There were a few hundred Sinti and Roma living in Belgium in the 1930s. As a result of a single deportation from occupied Belgium and northern France to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, which took place on 15 January 1944, seventy percent of the members of the Romani community in Belgium were murdered.
Between Repression and Tolerance
The arrival of ‘Bohemians’ is documented in Belgium around 1420, and over the centuries their presence has been recorded in a number of large Belgian cities, including Tournai and Brussels, as well as near the borders with Germany and the Netherlands. They were mainly active in itinerant trades, as basket weavers, horse traders, tinsmiths, musicians and peddlers.
Founded in 1830, the Belgian state, like other contemporary European states, introduced measures to monitor and control non-residents, for example at the borders. The newly established aliens police were to take action against those who were considered a threat to national security or public morals. Sinti and Roma were particularly targeted, as they were equated with criminals or vagrants. Over time, laws were passed that restricted their mobility and access to the country, in particular through internment in ‘workhouses’1The ‘workhouses’ in Belgium were a legacy from the time of the Dutch and later the French occupation. Beggars, alcoholics, prostitutes and other people who were considered a nuisance were locked up here and put to work. With the foundation of the Belgian state, their character changed and, depending on the government, they fluctuated between charity (‘welfare colonies’) and repression (punitive incarceration, ‘workhouses’). or expulsion.
However, these measures did not work from the state’s point of view, as the number of Sinti and Roma registered in Belgium continued to rise. Between 1880 and 1914, Belgian policy towards Sinti and Roma fluctuated between relative tolerance and repression. After World War I and at the beginning of the 1930s, Belgium tightened border controls and took stronger action against Sinti and Roma.
In the 1930s, ‘workhouses’ were reopened or newly built to cope with the influx of refugees from the German Reich. They were set up in the provinces of Liège (Marneffe and Marchin), Antwerp (Merksplas and Wortel), Hainaut (Marquain), East Flanders (Eksaarde) and West Flanders (Sint-Andries). The Belgian state held mainly Jewish refugees in these detention centres, but also petty criminals, people suspected of espionage or other subversive activities and Sinti and Roma.
The internees were put to work there or trained in the skills of plumbing, carpentry, electricity and gardening. With the idea of achieving self-administration, the inmates contributed to the maintenance of the institutions. Women took part in sewing and laundry courses and the children went to school.
Start of the War
Nazi Germany invaded neutral Belgium on 10 May 1940. From the first hours of the German invasion, the Belgian authorities were confronted with an unforeseen and uncontrollable number of people fleeing. More than 1.5 million, possibly even two million people panicked and fled. France reacted quickly, opening its borders on 13 May and taking in most of the refugees. The Belgian forces were quickly defeated and surrendered on 28 May. The Belgian government under Hubert Pierlot (1883–1963) went into exile in France and later in the United Kingdom, while King Leopold III (1901–1983) remained in Belgium.
The Military Commander for Belgium and Northern France
Belgium was placed under the direct administration of the German Military Commander for Belgium and Northern France. Military Commander Alexander Freiherr von Falkenhausen (1878–1966), General of the Infantry, was based in Brussels. Exercising sovereign authority, he was responsible for establishing the military administration, maintaining order, ensuring the safety of the occupying troops and exploiting the heavily industrialised and economically strong areas for the benefit of the German war economy.
General Eggert Reeder (1894–1959), who was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer in Belgium, held the post of head of the German military administration. He remained in office from June 1940 to July 1944. Although he was effectively subordinate to the Military Commander von Falkenhausen, it was Reeder who was in charge of the repression and persecution of both Jews and ‘Gypsies’ in the occupied territory.
The eastern cantons of Belgium—Eupen, Malmedy and Sankt Vith—were granted to Belgium after the defeat of Germany in World War I and under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. These areas were incorporated into the German Reich after Belgium’s defeat. The French departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais were attached to the former territory of Belgium and were therefore also subject to the German military administration in Brussels.
These departments were of particular strategic importance because of their proximity to the United Kingdom. Moreover, in the National Socialist vision of a new Europe these regions were deemed so historically, culturally and ‘racially’ similar that they formed a ‘Germanic unity’. This vision determined the treatment of the population.
The Military Commander in occupied Belgium and northern France had ‘Gypsies’ arrested in and deported from the territory under his control, while in France the persecution measures consisted mainly of enforced residence and detention camps (France).
