Antwerp police have handed over a list containing the names of the people deported by the Germans during the Second World War to the FelixArchief, Antwerp's city archives. Until now, the document had been kept at the police heritage centre. ‘It is a sober, administrative check list of who was still in Antwerp and who was not,’ explains Flemish historian Herman Van Goethem.
‘A dark period in Antwerp's police history’ is how the City of Antwerp describes the list, which was drawn up ‘some time’ after 4 September 1944 and contains the names, addresses and dates of Antwerp residents who were deported.
‘Police officers were ordered to arrest Jewish citizens from the city and hand them over to the German occupier. This list of names of victims makes this traumatic event in police history very real.’
From the 6th District
Presumably, every district in the city had a similar list. This one comes from the 6th District, which extended from the station area to the city park and the Plantin Moretuslei. ‘During the war, this was where the largest concentration of Jews lived,’ explains historian Herman Van Goethem. ‘This document shows how officers carried out checks, street by street, to see who was still there and who was no longer there.’
The list mostly contains Jewish names, mainly people who were arrested in August and September 1942, but also political prisoners and people who had fled.
According to Van Goethem, the document is ‘a sober, administrative check list of who was still in Antwerp and who was not.’ ‘It sounds cynical, but after the liberation, Antwerp was faced with a huge administrative problem. There were some 20,000 people who no longer lived in Antwerp, but there was no precise overview of this. The city authorities needed to know where those people were.’
‘Astonishing list’
Van Goethem calls the list an 'astonishing list'. ‘There are streets where hundreds of people had disappeared. At that time, no one knew that almost all the Jews had been killed, or what had happened to the political prisoners. It was only from April-May 1945 onwards that it became clear that almost everyone on the list had been killed.’
‘The Jews were all deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Most of them were gassed upon arrival, and only a very small group of those selected as workers survived. Of the 25,000 people deported from Belgium, barely 5 per cent survived, about 1,200 people.’ Mortality was also high in the labour camps where political prisoners were sent.
People who survived often suffered from poor health and psychological trauma after the war. ‘On top of that, they were also confronted with administrative issues. Hard to believe but true, the tax authorities knocked on their doors to say that they had not filed tax returns in 1942, 1943 and 1944. In that respect, this is a Kafkaesque document.’
Donated to the FelixArchief
Until now the list has been held at the Antwerp police heritage centre with exhibits from the past and present linked to the Antwerp police service. The police have now transferred the document to the FelixArchief, Antwerp’s city archives.
‘There the list will be stored under optimal conditions and will form part of the rich archive of the Antwerp police force that is already preserved in the FelixArchief,’ the city of Antwerp says. ‘A replica of the document will soon be available at the police heritage centre.’