Keeping the past alive
Fortress Breendonk was a stronghold built between 1906 and 1913 as part of the defensive belt around the important harbour town of Antwerp. During the Second World War, from September 1940 onwards, the Nazis used it as a "detention camp" for dissidents, resistance fighters, hostages, and Jews.
This SS Auffanglager inside Belgium itself was run by members of the SIPO-SD, including several Flemings. They organized a sinister regime of deprivation and torture. The internees were abused, starved, and arbitrarily beaten.
Of the 3,590 prisoners is documented, 303 died on the spot (including executions), 54 were executed elsewhere, and 1,741 subsequently lost their lives in concentration camps. As you might already have read some of my own family members were detained in Breendonk.
The new Flemish tv-series tells the story of the young couple Elisabeth and Rik, who are brutally separated following a failed resistance operation. Elisabeth is forced to go into hiding, while Rik ends up in Breendonk together with his father Leon.
[media=https://youtu.be/AniyiHn6AnU]
This SS Auffanglager inside Belgium itself was run by members of the SIPO-SD, including several Flemings. They organized a sinister regime of deprivation and torture. The internees were abused, starved, and arbitrarily beaten.
Of the 3,590 prisoners is documented, 303 died on the spot (including executions), 54 were executed elsewhere, and 1,741 subsequently lost their lives in concentration camps. As you might already have read some of my own family members were detained in Breendonk.
The new Flemish tv-series tells the story of the young couple Elisabeth and Rik, who are brutally separated following a failed resistance operation. Elisabeth is forced to go into hiding, while Rik ends up in Breendonk together with his father Leon.
[media=https://youtu.be/AniyiHn6AnU]
