Comité de la Colonie Turque en Belgique. Collection

In the fall of 1941 the Turkish consulates in Brussels and Antwerp were closed. Their tasks were transferred to their counterpart in Paris, France. Communication with the Turkish community in Belgium was problematic. Only in February 1943 did the community in Belgium learn that Turkish Jews, until 31 January 1943, had been allegeable for repatriation to Turkey, a country which was less hostile against its Jewish inhabitants. On 8 March 1943, after the repatriation deadline was prolonged, Turkish immigrants in Belgium founded the Comité de la Colonie Turque en Belgique [Committee of the Turkish Community in Belgium]. The main goal of the organisation was to act as a point of contact for Turkish and German officials, and to arrange papers for members in order for them to be repatriated to Turkey. The committee operated from an office at Vestingstraat 74 in Antwerp and Joseph Fachler became its first president. The majority of its members were Jewish, but a small number of non-Jewish Turks also joined its ranks. Thanks to their presence, the Committee was able to avoid forced incorporation into the Association des Juifs en Belgique (Association of Jews in Belgium, AJB), as had been ordered by Fritz Erdmann, the Judenreferent of the Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst, in June 1943. In April, August and September 1943 Joseph Fachler travelled to the Turkish consulate in Paris to discuss the repatriation of Turkish Jews from Belgium to Turkey, which would never take place, and to obtain the prolongation of the protective measures for people with Turkish papers, which exempted them from having to obey (some of) the anti-Jewish decrees. The Committee subsequently handed out declaration forms (Beyanname) as proof of the Turkish holder’s special status. Members of the Turkish community were assisted by Léon de Sotil of the Committee to fill out their declaration. In addition, thanks to papers provided by the Turkish consulate in Paris, the Committee in Belgium from then on was also able to immediately intervene for Turkish Jews held captive at the SS-Sammellager Mecheln (Dossin barracks) or in prisons under control of the Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst. Their papers guaranteed Turkish Jews in Belgium a certain amount of freedom, thanks to which a number of them joined the resistance. The Committee’s president Joseph Fachler, for example, wrote articles for the underground newspaper Het Vrije Woord, printed by Henri Mandel and his son Ernest. Before Autumn 1943, about 25 Turkish Jews - mainly men and women who had lost their Turkish nationality at some point - were deported from the SS-Sammellager Mecheln (Dossin barracks) to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In October 1943 the last ultimatum for the repatriation of Turkish Jews to Turkey was exceeded. About 70 Turkish Jews were then arrested in Antwerp and Brussels, and were transferred from several prisons to the Dossin barracks. 61 of them were deported via a special transport from Mechelen to Buchenwald and Ravensbrück on 23 December 1943. Only 26 survived.

On 18 June 2004, Jenny Wellner-de Sotil kindly permitted the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, predecessor of Kazerne Dossin, to digitise the documents in this collection. The documents were property of her father Leon (Youda) de Sotil, who was the secretary of the Comité de la Colonie Turque en Belgique [Committee of the Turkish Community in Belgium] during the war and of the Union européenne des Juifs Turcs [European Association of Turkish Jews] after the war.

Jenny Wellner-de Sotil, 2004