Transportlisten. Collection

The SS-Sammellager Mecheln (Dossin barracks) opened its doors on 27 July 1942. Three non-Jewish secretaries from Mechelen were hired to help at the Aufnahme. The other employees of the camp administration were recruited among the young Jewish girls who arrived at the SS-Sammellager on 27 July. Work at the Aufnahme was divided into two sections : the administration of the camp led by SS-Hauptscharführer Max Boden and the confiscation of Jewish property led by representative of the Brüsseler Treuhandgesellschaft Erich Crull. The employees at the Aufnahme, mostly inmates themselves, worked day and night to register all Jewish prisoners arriving at the SS-Sammellager. They also drafted the deportation lists, distributed cardboard identification tags, physically searched newly arrived detainees and completed confiscation forms. The Aufnahme continued to operate until the liberation of the SS-Sammellager (Dossin barracks) on 4 September 1944.

The Transportlisten were drafted by employees of the Aufnahme (camp administration) at the SS-Sammellager Mecheln (Dossin barracks) between July 1942 and September 1944. The lists of transports XVI and XVII are exceptions. Three Jewish inmates who worked at the Aufnahme were taken to the Organisation Todt camps in the north of France where they enlisted all Jewish forced labourers on the spot. Upon arrival at the SS-Sammellager Mecheln, the camp administration registered all information regarding the new prisoners and added it to index cards. In a second work phase the Transportlisten (deportation lists) were drafted, based upon the decisions made by Hans Rodenbusch, a researcher who specialised in Jewish matters and who administered the file card system. Of each deportation list at least four copies were created : the original was sent to the Sipo-SD in Brussels, a second one was kept at the Aufnahme, a third one was given to the staff of the deportation train and a fourth one was sent to Berlin. The copy that remains today is probably the one kept at the Aufnahme. When liberation drew near, before departing the SS-Sammellager Mecheln, Commander Frank ordered all documents of the Aufnahme to be burned, but Maurice Van Rees, a Jewish clerk of that service, managed to save the Transportlists from destruction. He hid almost all of them (Transport IV is missing) under a shower tray in the barracks. This is how they escaped destruction. After liberation in September 1944, the Aide aux Israélites Victimes de la Guerre, which took over the care of the camp, drafted additional lists of the remaining detainees. A combination of the lists was later on used by the Ministry of Reconstruction and the Service for War Victims (the current Directorate-general War Victims) in Brussels for research. In 1997 the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance (currently Kazerne Dossin) digitised and preserved all pages of the Transportlisten.

Digitisation permitted by Directorate-General War Victims, 1997