A rare photograph of a large group of people kneeling and surrendering with raised hands seconds before their execution in the Breendonk camp. From behind and at a close distance, the Nazi soldiers are seen with rifles hanging over their bodies. September 14, 1944. Depicted on the back and dated by hand: “BERNDUNCK CAMP ANTWERP, SEPT. 14, 44” – “THE BRENDONCK CAMP IN ANTWERP, SEPTEMBER 14, 1944”. Living documentation from the time of occurrence with paramount historical importance to the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the war. Extremely rare.
Before the war, Breendonk served as a fortified military base of the Belgian army between the cities of Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium. During the German occupation of Belgium during World War II, it served as a detention camp, where Jews from the Belgian community were also incarcerated. On 20 September 1940, the first prisoners arrived at the fortress. In the first year of the camp’s existence, the Jews constituted about half of the prisoner population. They were held there separately from the other prisoners. Among other, Rabbi Shlomo Ullmann, the chief rabbi of the Belgian Jewish community, and the heads of the Belgian Jewish Union, were incarcerated in the fortress. The prisoners stayed in the fortress for an average of about three months before being sent to concentration camps in Germany, Austria and Poland. The prisoners suffered from harsh living conditions, starvation, denial of medical treatment, and cruel treatment by camp staff, and they were put to forced labor; The Germans also conducted interrogations, torture, and executions by hanging in the fortress. Various ‘political’ prisoners were interrogated in the camp under severe torture. In August 1944, with the approach of the Allied armies to Belgium, the Germans began evacuating the fortress of Breendonk . In those months, executions increased in the camp by shooting, hanging, and other means. Many prisoners were executed immediately upon arrival at the camp even before they were given prisoner clothes, as can be seen in the photo before us. At the same time, the Germans evacuated the fortress and transferred the remaining prisoners there to Mechelen transit camp or to camps in the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. The first German commander of the fortress, Philippe Schmitt, was tried in Belgium in 1949, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in 1950.
Size: 10.5×7.5 cm. Stains. Good condition.
