Mechelen transit camp

Mechelen transit camp SS-Sammellager Mecheln
Transit camp
Modern view of Dossin Barracks which housed the transit camp
Location of the camp in Belgium
Coordinates	51°02′02″N 4°28′42″E / 51.03389°N 4.47833°E / 51.03389; 4.47833Coordinates: 51°02′02″N 4°28′42″E / 51.03389°N 4.47833°E / 51.03389; 4.47833
Other names	SS-Sammellager Mecheln
Location	Mechelen, Belgium
Operated by	Nazi Germany Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo-SD)
Original use	Military barracks
First built	1756
Operational	July 1942 – September 1944
Inmates	mainly Jews and Roma
Number of inmates	Jews: 24,916 Roma: 351
Killed	c.300
Liberated by	Allied Forces, 4 September 1944
Notable inmates	Felix Nussbaum,Abraham Bueno de Mesquita
Website	www.kazernedossin.be/en

Nazi Germany

The Mechelen transit camp, officially SS-Sammellager Mecheln in German, was a detention and deportation camp established in the former Dossin Barracks at Mechelen in German-occupied Belgium. The transit camp was run by the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo-SD), a branch of the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt, in order to collect and deport Jews and other minorities such as Romani mainly out of Belgium towards the labor camp of Heydebreck-Cosel and the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau in German occupied 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 Roma, 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 has been open near the site of the camp: the Kazerne Dossin – Memorial.

In the summer of 1942, the Nazis made preparations to deport the Jews of German-occupied Belgium, of which about 90 percent lived in the cities of Antwerp and Brussels. Mechelen, a city with a major railway hub that ensured easy transport, was located nearly halfway between the two cities. A track that connected a local freight dock ran along the River Dijle bypass at the inner city's ring road, where the rails passed a former Belgian army barracks, named Dossin Barracks (Caserne Dossin) after Lieutenant-General Émile Dossin de Saint-Georges. In the First World War, the division led by General Emile Dossin had put up a brave defense near the River Yser, including at a place named St.-Georges. In recognition, the general received the title Baron de Saint-Georges. At his death in 1936, the old barracks at Mechelen was renamed in his honour. The Germans found this location with minor adaptions required ideal for a transit camp in their Endlösung programme.