Belgium and the French departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais were divided into five high commands (OFK): Brussels, Charleroi, Ghent, Liège and Lille.
Presumably for strategic reasons and in view of a possible attack by the United Kingdom, a German police decree was issued on 12 November 1940 banning itinerant traders from the coastal zone, in both parts of Flanders and in the province of Antwerp.
Sinti and Roma were just one category among many. The ban was directed against groups of people regarded as ‘enemies of the Reich’: Jews, Englishmen, Norwegians, Poles, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, stateless persons who had been in Belgium since 1 January 1937, emigrants from Germany who had arrived since 1 January 1933, Czech nationals who had arrived since 1 January 1938, former members of the Foreign Legion and ‘Gypsies’.
Registration by the Aliens Police
Gérard Romsée (1901–1976), a leading figure of the Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond [VNV, Flemish National Association], was appointed the new Secretary General of the Belgian Ministry of the Interior by the German occupiers on 29 July 1941. The Flemish nationalist party, founded in 1933, had increasingly collaborated during the war.
At the turn of 1941 and 1942, the Belgian aliens police, which was subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior, tightened its policy towards foreigners. The extensive files that the aliens police kept on all foreigners, as well as Sinti and Roma, made it easier to locate them and thus persecute them. The term ‘foreigner’ quickly took on the meaning of ‘undesirable’.
The aliens police did not open files for those who had been resident in Belgium before the war and had Belgian citizenship. It was Romsée who instructed the municipal administrations to stamp the identity cards of Jews with ‘juif-jood’ and to send a copy of the register of Jews to the Security Police (Sipo), providing them with an indispensable tool for organising a genocidal policy.
At the end of 1941, the aliens police an administrative measure introduced aimed directly at Sinti and Roma, whom the Belgian authorities usually referred to as ‘Romanichels’. The regulations in force until then provided for them to be issued with ‘reiswijzer’/‘feuilles de route’. These were residence certificates with photographs and fingerprints that were valid for three months but did not guarantee authorisation to remain indefinitely: Municipalities had the right to restrict or refuse the presence of the holder.
In a circular dated 21 December 1941, the aliens police introduced a bilingual ‘Gypsy card’ [Zigeunerkaart], which replaced the ‘reiswijzer’. From 5 to 20 January 1942, all ‘Gypsies’ over 15 years were detained by local gendarmerie brigades until the cards were issued. The ‘Gypsy card’ was not an identity document either, but once again a provisional residence permit that had to be renewed every three months by the aliens police. On the 5th of each month, the holder of the card had to report to the gendarmerie. With the introduction of the ‘Gypsy card’, the occupying authorities had an additional instrument for registering a group of people who would soon become the target of raids and deportations
Escape and First Deportations
In the face of the invasion of the German Wehrmacht, several Sinti and Roma families fled to France from May 1940. There, however, they fell under the ‘Law of 16 July 1912 on the exercise of itinerant professions’, which categorised them as ‘nomades’, meaning that they had to carry ‘carnets anthropométriques’ [anthropometric identity cards]. They were also in violation of a decree of 6 April 1940, which prohibited ‘the movement of nomades during the period of hostilities’.
Several families who had fled to France were thus trapped in the occupied zone. The family of Edouard Maître (1919–unknown) was arrested on 8 November 1940 in Rouen, Normandy, when they tried to return to Belgium, where the situation seemed more bearable. After the arrest, the family, as well as the families of Emile (1911–1945) and Joseph (1927–unknown) Maître, Jean-Pierre Thodor (1921–1944?) and Joseph (1906–1944) and Auguste (1918–after 1973) Vadoche, were taken to the nearest detention camp Linas-Montlhéry (department of Essonne) and from there to Montreuil-Bellay (department of Maine-et-Loire).
The invasion of the Wehrmacht also posed a threat to the families who had fled from Germany to Belgium. This was the case, for example, for the Keck-Elster family, who had settled in Hasselt in the province of Limburg, as well as for the Weiss-Meinhardts, musicians working in Germany and the Netherlands who had settled in Maaseik, also in the province of Limburg. Others fled to Belgium, where they hoped for a diplomatic solution. This was the case, for example, for the Modis family from Norway, who had tried in vain to return to their home country in 1934.
