NEVER AGAIN: BREENDONK

 "What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again." - Anne Frank

Hall of Remembrance

Who are you?

Are you the concentration camp nurse whose focus is to monitor the torture to make sure it stops just short of killing the person, or are you the nurse who quietly provides medicines to relieve dysentery?

Are you the “responsible” (the prisoner designated as in charge of a barrack) who demands bribes from the others to get the larger pieces of bread or a sleeping platform away from the slop pot? Or are you the one who ensures that the weakest get a bit more food, and that facilities, such as they are, are shared equally?

When faced with the unspeakable, do any of us know which among the untenable choices we will make? During WWII, some faced those choices and chose the best route available and others chose the worst. And millions of others faced no choice at all but misery and death. Those circumstances were encapsulated in a place called Breendonk.

Thirty minutes from the port of Antwerp is an army fort that the Germans converted to a concentration camp during their occupation of Belgium in WWII.  This was not an extermination camp in the sense of mass killings—those killed here died from the results of torture or starvation, or were executed as members of the resistance. It was a smaller concentration camp than many of the better-known ones, with an estimated 3,500 victims having passed through it overall. It is believed that about 300 died at Breendonk. The rest were sent on to other camps after weeks or months of torture at Breendonk.

Breendonk’s first prisoners were “criminals”: Jews who were found in Belgium without the proper papers, having sought asylum after fleeing other European countries in advance of the Nazi onslaught only to be trapped in Belgium when it quickly fell.  Then came the political prisoners: those who were part of the resistance movement or those who otherwise opposed (or were seen as opposing) the Nazi regime.     

Much of what we know of daily life in Breendonk came through the testimony of the handful of survivors, including Jean Dubois, who at the age of 19 had started to distribute leaflets urging his fellow miners to work more slowly so as to slow the supply of coal to the Nazis. He’d only been at this a couple of days when he was picked up by the Nazis and taken to Breendonk. In the weeks and months that followed he was dehumanized, abused, beaten, and tortured to give up the names of others involved in resistance. Forced into hard labor during the day, and largely sleep deprived due to the screams of fellow prisoners being tortured at night, he endured until he was transferred to Mauthausen, from which he would be liberated in 1945. He died last year of natural causes at age 97.

The camp was run by the SS, and guards were drawn both from the SS and from the surrounding community, with some of the cruelest guards being Belgian neighbors. While the numbers at Breendonk were smaller than at most other camps, the cruelty was all the more acute because of the high proportion of guards to prisoners. Each day meant a “victim of the day”—someone who would be kicked, beaten, given the hardest work with the worst equipment, and humiliated in dozens of ways. Little things were done to set the men against each other: making them compete for the better tools that would make their work a little easier, providing stools at meals for only ¼ the number of people, punishing entire groups for the perceived transgression of one. Guards wagered a bottle of brandy on who would be the first to beat a prisoner to death. At least one “responsible” killed one of his charges by slamming him onto the floor when he was slow to respond. Cruelties abounded.

While the camp was supposedly for male prisoners only, one of the many secrets of the place was that it held some 30 female prisoners, all leaders of the resistance who were subjected to some of the cruelest treatment.

Many of the camp’s personnel, both German and Belgian, were later convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death or lengthy imprisonment. In fact, the last person to be executed by the state in Belgium was Breendonk’s first commandant, who had initially escaped after the war but was caught and tried in 1950. 

The accompanying photos are from the remembrance room, where the names of all the known prisoners are recorded on the wall, and from the hallway and yard of the camp. I did not take photos of places like the solitary confinement area, the execution yard, or the torture room. It did not seem right to do so. And it wasn’t until later that I realized that almost everyone else had also put their cameras away in these rooms, so I was not the only one who had this sense. I am chilled even as I write this, two days later. Yes, from remembering the cold and dankness of the place but also from the unflinching clarity of what were shown.

I have written at least five concluding paragraphs for this entry. None was adequate. None ever will be.

The yard at Breendonk

Hall in Breendonk