Kazerne Dossin

The Documentation Centre

Practical information KAZERNE DOSSIN

Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights Goswin de Stassartstraat 153, B-2800 Mechelen T + 32 (0) 15 29 06 60 / F + 32 (0) 15 29 08 76 www.kazernedossin.eu / info@kazernedossin.eu Open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. / Closed Wednesdays Closed Christmas Day, New Year’s Day and Jewish holidays Rosh Hashana (September 5-6, 2013) and Yom Kippour (September 14, 2013)

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Kazerne Dossin is located on the outskirts of mechelen, 25 kilometres from Brussels and antwerp. the museum is easy to reach by car and by public transport. mechelen is 15 minutes by rail from both Brussels and antwerp, and 8 minutes from Brussels international airport. if you arrive at mechelen-nekkerspoel railway station, the museum is a 15-minute walk away. For visitors arriving at the main mechelen railway station, there are buses to the museum. Visitors coming to Kazerne Dossin by road can park in the car park next to the museum or in one of the car parks on the outskirts of the city. the car park at rode Kruisplein is a few minutes’ walk from the museum. more information about accessibility, parking and accommodation may be found on the websites www.kazernedossin.eu and www.mechelen.be

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Kazerne Dossin houses a unique and valuable archive on the persecution of the Jews and Romanies in Belgium. The Documentation Centre holds photographs of almost 80 percent of the deportees. The search service answers hundreds of questions every year from researchers and people seeking information about their relatives. Everyone is welcome to bring their questions and requests for information to the archive and library.

Kazerne Dossin is digitising its extensive archive to preserve it for future generations. The Documentation Centre has so far scanned over 1.2 million documents relating to the Holocaust, including the files of the Aliens Police and the Belgian Register of Jews. Kazerne Dossin’s research cell also supports numerous publications and research projects in the field.

More information: info@kazernedossin.eu

Holocaust &

human rights Memorial & Museum

About KAZERNE DOSSIN From 1942 to 1944, these former army barracks were used by the Nazis as ‘SS Sammellager Mecheln’ – a transit camp from which more than 25,000 Jews and Romanies from Belgium and Northern France were deported to Auschwitz-Bir­ kenau. Fewer than five percent of them survived the war. A brand-new museum has been built opposite the barracks to shine a new light on this symbolic place of remembrance.

Kazerne Dossin explores one of the darkest pages in Belgium’s history, while also examining human rights in their contemporary context. The Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights informs, remembers and warns against exclusion, discrimination and mass violence, in the past and today.

Museum of the Holocaust

Museum of Human Rights The museum’s primary focus is on the persecution of the Jews and the Romanies – the greatest crime committed on Belgian soil in the twentieth century. The first floor displays photographs, files and testimonies of the Jewish and Romani communities in pre-war Belgium, and their compulsory registration by Belgian authorities in the autumn of 1940. The second floor tells the story of successive discriminatory measures against the Jewish community, leading to the imposition of the yellow star and internment in Kazerne Dossin. The third floor deals with the horror of the extermination camps and the lasting trauma they inflicted on the victims and their families. It also remembers rescuers and resisters, and help from unexpected quarters. The museum visit ends on the fourth-floor terrace, with a view of the old barracks complex.

As Europe’s first Museum of Human Rights, Kazerne Dossin focuses on gross and large-scale violations of those rights throughout the world.

What mechanisms allow mass murder and genocide to occur today ? What forces cause a society to run out of control ? And what is the role of the masses in that process ? Kazerne Dossin concerns itself with the key concepts of mass violence and non-discrimination. The museum invites visitors to ask questions about modern-day conflicts and to seek answers to them. The theme of human rights is an important thread running through the permanent and temporary exhibitions.

The Memorial The original rooms in one wing of the former barracks have been turned into a memorial for the thousands of victims who went from Dossin to their deaths. It is a quiet location for reflection and remembrance.

Objects and art works in four rooms refer to the victims’ final days and hours and to the void they left behind them. They help us remember the lost generations. At the Memorial, the victims of the Holocaust in Belgium are given back their names, voices and faces, making this dark period in world history tangible once more.