Kazerne Dossin is Belgium’s Holocaust Memorial Museum and Documentation Center located in Mechelen, Belgium, and is the location where between 1942 and 1944 over 25,000 Jews and 352 Roma and Sinti were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Many of these people were not from Belgium originally but fled there as the war expanded to their  European countries.  Only just over 5% returned. During this time it was known as the SS-Sammellager Mechelen, a Nazi collection and deportation camp.  The Museum was built by constructing the new museum opposite the old barracks, opening in 2012.

In late 2019, the then museum director resigned because he felt the daily management was focused too much on the Holocaust memorial aspect and not enough on documenting current human rights violations. Earlier this month 10 historians stepped down in protest of canceling an event honoring a vocal Israel critic. Brigitte Herremans, an activist who has called on the European Union to sanction Israel and its citizens, and has accused Israel’s supporters of “inflating anti-Semitism” to deflect criticism, was set to be honored as an “ambassador of peace” by the Catholic aid group Pax Christi.  The Board of Kazerne Dossin suggested it would continue to resist initiatives that it believes will dilute its core mission of commemorating the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators against Jews and other victims.

In full disclosure I have visited this museum in 2012 and IAJGS had as a speaker at one of its conference’s the then director of the Museum.

The website for the Museum is: https://www.kazernedossin.eu/EN/Museumsite/Museum/Inleiding

Their Documentation Center is https://beeldbank.kazernedossin.eu/ The Site is available in Dutch and English. Click on search key.  If you would like to consult the archive or the library you need to submit a research statement. The form is downloadable

at: https://www.kazernedossin.eu/EN/Museumsite/Documentatiecentrum/Archief-leeszaal

This is not the only Holocaust Museum that has undergone similar controversy. Last year the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports, “the director of Berlin’s Jewish museum resigned after the museum tweeted a link to an article defending the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel that the German parliament declared to be anti-Semitic the previous month. The Jewish museum of  Munich was accused last July of libeling Israel in an exhibition that suggested that it is an occupying force.”

To read more see:  https://www.jta.org/2020/03/12/global/lawmakers-worry-about-the-future-of-belgiums-holocaust-museum-after-historians-resign-in-israel-spat

Jan Meisels Allen

Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee

I am following the discussion about 9 professors quitting the Scientific Counsel of the holocaust museum of Mechelen (Belgium).  All this started when the Belgian authorities wanted the original Dossin Barrack museum (which was meant to show and remember all activities about the holocaust and the resistance in Belgium during World War II), to be transformed through a new building opposite the Dossin Barrack itself into a place of activity where it should be possible to discuss all genocides over the world including racism.  The idea itself is good, but plenty of people believed this should be done through a different museum and not in the museum of Mechelen.  They were afraid that in the long run the holocaust (Jewish genocide), which is the main purpose of its existence would become a small part of its activities.  Nathan Ramat, who was the founder and first chairman of the Dossin Barrack museum told me, off record,  about 10 years ago, that the authorities intended to transform the original goal of the museum into a general genocide museum, The board at that time had to accept this,  if the Dossin Barrack museum wanted  to get financial funds.  And so it happened.  Nathan Ramet, who was knighted by the king of Belgium for his activities for talking about the holocaust, passed away about 8 years ago.  If he knows what happens now, he will turn around in his grave, being an Auschwitz survivor. 

The Anti-Israel Activist Brigitte Herremans, who will always criticize Israel and always defend Hamas will (in)directly give occasion to some severe anti-Israel activists to consider the Israelis as Nazi Germans in order to promote the conflict into a Palestinian holocaust.  The fact that Brigitte Herremans was supposed to get a honorary degree for her activities in the premises of the museum  is a bridge too far.  It would be the same thing as putting a wolf in the middle of a cattle of sheep.  Therefore the board of directors intervened and refused to have the ceremony for Brigitte Herremans to take place in the premises of the museum.  That therefore 9 professors withdraw their membership of the scientific board of the museum is their problem.  Most of those professors consider the holocaust as a personal interest of history without taking in consideration of sensitivities of survivors and their descendants in Belgium, Israel and the rest of the world.   

Has this any influence on Jewish genealogical research.  I really do not know, but on the long run it maybe can have an impact on the activities of the museum including further research of information of the holocaust in Belgium.

Marcel Apsel

Antwerpen, Belgium