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
Famous quotes containing the words transit and/or camp:
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—William Lamb Melbourne, 2nd Viscount (1779–1848)
“Killers, huh? I’d trade the pair of you for a good Camp Fire Girl.”
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