Alexandre Stein. Collection

Alexandre Stein was born in Elizabethgrad (suburb Bogopol, Russia) in 1892. He migrated to Belgium in 1910 to study at the university of Liège (Lüttich) to become an engineer. In 1914, Alexandre, as a Russian citizen, served as a paramedic with a Belgian ambulance. He then joined a German ambulance crew, supposedly to spy for the allies, and was subsequently arrested by the German military. Alexandre Stein was sent to Chartreuse and was later on deported to the internment camp in Munster (Germany). In 1920 he was able to return to Belgium from Wolfenbüttel. Belgian immigration authorities distrusted him due to his reputation as a Bolshevik adept in Liège (Lüttich) before the First World War. When presenting himself at the immigration authorities in April 1920, Alexandre Stein was arrested for illegally crossing the Belgian border. In May 1920 he was allowed to settle in Belgium again, where he finished his engineering studies. He married the Belgian national Lucienne Berthe Sasserath in Liège (Lüttich) in 1924. The couple moved to Antwerp where their first child, Jeannine Betty Tatiana Stein, was born in 1925. In 1927, Alexandre Stein himself became a Belgian citizen. A son, Robert Joseph Albert Stein, was born in Antwerp in 1929. From 1930, the Stein family lived at Lange Leemstraat 297 in Antwerp. Alexandre Stein, his wife and both children were arrested there in the night of 3 on 4 September 1943 when the Nazis organized Aktion Iltis, arresting hundreds of Jews whose Belgian nationality had protected them until then. The complete family was deported via transport XXII B from the Dossin barracks on 20 September 1943. None of the family members survived.

These documents were discovered in a tube hidden beneath a double floor in the attic of the former Stein family home at Lange Leemstraat 297, Antwerp, by the current owner Ann Verhaert.

Ann Verhaert, 2013