Mechelen Transit Camp

The Mechelen transit camp, or officially SS-Sammellager Mecheln in German, was a detention and deportation camp established in the Dossin, the oldest casern at Mechelen, by the Nazi German occupier of Belgium. The transit camp was run by the SiPo-SD, a branch of the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt in order to collect and deport Jews and other minorities such as Roma mainly out of Belgium towards the labor camp of Heydebreck-Cosel and the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland.

During the Second World War, between 4 August 1942 and 31 July 1944, 28 trains left from this Belgian casern and deported over 25,000 Jews and Romas, most of whom arrived at the extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau. At the end of war, 1240 of them had survived.

Since 1996 a Holocaust museum at the Dossin Casern reminds of its infamous period.

Read more about Mechelen Transit Camp:  Location, Operation, Confrontation, Memorial and Museum

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