"Mijn oorlogsarchief" - Salomon-Vieyra family. Collection

Catherine (Caby) Salomon was born on 10 July 1936 as the daughter of the Dutch marker Hyman (Henri) Salomon (b. 09/03/1905 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and his wife Ricke (Rieke) Vieyra (b. 27/02/1905 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands). The family lived in Berchem, Antwerp, and took in David Salomon (b. 06/12/1883 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands), father of Hyman Salomon. In May 1940, Hyman Salomon and his brother-in-law David Vieyra (b. 25/09/1909 in Antwerp, Belgium) were drafted into the Belgian army. During the weeks that followed, Hyman kept a diary. While he and David fought in the Battle of Belgium, their wives, children, fathers and several other family members fled to France. After spending a few weeks in a French catholic monastery, the group of refugees was reunited with Hyman Salomon and David Vieyra. They all returned home to Antwerp on 30 June 1940. By the end of 1940, Hyman Salomon and his father David Salomon were both fired from their job as marker in the port of Antwerp. Hyman started to go door-to-door with bike parts and his wife Ricke Vieyra managed a dry cleaning business until the store was closed by the Nazis in 1941. The Salomon family also suffered from the other anti-Jewish measures. As of 1942, Hyman Salomon and Ricke Vieyra started talking about going into hiding. During the night of 28 on 29 August 1942, the Nazis organised a second large anti-Jewish raid in Antwerp. While Hyman Salomon was able to flee, the Nazis left his wife Ricke Vieyra alone because of her advanced pregnancy. Daughter Catherine Salomon was allowed to stay with her mother, but grandfather David Salomon was arrested. He did not survive deportation from the Dossin barracks to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport VIII on 8 September 1942. On 12 October 1942, Ricke Vieyra gave birth to a second daughter: Beatrix (Beppie) Salomon. In the fall of 1942, a resistance group named “Witte Brigade” (White Brigade) provided the Salomon family with false papers under de Flemish name Spoelders. The Salomons and Ricke’s father Mordechai Vieyra (b. 10/07/1870 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) went into hiding in the house of policeman Jos Veerman. Catherine Salomon was able to attend catholic school in Deurne. After the arrest of Jos Veerman, the Salomon family had to leave their hiding place and changed addresses often. Mordechai Vieyra died while in hiding and the resistance placed his corpse in an empty house so the rest of the family would not be discovered. In March 1944, the Van de Wouwer family, acquaintances of the Salomon family via the Theosophical Society, helped the Salomons to flee to Switzerland. A chain of traffickers helped them cross the Belgian-French border and guided them to Paris, from where they were able to reach Switzerland in a small group. Upon arrival, Catherine Salomon was separated from her parents and sister. Another Jewish couple in the group of refugees had paid for her trip. In return, they could present her as their own child so the couple would be granted refuge in Switzerland. The Salomon family was split up. Ricke Vieyra with baby Beatrix Salomon was sent to a home for mothers with young children. Hyman Salomon was interned in a refugee camp in Petit-Saconnex, while Catherine and her fake parents stayed in a camp near Champel. Hyman and daughter Catherine were eventually reunited in Petit-Saconnex, from where they were transferred to Bremgarten, although men, women and children were kept in separate areas of the refugee camp. By the beginning of 1944, Ricke Vieyra and Beatrix Salomon were also transferred to Bremgarten and the Salomon family was reunited. In August 1944, however, Ricke Vieyra and both her daughters were sent to Luzern, while Hyman Salomon remained in Bremgarten until mid-September 1944 when he was transferred to the reformatory in Wattwil. The family was reunited in Beau-Site on 14 October 1944. Only after the German surrender in May 1945, the possibility to return home to Belgium became an option. The Salomon family returned to Antwerp in July 1945, only to find that most family members had been deported from the Dossin barracks and were killed. Among the deportees were David Vieyra, his wife Janette Plas and their children Esther and Maurice Vieyra, Rebecca (Bep) Vieyra (sister of Ricke and David Vieyra), her husband Isidore Fransman, and Isidore Fransman’s parents Leendert Fransman and Keetje Boeken. After the war, nobody in the Salomon household spoke of their lost family members or the war again, which created a tradition of silence. Daughter Catherine Salomon became a social worker at the Centrale voor Joodse Weldadigheid (Central Association for Jewish Welfare) in Antwerp and the Antwerp General Board managing social affairs, thus coming in contact with many Holocaust survivors and former perpetrators. This inspired Catherine to collect and organize all documents and photos related to her family history. She still lives in Antwerp.

After the death of her parents Hyman Salomon and Ricke Vieyra, oldest daughter Catherine Salomon inherited a range of documents regarding the history of her family during the Holocaust. In 2000, she decided to arrange de documents chronologically as “Mijn oorlogsarchief” and divided them into six chapters, including a table of contents for each chapter : the flight to France (1940), the anti-Jewish measures and hiding in Belgium (1940-1944), the flight to Switzerland (1944), the Suisse refugee camps (1944-1945), the post-war family life (1945-1956) and unrelated family photos and documents. Catherine Salomon wrote her memoires and added these to each of the five chapters. In 2013, Catherine kindly permitted Kazerne Dossin to digitise her files.

Catherine Salomon, 2013