Belgium: New Holocaust and Human Rights Museum Opens at Mechelen

 Mechelen, Belgium. Kazerne Dossin. New Museum and Documentation Center.  Photos: Kazerne Dossin website.

Mechelen, Belgium. Kazerne Dossin. New Museum and Documentation Center, new memorial set inside the old barracks. Photos: Kazerne Dossin website.

Mechelen, Belgium. Kazerne Dossin in 2005 Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2005)

Belgium:  New Holocaust and Human Rights Museum Opens at Mechelen
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) King Albert II of Belgium opened a new Holocaust and Human Rights Center in Mechelen, Belgium in early December, 2012.  The new white cube-like building (actually its a pentagon) is situated adjacent to the18th-century Kazerne Dossin (barracks) that served as a last-stop transit camp for Belgian Jews begin shipped to their deaths at Auschwitz.  

According to the Museum website: 

"The old Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance is now a memorial, a place of reflection for victims and their relatives, while a brand-new building – a white monolith - opposite the old barracks houses the permanent historical exhibition. The new building occupies the site of the former detention building, opposite the barracks, emphatically marking the spot where the events of the Second World War unfolded....The museum is pentagon-shaped with large expanses of glass on one side and bricked-up windows on the other. On top of the building is a terrace which looks out over the old barracks. 

The infrastructure is designed to accommodate school and other groups as well as individual visitors. With four floors of galleries, a spacious auditorium, cafeteria and two educational areas, the museum has everything it takes to put itself on the map nationally and internationally."

You can see images of the construction and completion of the new center here.

The Mechelen transit camp site was strategically sited at a major rail junction halfway between Brussels and Antwerp, the major Jewish population centers of the country.  In the 1980s part of the complex was renovated for housing,  but part became the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, which opened in 1995 due to the initiative of Belgium's Jewish community.  In 2001, the government began an expansion of the institution with the construction of a new complex opposite the old barracks.  This new facility houses an expanded museum, documentation center and memorial.

Mechelen, Belgium. Kazerne Dossin commemorative exhibit in 2005. This has now been changed.  Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2005)

The new building was designed by Flemish architect bOb Van Reeth and financed by the Flemish government. The 25,852 bricks used in the construction are meant to signify the number of Jews and Roma sent to Auschwitz from the barracks, located just a few meters away.
Read more abut the new center here.

In related news, last summer Antwerp Mayor Patrick Janssens announced plans for a commemorative  monument to the city's Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.

Mechelen was the site of several incidents of Jewish resistant and prisoner escapes.  According to Wikipedia, based on the research of Maxime Steinberg: "The Belgian Jewish underground, assisted by the Belgian resistance, derailed several trains carrying Jews from the camp to Auschwitz during 1942–1943. Though most of these people were soon put on the next transports, about 500 Jewish prisoners did manage to escape. At an attempted escape on 19 April 1943, resistance fighters stopped the 20th transport near the train station of Boortmeerbeek, 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south-east of Mechelen. 231 prisoners managed to flee although 90 were eventually recaptured and 26 were shot by train escort guards.  you can read a more detailed history fo the camp by Lawrence Schram here:

Laurence Schram,The Transit Camp for Jews in Mechelen: The Antechamber of Death, Online Encyclopedia of Mass Violence

By: Philippe Siuberski BRUSSELS (AFP).- Belgium's newly-opened Holocaust and human rights museum stands symbolically on the site of a barracks commandeered by the Nazis as a wartime transit centre for Jews and Gypsies being sent to the death camps. The new "Kazerne Dossin" in the Flemish town of Mechelen, comprising a museum, memorial and documentation centre, is located at the site of an 18th century barracks that officials dub "a silent witness to the greatest war crime, in the form of genocide, in Belgium." The new World War II remembrance complex some 30 kilometres from Brussels was inaugurated by Belgian King Albert II and opened to the public last month. Like the Drancy camp outside Paris where Jews were rounded up and sent to death camps, the Dossin barracks -- directly linked to the Belgian rail network -- was turned into a last-stop transit centre for the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp run by the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. More than 25,500 Jews and 350 Gypsies from both Belgium and northern France were sent there after their arrest, often with the help of local police. There were more than 70,000 Jews in Belgium before the Second World War broke out, notably 18,000 in the nearby port city of Antwerp. After two or three months at Dossin, deportees were herded into trains for the Third Reich's death camps. Only five percent of the Jews and Gypsies who left Mechelen in 28 convoys ever returned. Last September, Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo presented the country's apologies for crimes committed by people who had worked hand-in-hand with Nazis to deport Jews. "This new museum takes a more profound look at the history of the persecution of the Jews in Flanders and Belgium, based on new historic sources of information and insights," said Kris Peeters, who heads the Dutch-speaking government of Flanders. "It also provides a link between the concepts of holocaust and human rights." In 1995, members of the Jewish community opened a small museum in a part of the barracks but much of the building had already been turned into flats and sold. The new complex, built with the help of a 25-million-euro investment by the government of Flanders, adds a state-of-the-art cube-like museum designed by celebrated Flemish architect Bob Van Reeth. The top fourth floor, destined to house temporary exhibitions, is open to the light of day but the other three storeys smack of a mausoleum. Rectangular shapes in the white facade symbolise bricked-up windows while the heavy sliding steel door recalls those on the freight trains used to carry the victims to their death. Van Reeth said the total volume was equivalent to that of the freight cars used in the 28 convoys to the death camp; the number of bricks used being the same as the number of people deported. The three floors touch on three themes -- intolerance, fear and death. The museum expects to see 100,000 visitors a year. © 1994-2012 Agence France-Presse

