Belgium and the Holocaust

Copy Link

Contents Foreword Dan Michman ix Part One: Historiography Research on the Holocaust in Belgium and in General: History and Context Dan Michman Part Two: On the Eve of the Occupation Belgian Jewry The Zionist Kaleidoscope in Belgium Daniel Dratwa 43 Jewish Immigration and Communism in Belgium, 1925-1939 Rudi Van Doorslaer 63 Belgian Jewry Reacts to the Nazi Regime Prior to the Occupation: The Case of the Economic Boycott, 1933-1939 Jean-Philippe Schreiber 83 Belgian Attitudes Toward the Jews The Attitude of the Belgian Roman Catholic Clergy Toward the Jews Prior to the Occupation Lieven Saerens 117 Antwerp's Attitude Toward the Jews from 1918 to 1940 and Its Implications for the Period of the Occupation Lieven Saerens 159 Part Three: Under the Nazi Yoke The German Occupier The Judenpolitik in Belgium Within the West European Context: Comparative Observations Maxime Steinberg 199 Belgian Attitudes Toward the Jews The Belgian Catholics and the Jews During the German Occupation, 1940-1944 Mark Van den Wijngaert 225 Baptism and Conversion of Jews in Belgium, 1939-1945 Luc Dequeker 235 Resistance Movements and the "Jewish Question" Jose Gotovitch 273 The Attitude of the Belgian Government-in-Exile in London Toward the Jews and the Jewish Question During World War II Veronique Laureys 287 The Rescue of Jewish Children in Belgium During World War II Mordecai Paldiel 307 The Fate of the Jewish Communities in the North of France During World War II Danielle Delmaire 327 Belgian Jewry Facing Persecutions The Jews in the Years 1940-1944: Three Strategies for Coping with a Tragedy Maxime Steinberg 347 The Belgian Zionist Youth Movements During the Nazi Occupation Dan Michman 373 The Contacts Between the World Hechaluz Center in Geneva and the Zionist-Pioneering Underground in Belgium Hava Wagman-Eshkoli 397 Jewish Orphanages in Belgium Under the German Occupation Sylvain Brachfeld 419 Rescue and Return: Post-Kristallnacht German-Jewish Refugee Children in Belgium and Their Return to Germany in 1941 Mordechai Ansbacher 433 Belgian Jews in France, 1940-1944 Lucien Lazare 445 Felix Nussbaum — The Impact of Persecution on the Art of a German-Jewish Refugee in Belgium Dalia Hakker-Orion 457 Part Four: Aftermath The Jewish Brigade in Belgium Yoav Gelber Re-education of War-Orphaned Jewish Children and Adolescents in Children's and Youth Homes in Belgium, 1945-1949 Arye Riesel 483 Kehillath Morya: Portrait of a Refugee Community in New York City, 1943-1987 Judith Tydor Baumel 499 Genocide and Its Memories: A Preliminary Study on How Belgian Jewry Coped with the Results of the Holocaust Daniel Dratwa 523 The Contributors 559 Index 567.

Recommended publications

In This Issue

July/August 2015 Tammuz Elul, 5775 Mazel Tov to all our Religious school students for another great year of learning. IN THIS ISSUE Special kudos to the Zayin Class who graduated in Host an Oneg…………………………. 2 President’s Column …………………. 3 May: Rabbi’s Column ……………………… 4 David Arlen Holiday Services ………..…………… 7 Ari Bernstein Yahrzeits July ……………………… 9 Adam Belkin-Rosen Yahrzeits August …………………10 Contributions ……………………..... 11 Rose Chusid In Memoriam ………………………… 13 Leah Lurie Education Director’s Column ...….. 14 Benjamin Margolis Gala Update …………………………. 16 Nathan Stein Kosher Korner ……………………. 17 Sisterhood News ………..…….…… 18 Jack Hyams Gift Shop …………………………… 19 Philly Soul Arena Football Team … 20 UPCOMING EVENTS Film Festival Schedule ……………. 21 Classes w/ Rabbi Jacob …….…….. 26 Please visit Donation Form……………………….. 27 orshalom.com/ Monthly Calendar ……………….. 28 calendar for the latest Advertisers ……………………….. 30 information about Office Hours: Monday 10:30 to 3:30 events. Tuesday 11 to 4 Wednesday 10 to 3 Thursday 10 to 3 September Horizons Friday 10:30 to 3:30 articles will be due August 21st Office Closed June 30 July 3 HORIZONS July/August 2015 Tammuz Elul, 5775 TD Bank Affinity Program One of our best opportunities to increase Or Shalom’s revenue is through TD Bank. The bank has a program which pays Or Shalom a percentage of the total balances of the accounts that are enrolled in Horizons is published monthly. Material the program and affiliated with Or Shalom. If you already have an submitted for publication may be edited account at TD Bank, you can easily enroll your account in the Affinity for style, length and content. Program by calling Jeff Salvo, the TD Bank branch manager in Devon.
Mandr April.Qxp

