Diary of dr. Alfons Van Orshoven. Collection

Prof. em. dr. Alfons Van Orshoven was born on 16 April 1922 in Hoeilaart as the oldest of eight children. His parents were Hector Van Orshoven en Maria Vandervaeren. At the start of the academic year in 1939 he began studying medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven (KULeuven). In May 1940, at the outbreak of World war 2, Alfons Van Orshoven was not in the army, but the Belgian government ordered all young Belgian men to flee to France. So did Alfons, but he returned home after a few weeks, as well as most of his comrades. Alfons devoted himself to helping the less fortunate during the war by assisting with winter aid. He was in his last year of studying, when he went to Bergen-Belsen with some fellow KUL final-year medical students. There was an appeal by the British after the liberation of the camp on 15 April 1945 to provide medical care to the former prisoners there. Typhoid had broken out in the camp. When the camp was evacuated, the British burned down the wooden barracks with tanks with flamethrowers because of the very high risk of typhoid and lice infection. The students were conscripted into the British army in 2nd Lt BA to work in Bergen-Belsen. From one day to the next, doctors there were confronted with catastrophe medicine, and with the problems of group pathology. After the war, Alfons Van Orshoven became a general practitioner in the village of Hoeilaart and, among other things, lecturer and professor in general practitioner medicine. Alfons' uncle (brother of his mother - Frans Van der Vvaeren, also mayor of Hoeilaaert) was also a doctor. Alfons married to Marieke Herbosch from Merchtem, who was already his girlfriend at the time living in Merchten when he was in Bergen-Belsen.

One of the daughters of Prof. em. dr. Alfons Van Orshoven, Kristin Debray - Van Orshoven, picked up the personal documents of Alfons from the retirement home after his death on 4 June 2020. She was the only child aware of the documents. Contact was made with Michel Erkens, president of the Hoeilaert local history circle, who digitised it and contacted Kazerne Dossin as well as Prof. em. Dr. Paul Van Orshoven, son of Alfons Van Orshoven. On 21 April 2023, Paul Van Orshoven, on behalf of the family, permitted Kazerne Dossin to digitally archive 239 pages from archival documents in this collection.

Paul & Kristin Van Orshoven