Kazerne Dossin – Memorial

View of the Kazerne Dossin museum building

The Kazerne Dossin – Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights is a museum in Mechelen, Belgium established next to the former Mechelen transit camp from which Belgian Jews and Romani were sent to concentration camps during the Holocaust in World War II.

History

During World War II, Dossin Barracks was known as Mechelen transit camp. It was operated by the Schutzstaffel and, between 1942 and 1944, 25,484 Jews and 352 Romanis were transported through the complex to the concentration camps in the east. Two-thirds were killed upon arrival. By the time of the liberation and the end of the Holocaust in Belgium, only 1,221 Belgian Jews had survived.

After the war, the former infantry barracks was partially renovated as civil housing; the Flemish Government, Province of Antwerp and the City of Mechelen financing the purchase of the ground floor and the basement of the right wing. In 1996 this building became the site of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, later renamed.

Museum

The original Dossin Barracks, site of the former transit camp, is situated opposite the main museum building

The Museum covered the following aspects of the Final Solution in Belgium and Europe:

• The rise of the extreme right in Belgium and abroad in the 1930s,
• The antisemitic policies imposed by occupying Germany,
• The Jewish resistance and hiding of children,
• The deportation of the Belgian Jews in convoys.

In 2001, the Flemish Government decided to expand the site by constructing a new museum complex opposite the old barracks. It opened its doors in September 2012 under its present name. Fort Breendonk, a Nazi prison camp near Mechelen, is also open as a museum.

External links

• Official website (English) (German) (Spanish) (French) (Hebrew) (Dutch)
• Mechelen – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Coordinates: 51°02′03″N 4°28′43″E / 51.0341°N 4.4785°E / 51.0341; 4.4785