Special, limited, Transport XX commemoration this year in Boortmeerbeek, Belgium on 21th April 2025.
“Zog nit keyn mol” – Never Say … the Yiddish Partisan Song written in 1943 by Hirsh Glick.
Watch also the entire Boormeerbeek Crescendo choir singing “Zog nit keyn mol” here
https://youtu.be/FmXmhzzuUc4
Photo, video, thanks to Michel Baert and Nick Doms, Municipal council Boortmeerbeek.
Citation info : Transport XX Boortmeerbeek 2025 • Miracles•Media | 20250423
by Michel van der Burg • Miracles•Media
Ward Adriaens (Mechelen, Belgium) passed away suddenly on the evening of November 15th, 2024. A wonderful man, a freethinker, author, with a passion for living history, especially the resistance, partisans, in World War II, and the founding director in 1995 of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance (JMDR) that opened its doors in 1996. In 2012 the JMDR became the Kazerne Dossin museum, with Ward Adriaens as honorary curator. In 2005 Ward Adriaens launched the Give Them a Face archival project. The portraits of all Jewish, Roma and Sinti deportees which passed through the SS-Sammellager Mecheln (Dossin barracks, transit camp, Mechelen) in 1942-1944, were scanned to create the “Give Them a Face” portrait collection. All around 20,000 photos in the Give Them a Face portrait collection are now part of the commemoration wall – a permanent exhibition – at the Kazerne Dossin museum.
In 2009 , I first encountered the Transport XX installation in Brussels, and met Ward Adriaens’ team of the Give Them a Face project in the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance in Mechelen, Belgium (1,2).
Next , Ward Adriaens participated in our 2012 documentary Transport XX to Auschwitz (3).
Recently, May 2024, Ward Adriaens’ opening speech at the TRANSPORT XX installation in Mechelen in 2007, was posted in the ‘Miracles’ project at Miracles•Media (4).
“…Let us clearly understand that this is the fundamental basis of racism: persecuted because we have a mother. We all have parents and many amongst us have children. In order to protect them it is essential that we do not give an inch to racism. Everyone of us will come under threat should the policy makers be influenced by racism…”
We lost Ward Adriaens… way too soon…
Michel van der Burg • Miracles•Media
1. Encounter • Miracles Docs #1 • Miracles•Media • 20240419 • URL https://miracles.media/2024/04/19/20240419/
2. Faces • Miracles Photo Story #1 • Miracles•Media • 20240419 • URL https://miracles.media/2024/04/19/faces-miracles-photo-story-1-20240419/
3. Ward Adriaens’ interview by the dutch reporters Piet de Blaauw & Aart Zeeman (Dutch NCRV-Netwerk broadcast, 13 April 2005, NL1) from the documentary ‘Transport XX to Auschwitz’ – a film by Karen Lynne & Richard Bloom and Michel van der Burg • In : Documentary film “Transport XX to Auschwitz” • Miracles•Media • 20130419 • URL (retrieved 20241119) https://michelvanderburg.com/2013/04/19/transport-xx-to-auschwitz/
4. Speech by Ward Adriaens, Curator of The JMDR, Friday 20th April 2007. In : TRANSPORT XX installation Mechelen • Miracles•Media • 20240518 • URL https://miracles.media/2024/05/18/transport-xx-installation-mechelen-20240518/
Citation info : In Memoriam Ward Adriaens • Miracles•Media • 20241119 • URL https://michelvanderburg.com/2024/11/19/in-memoriam-ward-adriaens-20241119/
Berlingen, Belgium. May 20, 2011.
After running through the woods all night, after his escape from Transport XX, the 11-year-old Simon Gronowski went to this house – a simple house, he trusted – at early dawn on Tuesday April 20th 1943. At the time, the number 14 in the Langstraat street [now renumbered 42] in Berlingen, Belgium.
Mrs Reynders answered the door when Simon rang the bell, and was the first to help Simon to get back to Brussels.
Photo (edited) by Michel van der Burg, taken close to midnight on May 20, 2011.
