Kazerne Dossin: what Mechelen uncovers about a past that continues to echo

Between 1942 and 1944, the Gestapo sent approximately 25,800 people to extermination camps from what was known as the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen, Belgium. Less than 5% returned after the war. Where there was so much horror, we now find a museum commemorating the memory of all those who left the barracks.

Real people’s registration given by de Gestapo to Jews and Roma’s in Belgium to later deported them to concentration camps. Author: Lucia Maldonado

The Assotiation of Jews in Belgium distributes from July 1942 labor call-up noticies to over 10 000 Jews instructed to report to the Dossin Barracks. Not showing up could carry severe penalties. At the same time the Germans developed its own initiative: a compulsory employment od 2 000 Jews from Belgium to build uo the Atlantic Wall in northern France.

In July 1941, the Militärverwaltung ordered a second registration of Jews in Belgium. Identity cards were stamped with the words Jood–Juif, making Jewish citizens instantly recognizable. The Flemish nationalist secretary-general for Internal Affairs, Gerard Romsée, ensured that duplicates of each Jewish identity card were sent directly to the Sipo-SD in Brussels. That’s how the Nazis obtained a complete list of Jewish names and addresses across the country — an administrative prelude to mass deportation. At that point, the machinery of persecution was still disguised as bureaucracy. What seemed like paperwork would soon translate into the organized disappearance of an entire community.

From July 1942, the Association of Jews in Belgium distributed labor call-up notices to over 10,000 Jews, ordering them to report to Mechelen. The Nazis described it as “labor mobilization,” but in reality, the Dossin Barracks was the departure point to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Trains departed regularly, carrying men, women, and children into the machinery of genocide. Each convoy carried around a thousand souls. They were packed into cattle cars with barely enough air to breathe. Some clutched photographs or prayer books; others left behind hastily written notes tossed through cracks in the wood, hoping someone would find them.

Alongside Jews, the Nazi regime also targeted another so-called “racial group”: the Roma. The term “Zigeuner” (Gypsy), used by the Nazis, carried a deeply racist connotation. At the time, there were only about 400 Roma in Belgium, most living in extreme poverty. In late 1941, Belgian authorities began a compulsory registration of Roma, officially designating them as a “race.” This bureaucratic act sealed their fate — many were interned or deported alongside Jews. Only thirty Roma deported from Belgium survived. Their names, too, now appear on the walls of the Mechelen memorial — proof that the Nazi obsession with “racial hygiene” left no group untouched.

Elisabeth Warsha with five of her children: Marie, Charles, Polika, Regina and Zolo. Below: Elisabeth Warsha and Joseph Karoli. The parents and eleven of their children were deported on Transport Zin January 1944-Only two of the children survived. Photo: Lucia Maldonado

The Nazi occupation relied heavily on local collaboration. Many Belgian officials, particularly in Antwerp, cooperated willingly with the occupiers, compiling lists, enforcing curfews, assisting in round-ups etc. Others resisted, refusing to enforce the wearing of the yellow Star of David introduced in May 1942. Yet resistance was the exception rather than the rule. In some neighborhoods, silence was complicity; in others, courage meant a loaf of bread left on a doorstep or a child hidden in a stranger’s attic. In fact, one of the most remarkable moments of resistance occurred in April 1943, when members of the Belgian underground stopped Convoy 20 near Boortmeerbeek and freed seventeen prisoners. Their bravery remains a powerful symbol of human defiance against the machinery of death

Between July 1942 and September 1944, the Dossin Barracks became the central assembly and transit camp for Jews and Roma from Belgium and northern France. Seventeen convoys left for Auschwitz in the first few months alone. Deportees traveled in sealed cattle cars; some attempted to escape through small openings as trains slowed, though few succeeded. Of the 25,484 Jews and 353 Roma deported from Mechelen, only about 5% survived.

Among those survivors is a woman from Antwerp who, as a young girl, fled with her family from one hiding place to another. Her memory is a fragile thread connecting the present to that terror-filled past. Her words reflect not only the fear of discovery but also a determination to survive — a small act of rebuilding life in the midst of persecution. Each move, each new address, was a defiance of Nazi control and a testament to hope in the darkest of times.

“We made our home in Antwerp at different addresses. Each time things improved a bit, we moved.”

Bureaucrats of death

But, the Holocaust in Belgium must be understood within a broader context of European anti-Semitism and fascist ideology. The Nazis’ obsession with racial purity had deep roots in Germany’s defeat in World War I, economic collapse, and the pseudo-scientific racism that flourished across Europe in the early 20th century. Hitler’s Mein Kampf had already envisioned the annihilation of Jews as “racial tuberculosis.” By 1933, his dictatorship suspended civil liberties, banned political opposition, and began persecuting anyone considered “undesirable” — from Jews and Roma to homosexuals and the disabled. This ideology transformed ordinary men into bureaucrats of death, and ordinary cities into nodes of extermination.

For the Jewish population in Belgium (around 75,000 people before the war) life became a daily battle for survival. Many went into hiding, helped by networks like the Comité de Défense des Juifs, which saved thousands of children by placing them with Belgian families. Others joined the resistance, printing underground newspapers or sabotaging deportation trains. Still, the vast majority of deportees passed through the gates of Mechelen before vanishing into the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Every photograph displayed at Kazerne Dossin today — every name, every birth date — is a reminder that these were individuals, not statistics.

A place for remembrance

Today, the Kazerne Dossin Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights stands as a place of remembrance and education. Visitors walk through rooms filled with portraits of victims, personal belongings, and the chilling transport lists prepared by the Nazis. The museum also addresses ongoing issues of discrimination, racism, and persecution, reminding us that the lessons of the Holocaust remain painfully relevant. Each visitor is asked not just to remember, but to reflect — on the fragility of democracy, and on how easily fear can turn into exclusion.

Where once people were herded like numbers toward death, today there is a call for human dignity and remembrance. Mechelen is no longer a symbol of fear, but of resilience and responsibility — a place where Belgium confronts its past to ensure that the crimes committed there are never forgotten, and never repeated.