Belgium has not been spared the horror of Nazism and its concentration camps. The fortress of Breendonk is a moving and striking example. It is one of the best conserved camps in Europe.
Breendonk is only a dot on the gruesome map of concentration camps, but one which witnessed the same desire to annihilate the individual, which shared the same objective of enslaving and negating the human person.
Between September 1940 and September 1944, around 3500 prisoners passed through. The majesty of the site and its Dantesque appearance make it a symbol that perpetuates the memory of the suffering, the torture and the death of so many victims. Breendonk, although small in comparison with others, was nevertheless a camp that saw Nazi barbarity sink to its vilest depths.
The Memorial seeks to embrace others in a quest for openness. It reaches out first of all to those who, in one way or another, have fought for freedom, have stood up to oppression, have suffered, victims of racism and blind fanaticism: war veterans, Resistance fighters, prisoners of war, the concentration camp prisoners, Jewish Resistance fighters and victims of the Shoah. And well beyond, it reaches out to all those who, driven by the same ideal of democracy, find in Breendonk the justification behind their cause.
The artillery consisted of seven cupolas, one 150mm gun, two 120mm howitzers, four 75mm guns and one searchlight. Two more 120mm guns and four 75mm guns on the flanks. 14 rapid firing 57mm guns were used for close defence and flank shots.
The building of the fort was undertaken in 1909. The fort is part of a defence belt of fortifications built ten miles away from the city of Antwerpen. The fort have on its West side, the Liezele Fort with the Letterheide bunker in between and, on its East side, the Waelhem fort.
On september 20th 1940 Sturmbannführer Philip Schmitt brought his first victims to Breendonk. The Fort became officially the Auffanglager Breendonk, a transit camp; a major centre for the Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst. During the first year of the Occupation, the Jews made up half the total number of prisoners. From 1942 onwards and the creation of the «vezammelkamp» (reception camp) at the Dossin barracks where the Jews were assembled before their departure towards the east and the extermination camps, most of the Jews disappeared from Breendonk, which gradually became a camp for political prisoners and members of the Resistance.
On the 22nd of September 1941, a first convoy of Belgian political prisoners was transferred from Breendonk and from the citadel of Huy to the concentration camp of Neuengamme close to Hamburg. Other convoys were to follow …Prisoners stayed on average three months at the fortress before being deported towards the concentration camps in Germany, Austria or Poland. The regime set up here by the Nazis hardly differed from that of an official concentration camp. The undernourishment and the forced labour wore down the body and mind. The ever-present physical cruelty sometimes caused the death of prisoners.
Initially, the camp was only guarded by a few German SS and a detachment of the Wehrmacht. In September 1941, the Wachtgruppe of the SD arrived as back up. This time, these were no longer German SS but mainly Flemings.In total, around 3500 persons, including around thirty women, were subjected to the “Hell of Breendonk”, as Franz Fischer calls it in his memoirs. Around half of these 3500 did not come back from the camps alive.
After the Liberation, on the 4th of September 1944, the Fortress served as a prison for collaborators and became known as "Breendonk II". Initially, the local resistance used it to lock up the “inciviques” or collaborationists. Certain excesses took place during this period. On the 10th of October 1944, the order of evacuation was given and the prisoners were transferred to the Dossin barracks in Malines. Subsequently, Breendonk became an official internment centre of the Belgian State, until it was designated a National Memorial by the law of 19th of August 1947.
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