Registries of Jewish retirement home Scheut. Collection

In the summer of 1943 the German authorities allowed the Association of Jews in Belgium (AJB) to open its first retirement homes for elderly Jews. A special AJB Service d’Intervention (intervention department) strived to transfer elderly Jews from the Dossin barracks to these institutions. However, very soon the homes in Saint-Gilles and Auderghem became overcrowded. Around the same time, it was noted that the Commission d’Assistance publique of Great-Brussels or CAP (Commission for Public Welfare, heading the complete current Brussels capital region) housed many Jewish men and women in its retirement homes and hospitals. Therefore the CAP was forced to combine powers with the AJB to separate Jewish and non-Jewish elders in separate institutions. Negotiations regarding the founding of a third Jewish retirement home lasted until the Fall of 1943. However, the raid aiming at the arrest of Jewish men, women and children holding Belgian nationality (the night of 3 on 4 September 1943) stirred protest amongst Belgian authorities. On 7 September 1943 43 elderly Belgians – Jewish men and women older than 60 arrested during this Aktion Iltis – were transferred from the Dossin barracks to the retirement home Scheut, a district of Anderlecht, thus becoming its first residents. Their number rose quickly : from 210 in September 1943 to 490 in June 1944. However, not all Jews arrived directly from the Dossin barracks. Some were transferred from the offices of the Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst in Brussels and Antwerp, from the Antwerp prison (Begijnenstraat), from their homes, from hospitals or from institutions led by CAP. A few even presented themselves voluntarily at the Scheut facility. The residents of the home were not deported. Although the AJB believed they were protecting these elderly men and women from deportation, discussion among historians showed that it is more likely that the residents would have been deported if the occupying forces would have had sufficient time and equipment to do so. After liberation, in September 1944, CAP took over full control of the retirement home Scheut. The following months, the Jewish elders mostly returned to their homes or were transferred to Jewish institutions run by the Aide aux Israëlites Victimes de la Guerre, an aid society for Jewish war victims. By December 1944, all Jewish inhabitants had left the home in Anderlecht. Only a few were reunited with their families since most of their relatives had been deported and killed. The home Scheut remains a retirement home until this day.

After the departure of the last Jewish residents in December 1944, the registries of the retirement home Scheut were further used for the registration of newly-arrived non-Jewish residents. Both registries thus remained part of the archives of the branch of the Commission d’Assistance publique or CAP (Commission for Public Welfare) in Anderlecht, which included the Scheut district. In 1976, the CAPs were reformed and became the Public Centre for Social Welfare or PCSW. The PCSW of Anderlecht eventually decided to transfer the registries of the retirement home Scheut to the State Archives in Brussels. In 2013, the State Archives offered Kazerne Dossin a digital copy of the war-time pages referring to Jewish residents.

Belgian State Archives, Brussels, 2013