The Mechelen transit camp, officially () in
German, also known as the Dossin barracks, was a
detention and deportation camp established in a former army barracks at
Mechelen
Mechelen (; french: Malines ; traditional English name: MechlinMechelen has been known in English as ''Mechlin'', from where the adjective ''Mechlinian'' is derived. This name may still be used, especially in a traditional or historical contex ...
in
German-occupied Belgium. It served as a point to gather Belgian
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
and
Romani
Romani may refer to:
Ethnicities
* Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia
** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule
* Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...
ahead of their deportation to
concentration and extermination camps in Eastern Europe during
the Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
.
The camp was established in March 1942 and was the only transit camp in Belgium. It was managed by the (SiPo-SD), a branch of the
Reich Security Main Office, and was used to hold Jews and Romani ahead of their deportation to
Auschwitz-Birkenau as well as other camps including
Heydebreck-Cosel
Heydebreck was a Nazi Germany village area with POW camps Arbeitskommando E711A and Bau und Arbeits (BAB, en, Building and Labor) camp 20 aWinter 2004 , b (renamed E794 in November 1944). Five km west
*
* in the Cosel district was a subcamp o ...
. Between 4 August 1942 and 31 July 1944, 28 trains left from near the camp and deported over 25,800 people.
Only 1,240 survived the war.
The camp was abandoned at the