Index cards on Jews from Belgium interned in or deported from France. Collection

This collection consists of index cards containing information on 9,765 Jewish men, women and children who in general lived in Belgium before the Second World War and who were interned in or deported from French internment camps during the war. The group of index cards for a specific person can contain a file card drafted by the Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst in 1941-1944 in case of a person who fled Belgium in or after 1941 and a research request filed by a relative. Every group of index cards for a specific person contains handwritten file cards with information gathered post-war by members of the Belgian Mission for Searches in France at internment camps, archives of Foreign Labour Groups and deportation lists. The content of each file allows researchers to reconstruct the path of a detainee or deportee. Contact Kazerne Dossin Documentation Centre: archives@kazernedossin.eu Archives Service for War Victims – State Archives of Belgium, Brussels Digital copy available as collection KD_00006 at Kazerne Dossin The Belgian Commissariat for Repatriation was created in June 1944 by the Belgian government in London to coordinate the repatriation of thousands of Displaced Persons to Belgium. The Commissariat was initially a military organisation. It sent over 400 liaison officers on missions all over Europe to look for missing persons. These missions were usually carried out upon requests from family members, but the officers would also systematically search hospitals, prisons, camps, municipal administrations, businesses and other potential places where persons from Belgium may be found. The mission’s approach depended largely on the information available. For persons whose circumstances and place of death were known, the officer would collect evidence at the scene. When lacking this information, the officer would try to retrace the persons path from where he was last seen by collecting testimonies and documents. In the Summer of 1945, most Displaced Persons had been repatriated and the Commissariat shifted its focus to the 20.000 persons from Belgium who were still missing. The military liaison officers were replaced with multi-lingual civilians who searched the former occupied territories for both information on missing persons and general documentation. Marie-Céline de Dorlodot had worked for the Belgian Repatriation Service since June 1940 and became the head of the Belgian Mission for Searches in France and member of the Belgian Military Mission for Repatriation from France. She and her team thus collected information on over 10.400 persons from Belgium, including thousands of Jewish war victims. All searches of the Commissariat were suspended in 1955, when the organisation was transferred to the Service for War Victims, today the Archives Service for War Victims – State Archives of Belgium. A name index is available at the Kazerne Dossin documentation centre.