8th May 1945, Victory in Europe Day: the day on which the Nazis surrendered to the Allies and World War II officially came to an end. However, for many victims of the persecution of the Jews this did not signify the end of the horrors of the Holocaust.
Most of Belgium had been liberated before May 8, 1945, between September 1944 and January 1945. Brussels and Antwerp were liberated as early as 3rd and 4th September 1944. Some Jews joined in the celebrations but others did not perceive a sense of joy. They did not yet know if their loved ones would return safely after their deportation.
After the liberation the surviving Jews encountered many practical problems. Often they had no official home to return to, or the contents of their homes had been confiscated. Adults did not have jobs and children were years behind in their schooling. They were in need of temporary shelter, food, clothing and assistance. Society at large paid little attention to the suffering of the Jewish community at that time. Even the liberation of the Dossin Barracks, the assembly camp for Jews, Sinti and Roma in Mechelen, went unnoticed, without any heroic intervention by military personnel: after their guards fled, the approximately 550 Jews still in the Dossin Barracks opened the gates themselves and left the camp. The Jewish community had to be self-reliant. Shelter, registration and practical support was provided thanks to mutual aid and support from overseas Jewish charities, allowing Jewish people to quietly take up their lives again. Not until the first public celebration of synagogue services did the liberation feel real. Being able to openly organize Jewish life marked the transition from occupation to freedom.
Meanwhile, there was a lack of news of deported relatives and loved ones. The first Jewish survivors returned to Belgium in late March 1945, seven months after the liberation. They were exhausted and sick, and their accounts of the horrors they had witnessed completely quashed any hope for the return of all those who had been deported. In the course of the following months a thousand or so survivors returned in dribs and drabs. They could not return to their homes because others had moved in in the meantime and they brought news of the many who had been killed. They did not share in the joy of the liberation or the end of the war. Some died shortly after their return.
The fact that so many of those missing would not return was for many impossible to believe, let alone accept. There was no date of death, no funeral or burial place for their loved ones and nothing was known about their fate. Many people spent their entire lives waiting and searching for their missing relatives. For them, true liberation never happened.
Read the full article by Veerle Vanden Daelen, curator at Kazerne Dossin in Dutch and French on Belgium WWII.
