Fort Breendonk
Fort Breendonk SS-Auffanglager Breendonk | |
---|---|
SS | |
Commandant |
|
First built | 1906–13 |
Operational | 20 September 1940 – 4 September 1944 |
Inmates | political prisoners, resistance members, hostages |
Notable inmates | Jean Améry, Willy Kruyt, Martial van Schelle, Todor Angelov, Paul Hoornaert |
Website | www |
Fort Breendonk (Dutch: Fort van Breendonk, French: Fort de Breendonk) is a former military installation at Breendonk, near Mechelen, in Belgium which served as a Nazi prison camp (Auffanglager) during the German occupation of Belgium during World War II.
Originally constructed between 1906 and 1913 as part of the second ring of the
Fort Breendonk was requisitioned by the
The camp was evacuated ahead of the
Construction and military use
Fort Breendonk was originally built by the
German prison camp: Breendonk I
Breendonk was occupied during the campaign of May 1940 and soon transformed into a prison camp which was controlled by SS and other security agencies of Nazi Germany—Sicherheitspolizei (SIPO) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in particular—although Belgium itself was under military (Wehrmacht) jurisdiction and controlled by General Alexander von Falkenhausen.[4]
Administration and inmates
On 20 September 1940, the first prisoners arrived. Initially most of the prisoners were petty criminals, people deemed anti-social, or who did not conform to the German race laws. Later on, resistance fighters, political prisoners and ordinary people captured as hostages were detained as well. Another section was used as a transit camp for Jews being sent to death camps in Eastern Europe such as Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The camp was guarded by
Between 3,500 and 3,600 prisoners were incarcerated in Breendonk during its existence,
Jewish prisoners in Breendonk were segregated from other prisoners until 1942. Thereafter, Jews were transferred to the nearby Mechelen transit camp and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.[7]
Daily life in the camp
Upon arrival at the camp, new inmates were brought to the courtyard where they would have to stand facing the wall until they were processed into the camp. They were forbidden to move and any motion was severely punished. In the camp, punishment consisted of beatings, torture in the old gunpowder magazine,
All the prisoners were subjected to forced labour. The camp authorities wanted the earth that had covered much of the Fort to be removed and shifted to build a high bank around the camp to hide it from outside view. In the few years Fort Breendonk was used by the Nazis, 250,000 cubic metres (8,800,000 cu ft) of soil covering the fort were removed by the prisoners by hand at a gruelling pace.[12] Prisoners only had hand tools to complete this enormous task and the soil had to be transported to the outer wall via hand carts on a narrow gauge railway system. The ground in the camp was often very soggy causing the rails to sink away in the mud. Prisoners were then expected to move by hand the carts filled with dirt, pushing and dragging them back and forth over a distance of more than 300 meters. This regime was imposed for over 12 hours a day, seven days a week, even in the worst of weather conditions. Orders were given only in German, so inmates were forced to learn the basic commands rather quickly or otherwise be punished for failure to obey orders. Prisoners were also forced to salute and stand to attention every time a guard passed.
Accommodation in the fort consisted of the old barracks. Built from thick stone, without windows and with only minimal ventilation, these were extremely cold and damp. Each barrack room only had a small coal burning stove, and providing sufficient heating was nearly impossible. Rooms were originally designed for no more than 38 people, but frequently housed over 50 inmates sleeping in three-tier bunk beds on straw mattresses. The top bunks were highly prized. Inmates only had a single small bucket per room for a toilet during the night, and many of the sick and weakened inmates simply allowed their waste to drop down to the lower levels. This caused much fighting between inmates, which was probably what the guards wanted.
Prisoners were allowed to use the toilet in the given order only twice a day. There were two gathering spaces inside the fort, east and west, each one with a small building, made of brick and without doors, equipped with four holes and one urinal. Only in 1944 a greater facility was added. But to go to the toilet was always done under surveillance, in group and in a hurry: an additional opportunity for the guards to intimidate and humiliate the prisoners.[13]
Jewish prisoners were segregated from other inmates and housed in specially constructed wooden barracks. These barracks were poorly insulated and over-crowded. Other prisoners were housed in cells, either in small groups or individually. The aim was to isolate certain prisoners for later interrogation and torture.
Food was severely rationed for the prisoners and distributed in different quantities to the various types of inmates. Jews received the least food and water. Prisoners were served three meals a day. Breakfast consisted of two cups of a coffee substitute made of roasted acorns and 125 grams (4.4 oz) of bread. Lunch was usually 1 litre of soup (mostly just hot water). Supper was again 2 cups of a coffee substitute and 100 grams (3.5 oz) of bread.[14] This was far from enough to sustain a human being, especially considering the intense cold or heat, harsh labour and physical punishments the prisoners were subjected to.
This harsh treatment of prisoners started to leak outside the Fort to such a degree that the head of the administrative staff of the Military Governor of Belgium Eggert Reeder was compelled to order an inspection of the Fort because Von Falkenhausen "did not want the camp to become known to history as the hell of Breendonk". But the respite was short lived also because the SS seized and forwarded to Germany most of the food parcels sent in by the Red Cross.[15]
Conditions in the camp were so cruel and harsh that those who left alive were so weak that their chances of survival at the final destination were severely hampered. Often prisoners were so sick and weak that they were led straight to the gas chambers or simply died within weeks of their arrival. The regime in the camp was at least as harsh as in an actual concentration camp. On 4 September 1944 the SS evacuated the Fort, and all the remaining prisoners were sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.[16] Fewer than 10 percent of the inmates survived the war.