Vol. 33-No.4 ISSN 0892-1571 March/April 2007-Adar/Nisan 5767 TEACHING TOLERANCE, UNDERSTANDING, AND UNITY n March 11, 2007 over one hun- resource developed by Yad Vashem, Vashem Jerusalem. They led the follow- “When the Nazis came for the communists, Odred educators gathered at the The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ ing workshops: 1) The Final Solution I remained silent; Pratt Mansions in NYC for the American Remembrance Authority, the Anti- 2) Jewish Resistance 3) Survivors and I was not a communist. Society for Yad Vashem’s Ninth Annual Defamation League, and the USC Shoah Liberators 4) Perpetrators, Collaborators, Professional Development Conference. Foundation Institute for Visual History and Bystanders and 5) The Ghettos. When they locked up the social democrats, Once again, this program was co-spon- and Education. We were pleased to wel- he Echoes and Reflections curricu- I did not speak out; sored by the Association of Teachers of come representatives from all three insti- Tlum is a comprehensive ten-lesson I was not a social democrat. Social Studies of the United Federation tutions. We were also very excited about program that focuses on the history of of Teachers. Remarks on behalf of the having teachers from eight different the Holocaust within the context of con- When they came for the trade unionists, temporary issues. For example, it deals I did not speak out; with cultural diversity, genocide, and I was not a trade unionist. intolerance. This year’s conference tried to show educators how to utilize this When they came for me, innovative curriculum in their class- there was no one left to speak out.” rooms.
Holocaust Memorial Days an Overview of Remembrance and Education in the OSCE Region

Holocaust Memorial Days An overview of remembrance and education in the OSCE region 27 January 2015 Updated October 2015 Table of Contents Foreword .................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 2 Albania ................................................................................................................................. 13 Andorra ................................................................................................................................. 14 Armenia ................................................................................................................................ 16 Austria .................................................................................................................................. 17 Azerbaijan ............................................................................................................................ 19 Belarus .................................................................................................................................. 21 Belgium ................................................................................................................................ 23 Bosnia and Herzegovina ....................................................................................................... 25 Bulgaria ...............................................................................................................................
City Research Online

City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Wheelwright, J. (2016). The ethical turn in considering hidden children's Holocaust testimony as historical reconstruction. Ethical Space: the international journal of communication ethics, 13(4), pp. 4-10. This is the accepted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/15253/ Link to published version: Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] The ethical turn in considering hidden children’s Holocaust testimony as historical reconstruction Julie Wheelwright How to balance respect for the testimonial quality of post-Holocaust memoirs while critically analysing their value as historical witness statements? This question is explored through the author’s experience of collaborating on a memoir project with a Jewish subject who, as a child, was hidden in a Catholic convent in Belgium during the Second World War. Using the concepts of ‘collective memory, memory makers and memory consumers’, the author argues that witness statements are most valuable when read and understood within broader issues of political and historical structures.
Felix Nussbaum (1904 – 1944)

SOMMAIRE I/ FELIX NUSSBAUM (1904 – 1944) ................................................................................3 Présentation de l’exposition ............................................................................... 3 Déroulé de l’exposition ...................................................................................... 3 La Nouvelle Objectivité ...................................................................................... 4 II/ OBJECTIFS ET PISTES PEDAGOGIQUES ................................................................6 Objectifs pédagogiques ..................................................................................... 6 Lien avec les piliers du socle commun .............................................................. 6 Organiser le temps scolaire ............................................................................... 7 Thématiques transversales ................................................................................ 8 Propositions pour le Primaire ............................................................................. 9 Questionnaire sur Felix Nussbaum .................................................................. 12 Propositions pour le Secondaire ...................................................................... 14 III/ POUR ALLER PLUS LOIN ........................................................................................ 17 1/ Felix Nussbaum et ses maîtres ......................................................................... 17 2/ L’art et la Shoah
The Schlenke Collection Featuring Felix Nussbaum

Inge Jaehner THE SCHLENKE COLLECTION FEATURING FELIX NUSSBAUM A lot has been published in recent years about collectors, especially art collec- tors. And it has not always focused just on the art collections, but has also ex- plored the different motivations that fuel a collector’s passion. “The Obsessed” is the title Peter Sager gave his book on “Art Collectors from Aachen to Tokyo”.1 “Collectors are manic, voracious, given to behaving imperiously. Or they are no- ble,” writes Peter Dittmar.2 Big collectors are often thought of as profit-seeking power players who indulge their vanity, extroverted personalities driven by the desire to have a building named after them. Irmgard and Hubert Schlenke belong to an entirely different category of collec- tors. While they have never sought the public limelight, they have shared their collection with the public. For theirs is a very special kind of collection. At no time did the Schlenkes ever set their sights on the conventional. Their focus has always been on artists many of whom would otherwise, and unjustly, have remained uncelebrated by the art world, who they felt deserved saving from a fate of oblivion. Thus, their collection has artists from the “Lost Generation” at its centre. As a collector, Hubert Schlenke is driven by very personal motiva- tions, by an interest in people and their life experiences. It is people’s stories that he collects, so that the artistic quality of a piece is not its only attraction for him. It is this humanitarian edge to his collection that makes it so special.
Thomas Hengstenberg Felix Nussbaum and His Time