In contrast to the refugees who remained in France and were interned in the Linas-Montlhéry and Montreuil-Bellay camps, nine young men aged between 16 and 32 decided to return to Belgium. They had been born in Belgium, France and Norway and belonged to the Gorgan (also Gorgon), Modis, Taicon, Vadoche, Tailor and Songen (Sorgen) families. On 6 February 1943, they were arrested by the Geheime Feldpolizei 712 in Antwerp and transferred to the Citadel of Huy and on 30 August to Saint-Gilles prison in Brussels, before finally being deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.
Seven of them died in Auschwitz-Birkenau; one remains unaccounted for. Josef Tailor (1911–1944) and Alfred Songen (1907–1944) were registered in the Flossenbürg concentration camp on 24 May 1944, where Alfred Songen died on 11 December 1944 and Josef Tailor on 1 February 1945. Only the then 19-year-old Joseph Collicon-Taicon (1926–unknown), who had been transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Buchenwald on 3 August 1944, survived this first wave of arrests.
Deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau
With the Auschwitz Decree, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) ordered the deportation of all ‘Gypsies’ from the territory of the Reich on 16 December 1942, and on 29 March 1943 the order was also issued for Belgium and northern France. This order threatened the existence of the small group of Sinti and Roma in Belgium and northern France.
From mid-October to the beginning of December, members of the German Feldgendarmerie, and in northern France also local police officers, carried out large-scale raids and arrests. It is not known how many Sinti and Roma managed to evade arrest by fleeing and going into hiding, but numerous examples, for example from Roubaix or Tournai, prove that many tried and some managed to survive in this way.
In the end, 352 men, women and children were arrested in various cities and sent to the ‘SS transit camp for Jews’ in Mechelen, some of them via prisons or assembly centres. This camp was set up in July 1942 in Mechelen in the Dossin barracks, located between Antwerp and Brussels, and was made available to the security police by the German military administration to implement the deportation of the Jewish population. Between 1942 and 1944, 25,843 men, women and children were deported from the camp in Mechelen. Twenty-seven transports took 25,272 Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them were murdered.
This was joined on 15 January 1944 by a single transport of 352 Sinti and Roma, more than half of them children, which was designated ‘Transport Z’ and also headed for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only 32 survived. After this first deportation, Rom Stevo Karoli (1925–unknown) was deported on the 25th transport from Mechelen to Auschwitz-Birkenau together with Jews. He survived and returned to Belgium in 1945.
Even if there was only one large, racially motivated deportation of Sinti and Roma in Belgium and northern France, it must be noted that this deprived the small Romani community in Belgium of seventy per cent of its members.
End of the War and Post-War Period
On 18 June 1944, the military administration in German-occupied Belgium and northern France was replaced by a civil administration under the control of the Gauleiter of Cologne, Josef Grohé (1902–1987). His main task was to control the occupied territories with a minimum of German forces and the more extensive involvement of local institutions. This new structure did not lead to a change in occupation practice on the eve of the arrival of the allied troops.
The allied troops reached Belgian territory on 2 September 1944, and by 12 September almost the entire area had been liberated. The ‘Ardennes Offensive’ of December 1944, one of the last German offensives on the Western Front, slowed down the liberation of Belgium, which was not complete until 4 February 1945. The Belgian Pierlot government, which had fled to London, had already returned to Brussels in September 1944.
Only 33 people survived the deportations from Mechelen. Some of the Sinti and Roma who had been imprisoned in ‘workhouses’ and thus escaped deportation also survived.2The number of those who survived in this way is not known; further research is needed.
Almost all of the survivors had lost their relatives and were severely damaged both mentally and physically by imprisonment and forced labour. All their possessions, homes and caravans had been confiscated and the deportees returned to Belgium or France destitute. In both countries, they received hardly any support; on the contrary, they were isolated. Discriminatory measures, such as the ‘Gypsy cards’ that were only abolished in 1975, pushed them back to the margins of society, often into illegality. Survivors who applied to be recognised as political prisoners in Belgium were rejected.3Archives de l’État en Belgique [State Archives of Belgium], Service Archives des Victimes de la Guerre, SDR 183 872, Cal Clara, 14/01/1925; SDR 8.401, Karoli Stevo/Caroli Steven, 26/08/1925.
