Van Beylen-Beirnaert family. Collection

Frieda Beirnaert was born in 1926. As of September 1940, she attended the “school voor handel en administratie” [school of commerce and administration] at Durletstraat 8 in Antwerp, Belgium. Frieda befriended her Jewish classmate Rebecca Weinstein (born on 14 June 1926 in Antwerp, Belgium) during her first year at the school (1940-1941) and Jewish classmates Rosa Seewald (born on 17 December 1926 in Krakow, Poland) and Miriam (Maria) Hauser (born on 3 August 1926 in Antwerp, Belgium) during her second year at the school (1941-1942). In July 1942, Rosa and Miriam signed Frieda’s poetry album. All three of Frieda Beirnaert’s Jewish friends would be killed during the Holocaust. Both Miriam Hauser and Rosa Seewald were deported from the Dossin barracks to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport II on 11 August 1942, not even a month after they wrote their messages of hope in Frieda Beirnaert’s poetry album. Rebecca Weinstein was arrested in 1943 and was killed after deportation from the Dossin barracks to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport XXIIB on 20 September 1943. Frieda Beirnaert survived the war and continued to use her poetry album. It was signed by several British soldiers she encountered after Liberation. On 10 September 1949, Frieda Beirnaert married Jules Van Beylen. Upon the occasion, Frieda received a tablecloth from misses Huyskens, who was the mother of Ivonne Huyskens, the wife of Frieda’s half-brother Karel Selis. During the war Misses Huyskens was a concierge at the apartment building at Steenbokstraat 28 in Antwerp, where a lot of Jewish families lived. One of these families gave misses Huyskens a tablecloth for safekeeping before their deportation. However, the family never returned and misses Huyskens gave the tableware to Frieda as a wedding gift in 1949. Jules Van Beylen asked his wife not to use it out of respect for the deported Jewish family, so they never did. Jules passed away in 2000, Frieda in 2021.

In 2013 Frieda Beirnaert kindly permitted Kazerne Dossin to digitise three pages from her poetry album. She also donated an original tablecloth during her visit. The tablecloth had belonged to a Jewish family that had given it to misses Huyskens for safekeeping before their deportation. As none of the family members returned, misses Huyskens gave the tablecloth to Frieda as a wedding gift in 1949. In 2021 the Van Beylen-Beirnaert family donated the original poetry album as well as four precious prints and notes by Frieda Beirnaert on her former Jewish classmates to Kazerne Dossin.

Van Beylen-Beirnaert family, 2013 and 2021