Bidspirit auction | Shocking initial impressions from the

Shocking initial impressions from the Breendonk camp as recounted by members of the resistance who were the first to arrive at the camp upon its liberation. Antwerp, 1944 - first edition - De volle waarheid over het concentratiekamp Breendonk. Een geïllustreerde reportage over de gruweldaden die aldaar door de nazi-beulen gepleegd werden - “The full truth about the Breendonk concentration camp - an illustrated report on the atrocities committed there by the Nazi executioners”. A rare publication as part of Documenten over de bezetting van België door Hitler-Duitschland 1940–1944 - documents on the occupation of Belgium by Nazi Germany. Published by Uitgeverij Ontwikkeling, Antwerp, 1944 - first edition. Extremely rare. Dutch. “Now Breendonk has been liberated, and only now does the full truth come to light. Let us say it at once: the truth is more terrible than we could have imagined, though we had already heard so much from our German friends. The truth, in short, is inconceivable…”. A rare booklet published shortly after the liberation of the Breendonk camp by resistance members who arrived at the camp immediately upon its liberation: “On the morning of Sunday, September 3, they (the G.L. members) had already taken the fortress of Breendonk, and now we stand in one of the rooms of the stronghold, with its thick and vaulted walls and ceiling…”. This is an early and initial report by members of the resistance who were the first to reach the Breendonk camp upon its liberation. They were present at the camp during the first interrogations of its captured Nazi commanders by Baron de Meester, as well as during the questioning of Belgian collaborators with the Nazis, and full transcripts of these interrogations are presented here - how they denied their crimes after being captured, and the information that was extracted from them at such an early stage. The authors of the report were the first to walk through the various wings of the camp, in the prisoners’ cells and in the death facilities: “We wish to see these cells and to take the first step into the tragedy of Breendonk, a narrow and low corridor containing ten or twelve cells. One of them is open… torture cages! Are we exaggerating? Judge for yourselves. The prisoner received no light or air. From the outside world, he heard only the grinding of locks and bolts and the threatening thud of his executioners’ boots. Whether he stretched his arms upward, sideways or forward, he touched the walls or the cell door everywhere in the darkness…”. They also recount here the story of the Jews who were taken to the camp and tortured to death. A full testimony is presented here from a prisoner who survived the camp (his name is not given) regarding the tortures he endured at the hands of his Nazi captors: “I was a member of an illegal movement. Then the Oberleutnant approached me and struck me in the face, and I was thrown onto the table. He continued to beat me until my jaw was shattered. I fell to the floor. The SS men, eight in number, kicked and beat me wherever they could… hell, and I do not know what was worse - the beatings themselves, to which we were exposed at every moment, or the endless fear of these beatings. We shrank every time we heard footsteps in the corridor, fearing they would stop at our door. The prisoners were forced to stand at attention in their rooms between the hours of 8 and 12 and between 2 and 6, with their backs to their beds, yet were not permitted to lean against them. The guards spied through the peepholes, and woe to anyone who could no longer endure it and broke the rule. Then the ‘Zugführer’ would first receive blows, which he had to pass on to the ‘culprit’. In this way, the Germans and their servants sought to turn the prisoners into beasts in their own image…”. The report includes several testimonies of prisoners received at the camp. They report on the tortures of the camp and the atrocities that took place there shortly after its liberation. Under the heading: “The torture cell: modern torture techniques alongside age-old executioners’ methods”, the sadistic acts of torture carried out by the Nazis on the camp’s prisoners are detailed, as reported by SS officers themselves who were captured in the camp - on the torture pulley, the furnace, and the “broken plank”, the burial of prisoners alive in sand pits, and more (due to the sensitivity, the details are not elaborated here). The booklet is accompanied by photographs: the barbed-wire fence surrounding the camp, the cells in which prisoners sentenced to execution were held, the iron door that provided access to the death chamber, the torture cell, the mortuary, the wall against which those condemned were executed, and more. Breendonk had previously served as a fortified military base of the Belgian army between the cities of Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium. During the German occupation of Belgium in the Second World War, it functioned as a detention camp,