Victims (the current Directorate-general War Victims) in Brussels for research. In 1997 the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance (currently Kazerne Dossin) digitised and preserved all pages of the Transportlisten.
3,246 digitised images (lists)
KD_00013_01 : Numerical per transport
The Transportlisten series consists of two parts : KD_00013_01 : The first part contains the carbon doubles of the original lists of all transports (Jews, Roma and Sinti) from the SS-Sammellager Mecheln (Dossin barracks) to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Buchenwald, Ravensbrück, Vittel and Bergen-Belsen. Each sheet contains the names of 10 to 20 deportees on a specific transport, their place and date of birth, their profession and their nationality. In some cases the date of arrival at the Dossin barracks is mentioned in the top left corner of the page. The handwritten notes were added by the Directorate-General War Victims after the war while doing research on deportees and survivors. KD_00013_02 : The second part contains additional administrative documents among which we can distinct three types. 1° The Aufnahme (camp administration) created statistics based on the deportation lists and also kept lists of persons liberated from the SS-Sammellager Mecheln, such as Jews with the Belgian nationality in the summer of 1943. 2° The Aide aux Israélites Victimes de la Guerre, the organisation which took over the care for the remaining prisoners upon liberation, drafted lists of the persons still in the camp on 4 September 1944 : prisoners registered for transport XXVII, employee-prisoners (Werkleute), Entscheidung cases (decision regarding deportation still to be made), special cases… 3° The Directorate-general War Victims drafted postwar lists containing the names of all persons repatriated (organised by transport). Part KD_00013_02 is only accessible at the Kazerne Dossin reading room and reading rooms of partner institutes.
Transportlisten. Collection