The purpose of this website is to compile what Marleen collected in the 1990s about the presence of Jewish people in Kalmthout and to demonstrate that they have been important in building up the Heide district in Kalmthout.
For centuries, Kalmthout was mainly an agricultural municipality. Since the construction of the Antwerp-Roosendaal railway in the 19th century, a large part of the municipality has grown into a residential area, surrounded by agricultural and nature reserves.
During the 1920s many Polish and Romanian Jews immigrated to Belgium and during the 1930s many German and Austrian Jews.
In 1911, Heide got its current station and it was very easy for Antwerp residents to make a trip to Heide-Kalmthout. Heide gradually developed from a center of day tourism to a permanent residential area. The Jewish fellow citizens, often working in the diamond industry, were also charmed by the beautiful forests and the healthy air of Heide.
That is why the Jews were also involved in the creation of Heide-Kalmthout.
In the work that Marleen wrote and last edited in 2001 you will find:
- a bit of history
- any photos of Jewish hotels and houses (including postcards from Hoelen)
- births, marriages of Jewish people in Kalmthout
- deported Jewish people who were once registered in Kalmthout
- the war years and some strong stories
- the synagogue and the yeshivah
This is how the need for a synagogue arose and it was built in 1928 mainly thanks to Mendel Kornreich.
Despite the war, the synagogue building was relatively spared. But the Jewish community was decimated.
The survivors and heirs of the rightful owners returned to Heide-Kalmthout for many years to come. Life around the synagogue took on meaning again. But it never became what it was before the war. People no longer went to Heide or the Belgian coast for holidays, but explored the world outside Belgium.
That evolution also affected the Jewish community here. The result was that many sold their homes, decimating the newly revived Jewish community here.
The synagogue lost more and more significance and had a minyan less and less often.
The final blow came when the last caretaker, Mrs. Ytje Barendsen, who had taken care of the synagogue for years, died.
In recent years when Ytje was still a caretaker, Marleen visited the synagogue several times. On one of those times she decorated the bimah and the ark for her. This gave Marleen the opportunity to take some photos (see the photos). She also visited the synagogue together with Professor Julien Klener, who explained the mostly Aramaic text of the plates hanging on the wall.
25,846 people were deported from the Barracks Dossin to the concentration camps. The ‘Give them a portrait’ project has been in place since 2013 and they have started looking for portraits to give these people a face. At this moment 20643 have already been collected.
Of these 25,846 people, 230 deported people were once registered in Kalmthout. And of these 230, 21 adults and 20 children under the age of 18 who stayed in Kalmthout until 1942 and were picked up there to be taken to the Dossin barracks.
We carried out the investigative work through the Kalmthout archive, the book ‘Mechelen-Auschwitz 1942-1944’, the book ‘Drancy-Auschwitz 1942-1944’, and the digital image bank of Kazerne Dossin.
We found 170 portraits of the people who were registered in Kalmthout in the image bank of Kazerne Dossin.
22 portraits can be found on the page of those deported from Kalmthout. The other 141 can be found on the page Registered in Kalmthout.