English: Inside the Fort of Breendonk, a former nazi prison in Belgium and now the National Breendonk Memorial. On september 20th 1940 Sturmbannführer Philip Schmitt brought his first victims to Breendonk. The Fort officially became the Auffanglager Breendonk, a transit camp; a major centre for the Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst (SIPO/SD), the german political police.

During the first year of the Occupation, the Jews made up half of the 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