The Destruction of the Jews of Belgium 

The Germans invaded Belgium and Holland on the 10 May 1940, as part of the Plan Yellow, and the Western campaign came face to face with Blitzkrieg – Lightning War.

On 28 May 1940 Belgium capitulated to the Germans on the terms of unconditional surrender, King Leopold and Queen Elizabeth decided to remain in Belgium and not escape to England.

There were approximately 85,000 Jews in Belgium just before the war, all but a few of them in the two cities of Antwerp and Brussels. Yet when the Germans on 28 October 1940 forced all Jews to register with the police, the total number registered was only 42,000.

While part of the difference was due to the mass flight across the French border, in the main it must have been reluctance on the Jews part to register. The Nazis were, in fact never able to lay their hands on the well-assimilated, native-born Jewish population, and were indeed reluctant to do so.

The Military Governor General von Falkenhausen, disliked National Socialist extremism and, till his own arrest for complicity in the bomb plot to assassinate Hitler, was able to thwart the designs of the Security Police.

Thus after Helmuth Knochen’s, the Security Police Commander North France and Belgium, conference in Paris on 14 March 1942, von Falkenhausen’s deputy, the Military Administrator in Belgium, Brigadier- General Eggert Reeder, absolutely refused to introduce the Jewish badge, though in the end he yielded to pressure from the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA).

As in other countries, without the support of the administration the Jews faced the usual restrictions such as registration, loss of employment, compulsory labour and the “Aryanisation” of Jewish firms without compensation.

Read the full article here:
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/beligiumjews.html

The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Tea

www.HolocaustResearchProject.org