My Journey Continues

My journey discovering our family history began in 2016 when I received a Facebook message from Jackie Schwarz, a researcher who found information about my maternal grandparents. I knew little about their immigration from Lublin to Antwerp, Belgium in the 1920s. Jackie uncovered registration documents in Antwerp Felix Archives. The records showed where they had lived, where they had worked and where their relatives had lived in Poland and the United States. From these documents we learned about their lives in Antwerp and Lublin from 1921 until 1937.

My great grandfather's identification card. Most likely he carried this with him. 

Pesa's new resident application shows her plans to immigrate to the U.S.

Canadian Pacific Railway shipping line served Antwerp from 1919-1929

Abraham Krymholc (Kramholc, Krimholc), my maternal great grandfather, accompanied his 20-year-old daughter, my grandmother, Pesa (Pola), and her two small children, Ita (Yetta) and David, from Lublin to Antwerp in October 1921. Several months later, Pesa and the children boarded the SS Minnedosa to sail to Canada and from there to Kansas City to join my grandfather, Sol, who had arrived a year earlier. Eventually, my great grandmother, Sura Matele, her young son Mordechai and Pesa’s brother Chaim and his wife, Rachel joined Abraham in Antwerp. Abraham and Sura continued to live in Antwerp for the next decade before returning to Lublin. (See What We Now Know)

Port of Antwerp extends for many miles

My journey continued in May when I visited Jackie in Antwerp where I could examine the documents at the Felix Archives, absorb the sights and sounds of the city and try to imagine what they experienced as new residents. Over six days we toured the Felix Archives, the Red Star Line Museum at the Port of Antwerp, Kazerne Dossin Memorial and Museum in Mechelen, Antwerp’s beautiful Central Station and most of the homes and neighborhoods where my family had lived.

Red Star Line Museum exhibitions are based on the 3 million people who emigrated to America from the Port of Antwerp from 1873 to 1935. In addition to passenger lists, photographs and artifacts such as dishes and menus, there are personal stories of six passengers including Irving Berlin and Albert Einstein. I followed my grandmother's footsteps in the renovated warehouse that is now the museum and thought about her journey that likely saved her life.

In 2016, Tadeusz Przystojecki and Malgorzata Milkowska from Lublin's Grodzka Gate Theater contacted the Red Star Line Museum asking for assistance in identifying Jewish immigrants from Lublin who arrived in Antwerp before WW2. Lien Vloeberghs, historical researcher at the museum, connected them with Jackie, a Jewish genealogy researcher. As luck would have it, Lien recently returned to the museum after a year sabbatical and I was able to thank her personally for making a wonderful connection!

Jackie Schwarz (left) with Lien Vloeberghs

The same building where my grandmother boarded her ship.

Kazerne Dossin in Mechelen, Belgium, was a military barracks designated by the Nazis as a transit camp for Jews, Roma and Sinti during WW2. Between July 1942 and September 1944, 25,274 Jews and 354 gypsies were transported from Mechelen to Auschwitz-Birkenau and to a few other smaller concentration camps.

I was not familiar with Kazerne Dossin Memorial and Museum until Jackie found photographs of Chaim Krimholc and two of his children, Moise and Sarah, in the archives. The museum's digital image database includes more than 1.5 million documents from the Holocaust in Belgium. Portraits from the database can be seen on the wall of the museum. (See Giving Them a Face and a Name).

Jackie introduced me to Dr. Veerle Vanden Daelen, Kazerne Dossin's deputy managing director and conservator, at Antwerp's Central Station early one morning and we rode the train together to Mechelen. I learned that Veerle's dissertation focused on the return of Jews and reconstruction of their life in Antwerp after the Second World War (1944-1960). She continues to investigate Jewish history and migration and identify holocaust-related resources throughout Europe. Veerle is traveling to Lublin and Warsaw next month for further study.

25,846 images of deportees on portrait wall at Kazerne Dossin

Dr. Veerle Vanden Daelen and me at historic barracks

Thank you to Veerle Vanden Daelen, Lien Vloeberghs, Inge Schoups, director of the Antwerp Felix Archives, Jackie Schwarz, Tadeusz Przystojecki, Malgorzata Milkowska and their colleagues for uncovering my family's history among thousands of other family histories so we can share our stories and the tragedy of the Holocaust with our children and grandchildren.