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By: Philippe Siuberski BRUSSELS (AFP).- Belgium's newly-opened Holocaust and human rights museum stands symbolically on the site of a barracks commandeered by the Nazis as a wartime transit centre for Jews and Gypsies being sent to the death camps. The new "Kazerne Dossin" in the Flemish town of Mechelen, comprising a museum, memorial and documentation centre, is located at the site of an 18th century barracks that officials dub "a silent witness to the greatest war crime, in the form of genocide, in Belgium." The new World War II remembrance complex some 30 kilometres from Brussels was inaugurated by Belgian King Albert II and opened to the public last month. Like the Drancy camp outside Paris where Jews were rounded up and sent to death camps, the Dossin barracks -- directly linked to the Belgian rail network -- was turned into a last-stop transit centre for the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp run by the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. More than 25,500 Jews and 350 Gypsies from both Belgium and northern France were sent there after their arrest, often with the help of local police. There were more than 70,000 Jews in Belgium before the Second World War broke out, notably 18,000 in the nearby port city of Antwerp. After two or three months at Dossin, deportees were herded into trains for the Third Reich's death camps. Only five percent of the Jews and Gypsies who left Mechelen in 28 convoys ever returned. Last September, Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo presented the country's apologies for crimes committed by people who had worked hand-in-hand with Nazis to deport Jews. "This new museum takes a more profound look at the history of the persecution of the Jews in Flanders and Belgium, based on new historic sources of information and insights," said Kris Peeters, who heads the Dutch-speaking government of Flanders. "It also provides a link between the concepts of holocaust and human rights." In 1995, members of the Jewish community opened a small museum in a part of the barracks but much of the building had already been turned into flats and sold. The new complex, built with the help of a 25-million-euro investment by the government of Flanders, adds a state-of-the-art cube-like museum designed by celebrated Flemish architect Bob Van Reeth. The top fourth floor, destined to house temporary exhibitions, is open to the light of day but the other three storeys smack of a mausoleum. Rectangular shapes in the white facade symbolise bricked-up windows while the heavy sliding steel door recalls those on the freight trains used to carry the victims to their death. Van Reeth said the total volume was equivalent to that of the freight cars used in the 28 convoys to the death camp; the number of bricks used being the same as the number of people deported. The three floors touch on three themes -- intolerance, fear and death. The museum expects to see 100,000 visitors a year. © 1994-2012 Agence France-Presse

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=60107#.UPVPDmePxJy[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org

By: Philippe Siuberski BRUSSELS (AFP).- Belgium's newly-opened Holocaust and human rights museum stands symbolically on the site of a barracks commandeered by the Nazis as a wartime transit centre for Jews and Gypsies being sent to the death camps. The new "Kazerne Dossin" in the Flemish town of Mechelen, comprising a museum, memorial and documentation centre, is located at the site of an 18th century barracks that officials dub "a silent witness to the greatest war crime, in the form of genocide, in Belgium." The new World War II remembrance complex some 30 kilometres from Brussels was inaugurated by Belgian King Albert II and opened to the public last month. Like the Drancy camp outside Paris where Jews were rounded up and sent to death camps, the Dossin barracks -- directly linked to the Belgian rail network -- was turned into a last-stop transit centre for the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp run by the Nazis between 1942 and 1944. More than 25,500 Jews and 350 Gypsies from both Belgium and northern France were sent there after their arrest, often with the help of local police. There were more than 70,000 Jews in Belgium before the Second World War broke out, notably 18,000 in the nearby port city of Antwerp. After two or three months at Dossin, deportees were herded into trains for the Third Reich's death camps. Only five percent of the Jews and Gypsies who left Mechelen in 28 convoys ever returned. Last September, Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo presented the country's apologies for crimes committed by people who had worked hand-in-hand with Nazis to deport Jews. "This new museum takes a more profound look at the history of the persecution of the Jews in Flanders and Belgium, based on new historic sources of information and insights," said Kris Peeters, who heads the Dutch-speaking government of Flanders. "It also provides a link between the concepts of holocaust and human rights." In 1995, members of the Jewish community opened a small museum in a part of the barracks but much of the building had already been turned into flats and sold. The new complex, built with the help of a 25-million-euro investment by the government of Flanders, adds a state-of-the-art cube-like museum designed by celebrated Flemish architect Bob Van Reeth. The top fourth floor, destined to house temporary exhibitions, is open to the light of day but the other three storeys smack of a mausoleum. Rectangular shapes in the white facade symbolise bricked-up windows while the heavy sliding steel door recalls those on the freight trains used to carry the victims to their death. Van Reeth said the total volume was equivalent to that of the freight cars used in the 28 convoys to the death camp; the number of bricks used being the same as the number of people deported. The three floors touch on three themes -- intolerance, fear and death. The museum expects to see 100,000 visitors a year. © 1994-2012 Agence France-Presse

More Information: http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=60107#.UPVPDmePxJy[/url]
Copyright © artdaily.org