The photograph was presumably taken at the end of the summer of , when massive round-ups and arrests took place. Nevertheless, the first commander of the camp, SS Major Schmitt, was not a member of this section. He was selected as Commander of the new camp on account of his brutally efficient record as commander of Fort Breendonk.
He maintained order in both camps, which were 15 kilometers apart, by the use of terror and violence. He relied on Rudolf Steckmann, who was his main deputy in both Breendonk and Mechelen, and on Karl Mainshauzen, who was responsible for the staff, both German and Belgian, and both Aryan and Jewish in the transit camp.
Schmitt did not hesitate to set his German shepherd dog on the prisoners. Until the end of December , the camp was guarded by Wehrmacht regular German army troops. In , these duties were taken over by a Flemish SS company which had been put at the disposal of the camp commander. Some 60 German and Belgian SS were enough to run the camp. The administrative and maintenance staff was composed of Jewish detainees, some 30 of which had been arrested during a raid on July 22, on the train from Brussels to Antwerp.
The Mechelen camp had not opened yet in the Dossin Barracks, so they were sent to Fort Breendonk, including the women in the group, which was exceptional. They were transferred to Mechelen on July 27, and arrived a few hours before the arrival of the first inmates, who had received a summons from the Association of Jews in Belgium or AJB a Judenrat which had been set up by the Germans on November 25, , supposedly for work. Here, newly arrived Jews were placed in different groups, such as those to be deported, those made to work as camp staff, or those who would be subjected to further investigation.
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The new inmates were then registered and their names were added to the deportation lists. They were issued with a little cardboard notice, on a card which had to be worn around the neck, containing information pertaining to their status in the camp, or details of their future deportation.
This deprived them of their identity. He also tried to extract information from them about any assets or property they might own. Upon their arrival, many prisoners were subjected to physical searches performed by the Belgian or German SS ; this often degenerated into gratuitous violence against the male prisoners, and to groping and indecent assaults against the women.
It was not until , when Johannes Hans Frank succeeded Schmitt as commander of the camp, that female prisoners were searched by other women, either a Jewish detainee or the sister of a Flemish SS. Under the command of his predecessor, Philipp Schmitt, the SS broke the Jews, both physically and morally, from the first day they arrived at the camp. The SS satisfied their sadistic and perverted instincts without undergoing any punishment: Commander Schmitt did not consider the treatment of Jews under his command in any other way.
Commander Schmitt and several of his subordinates had organized various workshops in which clothing, leather goods, etc. Though he lost his position as commander of Mechelen, Schmitt remained in command of Fort Breendonk. His accomplices did not all receive the same punishment: Steckmann accompanied Schmitt to Fort Breendonk, whilst Second Lieutenant Mainzhausen was sent to the Russian Front.
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The ferocity of the Schmitt era was followed by a period of lesser violence under the apparently more moderate Frank. Conditions improved slightly for the Jewish prisoners, food became a little more abundant, packages were delivered intact to their recipients, and some detainees were even allowed to have visitors. Stoves were used for heating again in the dormitories, and the working hours in the few remaining workshops were reduced quite a bit.
It took longer to form the deportation convoys, so the detainees stayed longer in the Mechelen camp.
This resulted in overcrowding, the deterioration of hygiene and the development of contagious diseases, such as scabies and impetigo. This relative improvement of conditions only involved the Jewish prisoners, however, and not the small number of Gypsies of the January 15, convoy. During the night of September , the SS and their henchmen left the Dossin Barracks, fleeing in expectation of the arrival of Allied troops and leaving the remaining prisoners behind.
All told, more than 27, Jews and Gypsies — which was exceptional — were interned in the camp. Women and children made up over half of the prisoners in these convoys, which included 10, women of which 10, were Jewish and were Gypsies and 4, children under 15 years of age of which 4, were Jewish and were Gypsies. Upon their arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, 8, of the Jewish and Gypsy deportees including 2, Jewish women were selected for the concentration camp and registered.
These victims were never registered. Apart from a few rare exceptions, all the Jewish children under 15 years of age were murdered upon arrival. This was the essence of genocide: to prevent a human group from having a future, it is essential to prioritize the elimination of those group members who are bearers of the future — women and children. They were not specifically the target of genocide, but their fate was no better than if they had been.