Particular controversy surrounds the
Notable inmates
Famed author, philosopher, and journalist Jean Améry (formerly Hans Mayer) was captured by the Nazis in July 1943 while fighting with Belgian Resistance. He was subsequently sent to Fort Breendonk, where he was severely tortured before being sent to Auschwitz.[17] Améry discussed his experiences in a book he wrote about the dehumanization that occurred between victim and perpetrator during the Holocaust, a work he entitled At the Mind's Limits.[18]
Comics artist
The artist Jacques Ochs was interned in Breendonk from 1940 to 1942, when he managed to escape. A few of the drawings he made during his time there had survived. He used them after the war to reconstruct scenes of life in the camp, and in 1947 published those in the book Breendonck – Bagnards et Bourreaux ("Breendonck – Slave Laborers and Hangmen").[21]
Allied prison: Breendonk II
The officer of the British Army designated to liberate the camp late in 1944 was
Fort Breendonk was briefly repurposed as an internment camp for Belgian collaborators. This period of the Fort's existence is known as "Breendonk II". The internees were moved to Dossin Barracks, Mechelen, on 10 October 1944.
Later significance
War crimes trials
Trials of the
Of those who were convicted, 18 [22] were sentenced to be executed by firing squad in 1947, two of which appealed their case and had their sentences revised to life imprisonment. Four others were sentenced to life in prison, one to 20 years in prison, and one other was acquitted, and two guards who were sentenced to life were never found.[23]
The Nazi camp commandant,
Museum and memorial
In 1947 Fort Breendonk was declared to be a national memorial, recognizing the suffering and cruelty that had been inflicted on Belgian prisoners during World War II. The fort is now a well-preserved example of the prison camps operated by Nazi Germany and a national museum. The Fort is open to visitors all year round and is located close to the A12 Brussels-Antwerp motorway.
Pictures of working Nazi internment camps during the war are rare and, for a long time, it was believed that absolutely no pictures of Breendonk during the war existed. But in the early 1970s a batch of photos of the camp was discovered in the possessions of Dutch photographer Otto Spronk. He had collected thousands of pictures and films of the Third Reich as part of his work for the
See also
- List of Nazi-German concentration camps
- Citadel of Huy
- Nazi concentration camps
- The Holocaust
References
- ^ a b c USHMM Encyclopedia.
- ISBN 9780544096646.
- ^ "Breendonk Fort National Memorial". Places of remembrance in Europe. Retrieved 10 February 2012.
- ^ Pahaut & Maerten 2006, p. 10.
- ^ Pahaut & Maerten 2006, p. 25.
- ^ N. C. (6 December 2007). "Le Mémorial de Breendonk ne change pas de nom". Le Soir (in French): 5.
- ^ a b Pahaut & Maerten 2006, p. 19.
- ^ Pahaut & Maerten 2006, p. 23.
- ^ Pahaut & Maerten 2006, p. 22.
- ^ Pahaut & Maerten 2006, p. 15.
- ^ Nefors, Patrick (2005). Breendonk. 1940-1945. Bruxelles: Racine. p. 34.
- ^ Pahaut & Maerten 2006, p. 12.
- ^ Pahaut & Maerten 2006, p. 16.
- ^ "The Breendonk torture camp". War crimes committed under the occupation of Belgium, 1940-1945. Liège: Ministry of Justice of Belgium - War crime Commission. 1948. p. 56.
- ^ Pahaut & Maerten 2006, p. 14.
- ^ Pahaut & Maerten 2006, p. 11.
- ^ Susan Derwin, "What Nazi Crimes against Humanity Can Tell Us about Torture Today," in Speaking about Torture, ed. Julie A. Carlson and Elisabeth Weber (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 75.
- ISBN 978-0253211736.
- ^ "Marc Sleen". lambiek.net.
- ^ Smet, Jan, en, Auwera, Fernand, "Marc Sleen", Standaard Uitgeverij, 1985.
- ASIN B00179NLV8. Retrieved 28 September 2016.
- ^ Martin Gilbert-Second World War
- ^ "Nazi War Crimes Trials: Breendonck Trial". Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
Bibliography
- Pahaut, Claire; Maerten, Fabrice (2006). Le Fort de Breendonk: Le Camp de la Terreur Nazie en Belgique pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (PDF) (in French). Bruxelles: Éditions Racine. ISBN 978-2873864606.
- "Breendonk". USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 15 May 2016.
Further reading
- Vander Velpen, Jos (2005). Breendonk: Chronique d'un camp (1940-1944). Brussels: Editions Aden. ISBN 9782930402079.
- Wijngaert, Mark Van den (2010). Beulen van Breendonk. Schuld en boete (1st ed.). Antwerp: Standaard Uitgeverij. ISBN 9789002239564.
- Nefors, Patrick (2005). Breendonk: 1940-1944. Brussels: Ed. Racine. ISBN 9782873864200.
- Wynen, André (2007). Le fort de Breendonk le camp de la terreur nazie en Belgique pendand la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Democratie ou barbarie (3rd ed.). Brussels: Ed. Racine. ISBN 9782873864606.
External links
Media related to Fort van Breendonk at Wikimedia Commons