Ferdinand Topper. Collection

Ferdinand Topper was born in Antwerp on 24 February 1903 as the son of Polish national Karel Topper (b. 06/01/1872 in Odessa, now Ukraine) and Austrian national Sophia Schnabel (b. 02/09/1875 in Dabrowa Tarnowska, now Poland). In 1921, Ferdinand started the procedure to obtain Belgian citizenship. The Belgian state granted his request and Ferdinand joined the Belgian army. He was stationed at several posts in Antwerp in the 1920s and 1930s. On 3 March 1925, he married the Dutch-Jewish girl Celine Selly Corper, born in Amsterdam on 28 January 1906. The couple had one son, Lucien Topper (b. 18/08/1934). In September 1942, Karel Topper was arrested and taken to the Dossin barracks. He did not survive deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport XI on 26 September 1942. Ferdinand, at the time, was working as a forced labourer for Organisation Todt in the north of France, together with 2.251 other Jewish men from Belgium. Because of his Belgian nationality, however, Ferdinand was not deported, as were the other forced labourers, to Auschwitz-Birkenau in October 1942. Ferdinand Topper returned to Belgium in Autumn 1942 and was arrested in Antwerp on 19 August 1943. He did not survive deportation via Transport XXIIB on 20 September 1943. In November 1946, Ferdinand’s mother Sophia Schnabel emigrated to the United States of America, where she passed away. The fate of Ferdinand Topper’s wife is unknown. His son Lucien Topper survived the war, got married and had two children and five grandchildren. He passed away on 13 July 2014.

Topper family, 2013