While the Belgian state set up a commission in 1997 to investigate the theft of the property of persecuted Jews,4Commission Buysse, Les biens des victimes des persécutions anti-juives en Belgique: Spoliation, Rétablissement des droits, Résultats de la Commission d’étude. Rapport final de la Commission d’étude sur le sort des biens des membres de la Communauté juive de Belgique spoliés ou délaissés pendant la guerre 1940–1945, juillet 2001, https://combuysse.prd.excom.fgov.be/fr/commission-detudes-des-biens-juifs [accessed: 28/02/2024]. there were no comparable initiatives with regard to the victim group of Sinti and Roma. The property stolen from them was mainly movable property: caravans and carriages, money, jewellery, horses, mules, musical instruments and tools. Only in exceptional cases did they own real estate, bank accounts or other financial assets.5Heddebaut, Des Tsiganes vers Auschwitz, 241–50. Only a few managed to recover some of this.
Historical Reappraisal
The history of the National Socialist persecution of the Sinti and Roma in Belgium only reached a wider public very late. There are several reasons for this: the negligible number of survivors, the mistrust of survivors towards society and the prejudices and resentment that still exist in society today, which contributed to the fact that the suffering and murders were met with indifference. The topic was also only taken up very late in academia.
In 1976, José Gotovitch (1940–2024) published the first general overview of the murder of the Sinti and Roma deported from Mechelen, thereby carrying out pioneering work. The Holocaust researcher Maxime Steinberg (1936–2010) dealt with the topic beginning in the late 1970s, superficially at first and then in more detail in the 1990s. He was involved in the founding of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance [Joods Museum van Deportatie en Verzet (JMDV)/Musée juif de la Déportation et de la Résistance (MJDR)] and ensured that the deportation of the Sinti and Roma was mentioned.
Interest in the history of the Sinti and Roma in the 20th century has only increased since the 2000s. Following a study commissioned by the Senate (the upper house of the Belgian parliament), one of the authors, historian Rudy Van Doorslaer (born 1951), published an article on the dispossession of the Sinti and Roma during the German occupation. Maxime Steinberg and Laurence Schram (born 1968) collaborated on several publications, including the catalogue of the Belgian exhibition at the Auschwitz Memorial Museum (2007) and ‘Mecheln-Auschwitz 1942–1944. The Extermination of Jews and Gypsies in Belgium’ (2009). These four volumes contain a general historical summary and contextualisation of each transport that departed from the Dossin barracks, as well as a list and portraits of the deportees.
In 2008, the historian Frank Seberechts (born 1961) analysed the administrative treatment of the Sinti and Roma by the Belgian state and the National Socialist occupiers. The unpublished report is characterised by the use of a variety of sources.
From 2012, the Norwegian historian Maria Rosvoll (born 1973) published several studies focussing on the Norwegian Roma deported from German-occupied Belgium. Monique Heddebaut (born 1955) researched the May 1944 deportation known as ‘Transport Z’ for the first time in detail in her dissertation, which was written in 2013 and published as a book in 2018. Her study, which is dedicated to the pre- and post-history of the deportation, is now considered a standard work. Laurence Schram also dedicated a chapter of her doctoral thesis (2015) and her book (2017) on the Dossin barracks to the persecution and deportation of the Sinti and Roma.
Commemoration
It took almost 50 years before a memorial plaque commemorating the internment and deportation of the Sinti and Roma was erected on 3 June 1995 at the historic site of the former ‘SS transit camp’ in Mechelen.
The initiative came from the Vlaams Overleg Woonwagenwerk (VOW) and the Consistoire central israélite de Belgique/Centraal Israëlitisch Consistorie van België [CCIB, Central Israelite Consistory of Belgium]. The VOW, an umbrella organisation of several associations, was founded in 1977 to champion the interests of Woonwagenbewoners [caravan dwellers]. This included representing their interests vis-à-vis the state and its authorities, providing education, setting up pitches, improving healthcare and supporting individuals on their visits to the authorities.
The plaque in Mechelen is the only one in Belgium to date that commemorates the genocide.
After initial beginnings in 1995, a memorial site has developed on the site of the former ‘SS transit camp’, which was opened to the public in 2012. Today, the ‘Kazerne Dossin—Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre for the Holocaust and Human Rights’ deals with the persecution and murder of Sinti and Roma in its permanent exhibition as well as in other formats such as travelling exhibitions and commemorative events.
