Parcel request form of Eva Kostelaniec. Collection

Hawa alias Eva Jaffe was born on 28 June 1904 in Kalisz, Poland. In December 1931 she obtained a visa for Belgium where she planned to study at the Free University of Brussels. As of 1932 she took geography and physics classes. On 1st December 1934, Eva married knitter Morduch Kostelaniec (born on 3 April 1902 in Molczadz, Belarus). The couple settled at Rue de la Poste 193 in Schaerbeek, where their daughter Minna was born on 13 May 1935. In August 1936 the family moved to Rue Linné 71 in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode. When Nazi-Germany invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940 Eva and her family lived at Rue Gaucheret 67 in Schaerbeek. They obeyed the anti-Jewish decrees, registering in the municipal Jewish register in December 1940 and becoming members of the Association of Jews in Belgium in Spring 1942. By that time the family had moved to Rue Floris 6 in Schaerbeek. Eva Jaffe was arrested at the beginning of September 1943, possibly at the hospital where she was being treated. Eva was deported from the Dossin barracks to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport XXIIA on 20 September 1943 and was murdered. Her husband Morduch Kostelaniec had already been deported. He was arrested under circumstances unknown to us and was taken to the Dossin barracks on 26 January 1943. Morduch was subsequently deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau via transport XX on 19 April 1943. Although he was selected as a forced labourer upon arrival – the number 117585 was tattooed on his arm – he was also killed. Only daughter Minna survived the war and was raised by her uncle and aunt Jacob and Chawa Jaffe-Hildeschayn at the Jewish children’s home in Profondsart, run by the Aide aux Israélites Victimes de Guerre.

The SS administration at the Dossin barracks allowed the detainees to fill out parcel request forms in order to ask their friends and relatives to send them food, clothes and hygienic products which were subsequently delivered to the detainees via the Association of Jews in Belgium (AJB). In 2007, a photocopy of the form of Eva Kostelaniec was offered to the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, predecessor of Kazerne Dossin.