Citation info : Berlingen | Miracles•Media | 20240712 | TakeNode deacfa40-7fc2-47e3-b1d6-af487a54bff7
Kuttekoven track to Auschwitz… Right after the site where Simon Gronowski escaped from the 20th convoy, ‘Transport XX’, the railway bed of this former so-called ‘Fruitspoor’ (Fruit Track) crosses the village of Kuttekoven, with – on the horizon – the Church of Saint John the Baptiser , currently with the expo ‘Witzwart’ (Whiteblack) – aka Land(es)capes from the 20th Convoy – by the local photographer Jo Struyven.
Filmed Sunday early afternoon, January 26th, 2014, while scouting the place for a reportage with Simon Gronowski later that day.
Watch film at Miracles•Media or Miracles•Media’s Substack … https://substack.com/@michelvanderburg/note/c-61114479
Citation info : Strange Fruit | Miracles•Media | 20240706 | TakeNode d929ede7-817f-476d-854c-4c358012ec82
Kuttekoven (Borgloon), Belgium. Sunday, January 26th, 2014. At nightfall, Simon Gronowski recounts to people of Kuttekoven, his daring escape – helped by his mother Chana Kaplan that rainy night of April 19, 1943 – from the 20th deportation train to Auschwitz, at this very spot on the railway track bed (of the so-called ‘Fruitspoor’) where it enters the village of Kuttekoven.
Watch film at Miracles•Media – link
https://miracles.media/2024/07/05/escape-miracles-docs-4-20240705/
From May 8th to May 24th, 2010, the memorial installation “Open Memory” was on display in a prominent location in Köln (Cologne, Germany) — in front of the Hohenzollern Bridge, at the left bank of the Rhine river, parallel to the railway tracks of the Cologne Central Station (Köln Hauptbahnhof), with the Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom) in the background.
It consisted of 26 large canvases on which portraits of more than 1,500 people were depicted. This open-air exhibition was intended to commemorate three events that occurred during this period: the end of the Second World War in Europe on May 8th and 9th, 1945, the 70th anniversary of the attack by the German Wehrmacht on the Benelux countries and France, and the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the Sinti and Roma from Cologne and the Rhineland (Western Germany).
The Museum La Coupole had created six canvases with photographs or silhouettes of 351 Sinti and Roma from Northern France and Belgium, deported with “Transport Z” in January 1944 from Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen, Belgium to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
On 20 other canvases were the portraits of 1,200 Jewish people deported with “Transport XX” in April 1943 from Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen to Auschwitz. This exhibition was created by the Jewish Deportation and Resistance Museum (Kazerne Dossin) in Mechelen. “Transport XX” is the only deportation train in Europe that was stopped by a resistance group.
The exhibition lined the route Roma and Sinti from Köln had to take from May 1940 en route across the Rhine via the Hohenzollern Bridge to the Cologne Fair (Köln Messe) transit camp for deportation to the extermination camps. The route was marked May 6, 1990, by the artist Gunter Demnig (later known for his Stolperstein project) by printing the writing “May 1940 – 1000 Sinti and Roma” on the streets in Cologne, using a wheel for painting with white paint.
The Open Memory installation was presented by : the Jewish Deportation and Resistance Museum (Kazerne Dossin) in Mechelen, Belgium • La Coupole – History Centre in Wizernes, France • NS Documentation Center Cologne • AK Memorial Centers NRW • Yavne Memorial and Educational Center • EL-DE-Haus Cologne.
Film by : Michel van der Burg, thanks to an amateur (2010) slide presentation by A. Lototsky
Citation info : Open Memory | Miracles Docs #3 | Miracles•Media | 20240523 | ISAN 0000-0007-329C-0003-M-0000-0000-8 | TakeNode 4e398109-d461-4a41-84d7-8d74756c82d8
Construction of the new Kazerne Dossin museum, across the Dossin barracks – transit camp during WWII – housing both the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, as well as apartments, April 20, 2011, Mechelen, Belgium.
Citation info : Construction Kazerne Dossin | Miracles•Media | 20240424 | TakeNode 7865a3f9-5a76-479f-af10-306a60fe982b