Their survival rate at Auschwitz was even lower than that of the Jews: 4. The repression of the Gypsies was motivated by racist policies of sedentarization and social exclusion, and was led by the local police authorities as well as by the Nazis. Association of the Jews in Belgium to distribute almost 12, Arbeitseinsatzbefehlen work orders. As a result, 3, persons reported to Mechelen Schram, The strategy of calling Jews to work was abandoned permanently on September 3, As soon as the Sipo-SD observed this was inefficient, they opted for more straightforward and aggressive tactics.
Between August 15 and September 22, , they organized five large-scale operations: four big round-ups were carried out in Antwerp 3, victims and one in Brussels victims Steinberg, and Saerens, In a little over a month, 4, persons were transferred to Mechelen following these big raids. The element of surprise quickly wore off.
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The Jews soon realized that this blind violence would spare no one, regardless of age or state of health, and massively went into hiding. The last big round-up took place during the night of September , and exclusively targeted Jews holding Belgian citizenship. Up until then, they had been exempted from deportation, so most of them had felt secure enough not to go into hiding. Also, the release of and Belgian nationals from the Mechelen camp on June 26 and 29, Steinberg, , had allayed their fears further.
In the long run, individual arrests resulting from manhunts and betrayals led to the deportation of more Jews than did the mass round-ups, and over half the Jews deported from Belgium were victims of the first method. The period during which the techniques of work orders, mass round-ups and individual arrests were used simultaneously was the most deadly: in days, 16, people were deported to Auschwitz.
Only survived. On December 13, , Jews, mostly Turks and Hungarians were deported in this way. Published accounts of life in the Mechelen transit camp are rare. Most of the deportees only spent a few days in Mechelen on their way to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and compared to the horror they experienced in the latter camp, their imprisonment in Mechelen seemed quite bearable. Two witnesses gave a detailed account of daily life in Mechelen. He described all aspects of camp life: arrival, accommodation, hygiene, hierarchy, violence She was interned in Mechelen for several months and released in April She narrates her life in the camp, which was marked by a succession of departing convoys, and she wavered between anguish and hope.
In fact, judicial sources, such as written reports of witness interrogations and legal statements by the accused and their victims, tend to be the most complete sources of information on the history of the camp.
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Many women have recounted their arrival in the camp. They underwent abusive physical searches, far beyond the degree necessary to verify what they were carrying. Stripped naked in public and humiliated, they were subjected to violence, indecent assault and groping. Prior to the departure of Convoy VIII, the SS humiliated the Orthodox Jews by cutting off their beards and payot hair growing from the temples, often worn long and curled by Yemenite and Hasidic Jewish men , drawing swastikas on their tallitot prayer shawls , and setting fire to their Torah scrolls and religious books.
They forced their victims to dance around the pile of burning books whilst carrying the old Rabbi Gelernter on a chair above their heads. This scene appears on two of the four existing photographs of the Mechelen camp taken during this period, one of which is this:. From September , the assembly camp at Mechelen: whilst awaiting deportation, detainees of the 8th Transport are humiliated.
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During a gymnastics session intended as a punishment, Schmitt set his German Shepherd dog on a year-old prisoner, Herman Hirsch, who was bitten so severely that he had to be transferred to the Mechelen town hospital. Gangrene set in and one of his legs had to be amputated. He was discharged from hospital after more than 6 months and brought back to the barracks the day before the departure of Convoy XXI.
He was beaten, sprayed with cold water and left to stand in the barracks courtyard throughout the night. As a result, he died on April 5, He was the only prisoner who died in Mechelen as a direct result of ill-treatment. As her parents were being put on Convoy XX, on April 19, , Berthe Israels, a young, slightly feebleminded girl, had hysterics. Screaming and struggling, she managed to get out of the barracks to join her parents. The SS reacted violently, especially Max Boden. They dragged her by the hair back to the barracks and beat her fiercely.
After the mass round-up of Belgian Jews during the night of September , , a group of prisoners were taken from Antwerp to Mechelen a kilometer trip in a hermetically sealed truck. Many witnesses were struck by the terrible treatment of the Gypsies. They were locked up in the attics of the barracks and isolated from the other detainees.
They were not allowed to receive packages from outside the camp, and as a result they were starving. They slept on straw mattresses, had no access to the toilets and or to hospital care. At the end of the walk, they were locked in the attics again.
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Their families had been decimated, their health was poor, and they had lost their homes and possessions. They were without money and without work. They had to overcome their physical and psychological state of weakness and reintegrate into the society from which they had been excluded, find work on a job market they had been banned from, and learn to live again.
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