The Fort of Breendonk dates from the beginning of the 20th century. The concrete armored fort is part of a ring of forts around the strategically located port city of Antwerp. During the First World War, it was heavily shelled and surrounded by German troops from October 1 to 8, 1914. Ultimately, it surrendered as one of the last forts around Antwerp, after which Antwerp was taken by the Germans.
The Fort remained a military quarter between the two world wars. When the Second World War broke out, Belgian King Leopold III took up residence there from May 9 to 18, 1940. In those days, the Fort served as the headquarters of the general staff of the Belgian army.
Fort Breendonk gained its gruesome reputation during the Second World War. The German occupier established an 'Auffanglager', a prison that is used as a reception camp for mainly political prisoners. The SIPO-SD, the SS police, locked up approximately 3,600 people of about 20 different nationalities there from September 1940 to August 1944.
In the first year of occupation, about half of the prisoners were Jews. Most of them disappeared from Breendonk in 1942, when the German occupier put the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen into use as a 'Sammmellager', a collection camp from which Jews, Roma and Sinti were transported to the concentration camps.
The regime in Breendonk is highly violent. From the moment they arrive at the camp, prisoners are subjected to humiliation, beatings, forced labor, malnutrition and torture. A disadvantage is the small scale of the Auffanglager: the number of prisoners never exceeds 6 to 700. In Breendonk it is impossible to escape the attention of the German or Flemish guards even for a moment. Disappearing into the crowd, as in large camps, is not possible in Breendonk.
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