On Thursday, 27 November, the thirteenth edition of the annual Portrait Ceremony took place at Kazerne Dossin. Since 2013, a year after the museum opened, Kazerne Dossin has organized the Portrait Ceremony every year. During this event, the new portraits are unveiled and added to the monumental Portrait Wall. The ceremony also commemorates the victims, while Kazerne Dossin’s researchers share insights into their search for photographs over the past year.
This year, 203 new portraits were unveiled. 136 portraits were added to the Portrait Wall in the museum, while the remaining 87 were added to a digital monument for the deportees from Drancy. With these new additions, we are now able to display portraits for 21,162 of the 25,843 deportees on the wall.
Researchers continue their daily work to locate images of the Jews, Roma, and Sinti deported from Mechelen. The large number of portraits unveiled this year is remarkable. Dorien Styven, archivist at Kazerne Dossin, explains how this was possible: “For the first time this year, we gained access to a new source: post-war tracing files. These were used to locate people who went missing after the war. Many of these files contained photographs. One of our researchers carefully examines these files in the hope of finding additional portraits, and with succes.”
A second way in which photos reach the research team is through donations. This year, the photo of Salomon Frey was added. “Salomon was one of the founders of the Antwerp Diamond Exchange. Because of his contribution to the diamond trade, he was awarded the title of Knight in the Order of the Crown during the interwar period. He assumed that his status would protect him — but it did not. He was deported with his wife, Ruchel Goldman, in January 1943. A few months later, their sons Max and Hendrik were also deported,” recounts curator and collections & research coordinator Veerle Vanden Daelen. In June 2025, Salomon Frey’s surviving relatives visited Kazerne Dossin from the United States, bringing photos of Salomon, Ruchel, and their sons Max and Hendrik.
The photos are added to the Portrait Wall in the museum, a living monument that grows every year. The wall spans four floors and contains photos or silhouettes representing all 25,843 people deported from the Dossin Barracks, of whom 21,162 now have a portrait.
