Craving news from dear ones : the impact of Organisation Todt forced labour on the survival chances of the families of the Jewish workers from Antwerp

Styven, Dorien; Vanden Daelen, Veerle

doi:10.1515/9783110733860-019

Title

Craving news from dear ones : the impact of Organisation Todt forced labour on the survival chances of the families of the Jewish workers from Antwerp

Author

Styven, Dorien

Vanden Daelen, Veerle

Abstract

In the summer of 1942 over 2,250 Jewish men – including at least 1,625 living in Antwerp in 1940 – were deported from Belgium to Organisation Todt labour camps in Northern France. Communication between the workers and their families remained possible via the payment of wages as well as the shipment of parcels and mail items, such as the photo Bertrand Liebermann sent to his cousins. With a deportation rate of 85.57 percent for the OT men deported from Antwerp in the summer of 1942 and an estimated deportation rate of 73.52 percent for their Jewish relatives, the OT camps were one of the most threatening steps in the racial persecution of the Jewish population in Belgium in general and in Antwerp in particular. Even though not executed in a preconceived plan as such, communication between the slave labourers and their families left behind may have caused less mobility and less chances of survival. The loss of communication, as appears from our micro-studies, may have been an incentive to escape or go into hiding. In combining statistical information with the micro-analysis of such photos, letters and diaries, this article illustrated how obligatory labour and the (lack of) communication may have negatively influenced survival chances on both ends. This analysis further illustrates how the obligatory OT labour is an important factor to explain the “Antwerp specificity” as most Jewish OT men from Belgium were 1940 Antwerp residents.

Language

English

Source (book)

New microhistorical approaches to an integrated history of the Holocaust / Bonnesoeur, F. [edit.]; et al.

Publication

Berlin : De Gruyter Oldenbourg , 2023

ISBN

978-3-11-073846-9

DOI

10.1515/9783110733860-019

Volume/pages

p. 345-360

Full text (Publisher's DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110733860-019

Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)

https://repository.uantwerpen.be/docstore/d:iruaintra:10994

Faculty/Department				Faculty of Arts. Literature

Research group				Institute of Jewish Studies

Publication type				H1 Book chapter

Subject				History

Affiliation				Publications with a UAntwerp address

VABB-SHW

This title in VABB-SHW

Identifier

c:irua:201908

Creation

05.01.2024

Last edited

07.04.2025

To cite this reference

https://hdl.handle.net/10067/2019080151162165141