De Hel van Breendonck – Herinneringen – The Hell of Breendonk – Memoirs by camp prisoner Frans Fischer, published by Editions Labor. Brussels, 1945 – First edition in Dutch. One of the first testimonies published after the war by a prisoner who was held at Breendonk camp. Copy signed by the author.
“In this account of what my eyes witnessed, I could not, of course, provide a complete description of all the deliberate assaults on human life. Indeed, in Breendonk, there were alternating periods of absolute cruelty followed by some periods during which, for completely mysterious reasons, the regime somewhat softened, without ever losing its character of harsh and barbaric imprisonment, punishing people whose crime was loving their country and refusing to bow to the abominable Hitlerian ideology.” (From the author’s introduction).
A detailed testimony by a prisoner who was held at Breendonk camp for four months starting in June 1941. Fischer was arrested at his home in Brussels by the Nazis, and the reason for his arrest was never given. After being tortured during interrogation in the Gestapo basements and subjected to a show trial, he was transferred to Breendonk camp. Fischer provides a detailed description of the brutal conditions and the atrocities he and his fellow prisoners endured in the camp. He meticulously describes the structure of the camp and the cruel daily routine in the fortress that had been transformed into a Nazi death camp. He recounts the constant hunger and thirst, the daily humiliations, the loss of any sense of time, the especially brutal treatment of the Jewish prisoners compared to the others, the beatings and torture, the horrific conditions in the camp’s dungeon, and the executions carried out by the SS guards. Fischer witnessed how prisoners who had arrived with him were reduced to human skeletons and driven insane due to the inhuman conditions in the camp, among them well-known figures in Belgian public life such as Mr. Neps, Secretary of the Brussels Federation of Trade Unions, who was beaten nearly to death before his eyes, among others. He also witnessed the increasing pace of the murders committed by the Nazis in the camp, with his only concern being how to convey the horrors and inform the outside world of what was happening within. Many sections of the book are hard to read, as Fischer describes in detail the various forms of abuse he and his fellow prisoners suffered in the camp, as he puts it:
“It is hardly possible to imagine such barbaric crimes. One must see it with one’s own eyes to believe in such cruel and sadistic methods. But we saw it, and we hope that many generations after us will never witness such things…”.
One of the most harrowing passages in the book is the section where Fischer describes how the bodies of communist prisoners who were executed at the camp were placed in coffins, with some sent to their families, while the Jewish prisoners in the camp were never given a proper burial:
“But there were also other forced laborers who died, were executed, or murdered, who were never properly buried. This is, among others, the case for many Jewish prisoners. In the camp, there is a considerable mound, beneath which lie unfortunate victims, whose number is unknown and whose identities were never determined, laid to their final rest completely naked…”.
Nevertheless, Fischer also describes the resilience and courage of the prisoners, who found ways to support one another and resist their captors. He writes that, judging by the beatings the prisoners endured, the number of deaths should have been much higher, but thanks to their inner strength, some managed to survive. The book was first published in 1944 in French, immediately after the liberation of Belgium, and later in 1945 in Dutch in the edition before us.
Before the outbreak of the war, Breendonk served as a fortified military base of the Belgian army, located between the cities of Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium. During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II, it was used as a detention camp, where Jews from the Belgian community were also imprisoned. On September 20, 1940, the first prisoners arrived at the fortress. Among those incarcerated were Belgian communists, members of the resistance, hostages captured by the Germans, Jews from the Belgian community, and criminal offenders. During the first year of the camp’s operation, Jews made up about half of the prisoner population. They were held separately from the other prisoners. Among those imprisoned in the fortress were Rabbi Solomon Ullmann, the Chief Rabbi of the Belgian Jewish community, and leaders of the Belgian Jewish Association. Prisoners typically remained in the fortress for about three months before being deported to concentration camps in Germany, Austria, and Poland. The prisoners suffered from harsh living conditions, starvation, denial of medical care, and brutal treatment by the camp staff, and they were forced into hard labor. The Germans also conducted interrogations, torture, and executions by hanging in the fortress. Various political prisoners were interrogated under severe torture. The first German commander of the fortress, Philipp Schmitt, was tried in Belgium in 1949, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed in 1950.
Rare. Only three listings in the WorldCat global library catalog.
157 [1] pages. Wear along the spine. Good condition.
