Joseph Toloche was born on 15 April 1912 in Florenville, Belgium, into a family of showmen, horse dealers and tinsmiths. Together with Flore Boudin (1901–1941), he had two children: Marguerite (1933–1944) and Bernard (1935–1944).
Escape to France
Like many others, the family fled from Belgium to France in May 1940 to escape the German Wehrmacht. The French gendarmerie arrested them in Rouen on 8 November 1940 and took them to the nearest detention camp (camps d’internement de nomades) in Mulsanne (Sarthe department). Their wagons and horses were confiscated and remained in Darnétal. In March 1941, Joseph Toloche wrote to the prefect of Seine-et-Oise demanding his release. Shortly afterwards, on 21 April 1941, his wife Flore Boudin died of a miscarriage in the hospital in Arpajon (Essonne department). Joseph Toloche was now a widower and left to fend for himself with his children.
In September 1941, father and children were forced to live in the Linas-Monthléry camp. Together with other Belgian prisoners, Joseph Toloche again demanded the return of their property and permission to return to Belgium. This attempt also failed and the family was transferred to the Montreuil-Bellay camp (Maine-et-Loire department), one of the largest detention camps for ‘Nomades’ in the occupied zone. Eventually, they were granted permission to settle outside the camp on the condition that they found an employer and accommodation within 20 kilometres of the camp. Joseph Toloche managed to sign a rental contract for a small house in Montreuil-Bellay. However, as far as is known, he wished to return to Belgium because there were no detention camps for Sinti and Roma there at the time.
Another Escape and Deportation
As several petitions had been unsuccessful, Joseph Toloche and his children, along with other families, returned to Belgium on their own. However, they were seized by the Feldgendarmerie and the security police (Sipo-SD) at the end of November 1943 in Hénin-Liétard (now Hénin-Beaumont, Pas-de-Calais department) and Vimy (Pas-de-Calais department) in northern France and interned in Loos-lez-Lille prison in Loos.
Those arrested, including Joseph Toloche and his two children, were taken to the ‘SS transit camp’ in the Dossin barracks in Mechelen. There, the German criminal police recorded them on a list on 9 December 1943. All of the people on this list, a total of 352 men, women and children, were deported from Mechelen on 15 January 1944. They were taken on ‘Transport Z’ to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp and assigned to the Camp Section BIIe. Joseph Toloche’s children died there; the dates of their death are not known.
On 15 April 1944, Joseph Toloche was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp with a larger group, including 23 other deportees from ‘Transport Z’. He was categorised as fit for work and assigned to the Dora satellite camp, later Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. On 28 October 1944, he was registered at the Ellrich-Juliushütte satellite camp. In the final weeks of the war, he was transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where he was liberated on 15 April 1945.
Return and Expulsion
On 8 May 1945, Joseph Toloche returned to Brussels in what his repatriation card described as ‘poor general health’. A few weeks later, at the beginning of June 1945, he was questioned by the aliens police. They recorded his testimony about the deportation and his internment in the concentration camps and issued him with a new ‘Gypsy card’ [‘Zigeunerkaart’]. At the end of the 1950s, he was travelling through Belgium in a caravan and earning his living as a toolmaker. He may have married again. The aliens police noted a woman named Céla or Séva Colombar as his partner several times, as well as nine children, who are not named in the files. In 1960, Joseph Toloche was expelled from Belgium for unknown reasons. It is not known when and where he died.