PREFACE Thomas Hengstenberg FELIX NUSSBAUM AND HIS TIME Featuring more than 140 works, this exhibit draws our attention to a generation of artists born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who set out to engage in their craft in the changing, unpredictable times pre- and post-WW I. Many of them enjoyed great success in the brief period between the world wars. Keen experimenters and with a strong will to effect change, they had significant influ- ence on the cultural and social life of the day. However, their hopes that the tur- bulent, crisis-ridden decades of the early 20th century would be followed by an era of stability for a society renewed in freedom were ultimately dashed when the Nazis gained power in Germany. Like most creative thinkers and innovators of that time, artists too became a target of the powers that be if they refused to have their works be misused for propaganda purposes or to be enlisted and monopolised for the systemised national arts programme of the dictatorship. Even before 1933 nationalistic and national-socialistic groups had defamed these artists as “anti-German” and sub- jected them to the full destructive force of a powerful movement that opposed and rallied against all things “non-Aryan” or stood in contradiction to the political and philosophical views of the party. What began as rhetorical confrontations, censorships and book burnings, progressively intensified into systematic psy- chological terror and brutal assaults against non-conformists and those per- ceived to be different, and ultimately ended in the persecution, forced migration and genocide of millions.
2018 Disseminator Grant

2018 Disseminator Grant: Project Title: Unraveling the Past to Create a Better and Inclusive Future Jacqueline Torres-Quinones, Ed.D [email protected] South Dade Senior High School 7701 ONCE I THOUGHT THAT ANTI-SEMITISM HAD ENDED; TODAY IT IS CLEAR TO ME THAT IT WILL PROBABLY NEVER END. - ELIE WIESEL, JEWISH SURVIVOR For Information concerning ideas with Impact opportunities including Adapter and Disseminator grants, please contact: Debra Alamo, interim Program Manager Ideas with Impact The Education Fund 305-558-4544, Ext 105 Email: [email protected] www.educationfund.org Acknowledgment: First and foremost, the Unraveling the Past to Create a Better and Inclusive Future Grant, has led to the development of a practical and relevant Holocaust unit filled with various lessons that can be chunked and accessible resources for secondary teachers to use. The supportive guidance was provide by Eudelio Ferrer-Gari , a social science guru- [email protected] from Dr. Rolando Espinosa K-8 Center, The Echoes and Reflections, and the Anti-Defamation League Organizations. Within this grant, teachers will be able to acquire knowledge of how to help students understand the Holocaust better and assist them to make critical thinking connective decisions as well of how they can make a positive difference today- when dealing with challenging social and political issues. Resources used throughout the grant: Founded in 2005, Echoes & Reflections is a comprehensive Holocaust education program that delivers professional development and a rich array of resources for teachers to help students make connections to the past, gain relevant insight into human dilemmas and difficult social challenges, and to determine their roles and responsibility in the world around them.
Judging the Past the Use of the Trials Against the Members of the Gestapo in Belgium As a Source for Historical Research

S: I. M. O. N. SHOAH: I NTERVENTION. M ETHODS. DOCUMENTATION. Robby Van Eetvelde Judging the Past The Use of the Trials against the Members of the Gestapo in Belgium as a Source for Historical Research Abstract Academic historians have an ambiguous relationship with the use of documents produced in the context of criminal investigations. On the one hand, these documents provide an ava- lanche of information, often giving a voice to historical actors that would otherwise stay hid- den in classical top-down history. On the other hand, academics denounce such documents as inherently biased and thus unfit for use in an “objective” reconstruction of the past. This problem’s urgency increases in the context of a politically tense period such as the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. In post-war Belgium, military courts were responsible for bringing to justice both German officials and Belgian collaborators. This paper identifies the methodological possibilities and problems associated with the use of the documents these courts amassed to this end with regard to research on the Holocaust and the German occupation of Belgium and to history-writing in general. Among others, elements such as the influence of the internal workings of the military court and the legal framework in which it had to operate, the similarities and differences in how historians and prosecutors go about their research, and how defence strategies employed by suspects/perpetrators as well as wit- nesses/victims twisted their hearings and testimonies, are addressed. The paper concludes that although judicial sources come with inherent limitations, they can be employed in aca- demic history as long as attention is paid to the specific context in which they were produced and they are subjected to proper critical reading.
Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944)

Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944) Dix fiches d’œuvres à exploiter en classe Les Deux Juifs (Intérieur de la synagogue d’Osnabrück) 1926 Huile sur toile, H. 115 – L. 99 cm Osnabrück, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, prêt de la Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung. Souvenir de Norderney 1929 Huile sur toile, H.98 – L. 113,5 cm Osnabrück, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, prêt de la Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung. Destruction (2) 1933 Huile sur toile, H. 53 – L. 76 cm Osnabrück, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, dépôt d’une collection particulière. Le Réfugié (1) (Vision européenne) 1939 Huile sur toile, H. 60 – L. 74 cm Osnabrück, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, prêt d’Irmgard et Hubert Schlenke, Ochtrup. Esquisse pour La Synagogue du camp 1940 Crayon et encre de Chine sur papier, H. 18 – L. 28 cm Osnabrück, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, prêt de la Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung. La Tempête 1941 Huile sur toile, H. 87 – L. 101 cm Osnabrück, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, prêt d’une collection particulière. Autoportrait à la clé 1941 (Verso du tableau Landschaft bei Rom n° 153) Huile sur bois, H. 47,2 – L. 35,1 cm Tel-Aviv, Museum of Art, don de Philippe Aisinber et Maurice Tzwern, Bruxelles. Peur (Autoportrait avec sa nièce Marianne) 1941 Huile sur toile, H. 51 – L. 39,5 cm Osnabrück, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, prêt de la Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung. Autoportrait au passeport juif vers 1943 Huile sur toile, H. 56 – L. 49 cm Osnabrück, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, prêt de la Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung. Triomphe de la mort (Les squelettes jouent une danse) 18 avril 1944 Huile sur toile, H. 100 – L. 150 cm Osnabrück, Felix-Nussbaum-Haus, prêt de la Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung.
Patterns of Cooperation, Collaboration and Betrayal: Jews, Germans and Poles in Occupied Poland During World War II1

July 2008 Patterns of Cooperation, Collaboration and Betrayal: Jews, Germans and Poles in Occupied Poland during World War II1 Mark Paul Collaboration with the Germans in occupied Poland is a topic that has not been adequately explored by historians.2 Holocaust literature has dwelled almost exclusively on the conduct of Poles toward Jews and has often arrived at sweeping and unjustified conclusions. At the same time, with a few notable exceptions such as Isaiah Trunk3 and Raul Hilberg,4 whose findings confirmed what Hannah Arendt had written about 1 This is a much expanded work in progress which builds on a brief overview that appeared in the collective work The Story of Two Shtetls, Brańsk and Ejszyszki: An Overview of Polish-Jewish Relations in Northeastern Poland during World War II (Toronto and Chicago: The Polish Educational Foundation in North America, 1998), Part Two, 231–40. The examples cited are far from exhaustive and represent only a selection of documentary sources in the author’s possession. 2 Tadeusz Piotrowski has done some pioneering work in this area in his Poland’s Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces, and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1998). Chapters 3 and 4 of this important study deal with Jewish and Polish collaboration respectively. Piotrowski’s methodology, which looks at the behaviour of the various nationalities inhabiting interwar Poland, rather than focusing on just one of them of the isolation, provides context that is sorely lacking in other works. For an earlier treatment see Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles under German Occupation, 1939–1944 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1986), chapter 4.
Jewish Masculinity in the Holocaust

Jewish Masculinity in the Holocaust Anna-Madeleine Halkes Carey Student No. 100643952 Royal Holloway, University of London PhD Thesis Declaration of Authorship I, Anna-Madeleine Halkes Carey, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: Date: 2 Abstract This thesis considers the prevailing historical representation of Jewish masculinity in Holland, Belgium, France and Poland during the Holocaust and asks to what extent it is an accurate reflection of the source material available. Having concluded that such scholarship as exists on the subject is inherently flawed, my thesis will attempt to consider exactly how it might more accurately be represented. Beginning with a broad understanding of theories of masculinity and discussions of Jewish gender my thesis will lay out a clear approach both to the study of masculinity and to the questions and key features of Jewish masculinity in the interwar period in Europe. Treating the period largely chronologically, this thesis will then go on to its substantive research, looking at the sources, contemporary and modern, written both by survivors and those who died during the Holocaust, to attempt to determine the impact of persecution upon several elements of male gender identity, specifically, conformity to normative identities, the impact of gendered environments and , finally, more individual elements of masculinities. Ultimately, this thesis will argue that whilst Jewish masculinities were severely damaged in the initial phases of persecution, particularly due to an environment which was gendered feminine and the near impossibility of practising normative gender identities, the period of enclosure, and particularly ghettoisation, which followed was one in which many men were, within reason, able to reassert clear masculine identities.