Archives of the Association des Juifs en Belgique (Front de l’Indépendance)

Collection description

Collection

Country:: Belgium

Holding institution:: Kazerne Dossin - Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on the Holocaust and Human Rights

Holding institution (official language):: Kazerne Dossin - Mémorial, Musée et Centre de Documentation sur l’Holocauste et les Droits de l’Homme

Postal address:: Goswin de Stassartstraat 153, 2800 Mechelen

Phone number:: +32 (0)15 29 06 60

Web address:: https://www.kazernedossin.eu

Email:: info@kazernedossin.eu

Reference number:: KazDossin-Mechelen-Collection 11

Title:: Archives of the Association des Juifs en Belgique (Front de l’Indépendance)

Title (official language):: Archives de l’Association des Juifs en Belgique (Front de l’Indépendance)

Creator/accumulator:: Vereniging der Joden in België; Association des Juifs en Belgique

Date(s):: 1941/1944

Extent:: 4,054 items (13,088 digital images)

Scope and content:: This fonds contains correspondence of the AJB as well as various lists (notably of AJB employees, of workers for the Organisation Todt, of persons summoned to Mechelen, of parcels). We also note correspondence and other documents of the departments of Education, Intervention, Special Aid Mechelen, Philanthropy, Emigration etc. of the organisation.

Administrative/biographical history:: The Vereniging der Joden in België - Association des Juifs en Belgique (VJB/AJB)(‘association of Jews in Belgium’) was created in late 1941 at the initiative of the German security services led by Heinrich Himmler. Through the creation of a representative body for the entire Jewish population in Belgium, the occupier hoped to increase the social isolation of the Jews as well as facilitate the implementation of its own anti-Jewish policy. The VJB/AJB, initially with Salomon Ullmann as its president, was de facto controlled by the Militärverwaltung and the Sipo-SD. The central office of the VJB/AJB was located in Brussels, with local branches in Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Ghent and Liège. From the autumn of 1943 only the Brussels branch remained. The VJB/AJB branches were primarily directed by integrated Jews from the bourgeoisie – usually notables who already held leading positions within the Jewish communities before the war. In the first phase (January 1942 – late June 1942), the institution was mainly active in the organisation of Jewish charity and education, separated from broader Belgian society by the anti-Jewish ordinances. The VJB/AJB managed, among others, a number of homes for children and the elderly. The deportation of Jews to northern France for compulsory labour on the Atlantikwall (for Organisation Todt) marked the beginning of the second phase (June 1942 – September 1943), in which the VJB/AJB was charged with the preparations for the physical removal of the Jews from Belgium, culminating in the sending of the “employment orders” (tewerkstellingsbevelen) summoning Jews to report to the Dossin barracks in Mechelen. Finally, from September 1943 the VJB/AJB leaders – who, after the roundups and deportations, no longer held any illusions about the role of the VJB/AJB – focused on bringing friends, family and themselves into safety. The VJB/AJB was eventually dissolved in August 1944. The tragic and extremely complex role of the VJB/AJB can hardly be summarised in binary frameworks of collaboration and resistance. Rather, it should be seen as a process of ‘accommodement’ of the occupier, influenced by factors such as the personalities of the VJB/AJB-leaders as well as their legalism and bourgeois conformism. However, the VJB/AJB was, even as an instrument of the occupying forces, less docile than was hoped for. It was the active policy of the “curators” of the “legal ghetto”, stuck “between obligation and necessity”, to minimise the impact of the anti-Jewish ordinances as much as possible, and to meet the everyday social, cultural, economic and religious needs of the Jewish population. Until the roundups in the autumn of 1942, it appears that a significant part of the Jewish population trusted the VJB/AJB. The relationship of the institution with the resistance was somewhat ambiguous; certain functionaries (including Perelman and Heiber) were at the same time also members of the Comité de Défense des Juifs. After the war an investigation into the VJB – in the context of the repression against incivisme – was classified and no further legal action was taken. Former VJB/AJB leaders (including Ullmann, Blum and Van den Berg) continued to hold eminent positions within certain Jewish institutions. For pragmatic reasons a part of the VJB/AJB staff was integrated into the organisation Aide aux Israélites Victimes de la Guerre. For quite some time, a strategy of pacification was implemented and a debate on the VJB/AJB avoided, in order to prevent total disintegration of the organised Jewish community due to an internal purge (epuratie). The first cautious attempts (in particular regarding the VJB/AJB in Brussels and Liège) were undertaken only in the 1960s. Today, the role and legacy of the VJB/AJB is still a highly sensitive and controversial issue with the Belgian Jewish communities. (J.-P. Schreiber, “Association des juifs de Belgique”, in P. Aron & J. Gotovitch, Dictionnaire de la Seconde Guerre mondiale en Belgique, Brussel, André Versaille, 2008, pp. 60-61; J.-P. Schreiber & R. van Doorslaer (eds.), De curatoren van het getto. De Vereniging van de joden in België tijdens de nazi-bezetting, Tielt, Lannoo, 2004, pp. 433-466.)

Access points: locations:: Mechelen

Subject terms:: Antisemitism; Antisemitism--Antisemitic measures; Holocaust; Jewish community; Jewish community records

Access, restrictions:: Access requires the authorisation of the archivist.

Finding aids:: There is an MS Excel spreadsheet describing the content of the fonds item by item.

Yerusha Network member:: State Archives of Belgium

fullscreen: Archives of the Association des Juifs en Belgique (Front de l’Indépendance)

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