Rik Hemmerijckx holds a doctorate in history (from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel). His research focuses mainly on trade union resistance, the history of the ABVV, Renardism and communism in Belgium. He worked successively as a historian at the Institute of Social History (Amsab), then as a coordinator for the Auschwitz Foundation. Since 2008, he has been curator at the Emile Verhaeren Museum.

The interviews he conducted concerned trade unionism in times of war. Recorded between 1984 and 1994, 39 files are available upon request for consultation.

Wim Meyers worked mainly on Flemish collaboration with a particular focus on the VNV in his interviews, which were conducted between 1972 and 1988. The last of these concern Flemish collaborationist youth movements such as the NSJV.

A historian from Ghent University, Rudi Van Doorslaer wrote a doctoral thesis entitled “Children of the Ghetto. Jewish Revolutionaries in Belgium, 1925-1940”, submitted in 1990. From 1977 to 1980, he worked as a temporary attaché at CegeSoma, before being hired as a permanent researcher in 1985. For two years, he directed a research project on the Commission for the Study of Jewish Property under the Prime Minister’s Office. From 1996 to 2005, he was editor-in-chief of Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent. He has published in the domains of Jewish history, migration, communism and anti-communism, the Spanish War and other topics related to the Second World War. He left CegeSoma in 2016.

The interviews conducted by Rudi Van Doorslaer mainly concern the Belgian Communist Party. In particular, he interviewed several witnesses who had been active in the PCB during the Second World War in various Belgian cities (Antwerp, Kortrijk, Brussels, Aalst,…), but also in the context of the Spanish Civil War. He was committed to gaining a better understanding of the structure of the party. The interviews were conducted in two stages. The first interviews took place at the end of the 1970s, between 1976 and 1979. They mainly concern the PCB. Then, from 1983 to 1989, he was still interested in the PCB, but his emphasis was on its links to the Spanish Civil War.

Moreover, there are several interviews with Jewish refugees carried out in order to deepen knowledge of Jewish history.

Michel Vanbergen conducted about twenty interviews, mainly in French, on broadcasting during the Second World War (Radio London, Institut national de radiodiffusion – I.N.R., Radio Belgique, Mission Samoyède) from 1970 to 1980.

A researcher at CegeSoma from 1975 to 1984, Luk Kongs devoted the majority of his research to the question of fascism. He began a doctoral thesis on the Verdinaso but died of illness before he could complete his work. Between 1976 and 1983, he conducted a series of interviews on fascism in Spain and Belgium.

This archive contains a wealth of information about the Jewish presence in Antwerp and also testifies to the life and work of Sylvain Brachfeld, author and guardian of the history and memory of the Antwerp Jewish community. The archive consists of two large parts: the manuscripts and publications of Sylvain Brachfeld himself, with hundreds of articles, various books and poems written by him. In them, he describes every possible facet of Jewish life. The second part contains the testimonies he collected, including some 200 audiocassettes, more than 1200 photographs, slides, negatives and videotapes. Various books and studies relating to Judaism in Belgium are also present. The audio cassettes form a very important part of the archive. In the 1970s, Mr Brachfeld interviewed many Jewish families in Antwerp, resulting in about 120 stories with precious memories, since many of those witnesses are already deceased. He himself belongs to the last generation who can still testify directly about the Shoah.

Sylvain Brachfeld used his research for several publications

Among those interviewed are Jewish camp survivors, Jewish and non-Jewish resistance fighters, political prisoners, hidden children, hidden adults, hostages, refugees, survivors of the Rwandan genocide, Spanish Civil War volunteers, anti-fascists and children of members of these groups of witnesses. Most of the witnesses lived in Belgium during and post-war.

In 1987, Johannes Blum started recording testimonies of Holocaust survivors in Belgium, and from 1993 he made audiovisual recordings. Over the years, he interviewed more than 1,100 people, some of them several times. For each interview, Johannes Blum also compiled a research file, including copies of documents, newspaper clippings, photos of the witness, (scans of) historical photos, written testimonies, publications and obituaries. In 2003, Johannes Blum contacted the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, the predecessor of Kazerne Dossin. His collection was then transferred to the archives of the JMDR. Kazerne Dossin continues to digitise the recordings and research files.

During the Second World War, millions of people lost their lives in German concentration camps. There were survivors, but they are slowly dying out. Soon there will be no more people who can testify at first hand about the horrors of the camps. Their memories – however horrific – must never disappear.

A book has been published and a documentary made

The five-part documentary by Luckas Vander Taelen records the story of fifteen Flemish Holocaust survivors and imprisoned resistance fighters.

De laatste getuigen is a five-part documentary made in 1991 by Luckas Vander Taelen for VTM. It is a timeless document that has lost nothing of its power even 20 years later. In the series we see how the filmmaker and fourteen Belgian survivors return to the concentration camps where they were held during the Second World War. Seven of them are Jews, the other seven were arrested and deported by the Nazis and their accomplices because of their political convictions and acts of resistance.

Luckas Vander Taelen spoke extensively with these last witnesses of the Nazi horror, first here in Belgium and then during a journey to the camps where they had been imprisoned for months or years during the war. They returned to Dachau, Ravensbrück, Natzweiler, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen, Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz-Birkenau and other places.

They testify about their experiences, from the moment they were picked up, their deportation, arrival and life in the camps, and later their liberation and return to Belgium. The result is one of the most striking and penetrating documents about this terrible period in our country’s history.

During the recording, a fifteenth witness was added: Samuel Hejblum, a Jew, was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp on 5 August 1942. There he worked for a fortnight in a special commando who was in charge of the first gas chambers. His duties included carrying the bodies to the crematoria. Later, he also had to empty the goods wagons that brought the Jews from all over Europe to Auschwitz and sort out their meagre possessions. This is a unique testimony from one of the few survivors of a Sondercommando.