Metadata: Régine Karlin-Orfinger archives
Collection
- Country:
- Belgium
- Holding institution:
- Archive and Research Centre for Women’s History
- Holding institution (official language):
- Centre d’Archives pour l’Histoire des Femmes
- Postal address:
- Middaglijnstraat 10 / Rue du Méridien 10, 1210 Brussel (Sint-Joost-ten-Noode)
- Phone number:
- +32 (0)2 229 38 31
- Web address:
- http://www.avg-carhif.be/
- Email:
- avg.carhif@amazone.be
- Reference number:
- ARCWH-Brussels-KAR 77
- Title:
- Régine Karlin-Orfinger archives
- Title (official language):
- Fonds Régine Karlin-Orfinger
- Creator/accumulator:
- Orfinger-Karlin, Régine
- Date(s):
- 1962/1995
- Extent:
- 3 linear metres
- Scope and content:
- In this fonds we mainly find documents related to the activity of Régine Karlin-Orfinger in various women’s organisations and associations working towards the decriminalisation of abortion. We mostly note incoming documents such as correspondence, circulars, newsletters and periodicals but also minutes of meetings, notes, statutes, leaflets and posters, documentation, etc. In addition we also mention the subject files, including some that exclusively concern legal accusations and prosecution of these associations in the framework of the struggle for the right to abortion. Lastly, we point out file no. 88 (1993-1994), related to requests addressed to Régine Karlin-Orfinger to give talks about i.a. the resistance and the situation of Jewish children after the war.
- Archival history:
- Donation in 2003.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Régine Karlin (1911-2002) was born in 1911 in Antwerp, the daughter of the diamond trader Gregori Karlin. She studied law at the ULB and became, in 1934, one of the first women admitted to the Bar in Antwerp. She was also an active Freemason. In 1941 Régine Orfinger-Karlin was excluded from the Bar because she was Jewish. She joined the resistance and initially helped evacuating and hiding Jewish children (i.a. within Ezra). In 1942 she joined the Gewapende Partizanen (of the Onafhankelijkheidsfront) in the Antwerp region, a resistance group in which her husband, the engineer Lucien Orfinger, was also active. Régine Orfinger-Karlin worked as a courier for the Onafhankelijkheidsfront. Henri Orfinger was born in 1940; a second son, Pierre, was born in 1943. He would never know his father: Lucien Orfinger was arrested in 1943 and executed in Breendonk (1944). Régine Orfinger-Karlin moved to the Namur region, where she continued her resistance activities. After the war she refused reintegration in the Bar of Antwerp but instead built a flourishing career at the Bar in Brussels. She also worked for the AIVG and acted as a legal expert for the Service Social Juif. In addition she was the co-founder of the Ligue des Droits de l’Homme and the Syndicat des Avocats pour la Démocratie. In the post-war period she was very committed to the cause of anti-racism (i.a. in the MRAX) but especially to women’s rights and feminism – among others on the issue of salary equality and the early abortion movement. (J. Wiener-Henrion, “Régine Karlin-Orfinger”, in Les Cahiers de la Mémoire contemporaine-Bijdragen tot de eigentijdse Herinnering, no. 5, 2003-2004, pp. 187-200.)
- Access points: persons/families:
- Karlin-Orfinger, Régine
- Access, restrictions:
- Access requires the authorisation of the AVG-Carhif. Some files, notably those concerning abortion, cannot be consulted.
- Finding aids:
- There is an unpublished inventory.
- Yerusha Network member:
- State Archives of Belgium
