“The Holocaust that was kept secret, Belgium as an example,” is the title of the unique book by Alan Blitz, a teacher from Kibbutz HaSolelim in the Lower Galilee. Undoubtedly, the name of the book, which appeared in the run-up to Holocaust Remembrance Day, published by Tzameret on its 476 pages, to throw into our consciousness the statement in it, the like of which has not been made in the Holocaust books that have been published to date.
“In three Western European countries – the Netherlands, Belgium and France – about 200,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust,” Blitz released Nazareth. “It can be said that it is not much, equivalent to two or three cities in Poland. If in Belgium, my homeland, about 30,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, that is the number of Jews killed in Babi Yar in three days. But the numerical issue does not determine everything. The Holocaust was a tragic event. “European and when you do not refer to what happened at that time in Belgium, where the horrors of the Holocaust that took place did not find such expression in the books, this is a distortion of reality, which my book came to correct.”
“The three Holocaust institutions in the kibbutz sector in which I live – in the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutzim, Yad Mordechai and Tel Yitzhak – continue to develop the narrative of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which, with all its importance, is time to stop ignoring what happened beyond it,” he reads. “A month ago, there was a seminar at the Ghetto Fighters’ House on the subject of Jews rescuing Jews. Strangely enough, the name of Belgium did not come up, which during the Holocaust had a dedicated Jewish underground, which saved about 3,000 children and 5,000 adults.”
“The bottom line is that something needs to change here,” Blitz states. “This is especially true because there are those who, because of political correctness, a socio-political reason, even precede the Holocaust in North Africa to the one in Western Europe, even though some 500 Jews were deported from Libya, for example, which is terrible, but has nothing to do with what happened in Belgium. “A country that for some reason was marginalized. Therefore, I was called upon to invest my whole being in writing my book.”
It seems to me that there was another reason for the book, which could also have been called “in the name of the father” – I remark to him. His father, Joseph (Joska), an Auschwitz survivor, rarely spoke about the horrors he went through until he was opened to his grandchildren, the third generation. But it was already late and after he passed away in 2010 at the age of 85 he took it upon himself to tell about what happened there, even though he was born years after the Holocaust and despite being a primary school teacher (in Ginegar) and not a professional historian. According to Blitz, this is clearly not just a commemorative book and therefore pushed his father’s personal story into the appendices chapter at the end of the book.
In Belgium, which I, the author of this article, also have some connection to, there were about 70,000 Jews in May 1940, when the Holocaust exploded, including about 20,000 refugees from the German Reich, after the Nazis came to power. At the end of that month, Leopold, King of Belgium, signed a humiliating letter of surrender.
In general, as can be seen from Blitz’s in-depth account, the Belgians were indifferent to what was done to Jews in their country during the Holocaust, despite heroic rescue stories on the one hand and angular extraditions on the other. “The Belgians had other problems, including the supply of food and the supply of coal for heating the house,” says Blitz. “On the other hand, 1,774 Belgians were recognized at Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations, and on the other hand not many people know that there is a Jewish underground in Belgium, called the ‘Armed Partisans’, some of whom were graduates of the Spanish Civil War.”
Joska, Blitz’s father, was a prisoner in Auschwitz for about two and a half years, between ’42 and ’45. “He did what he could to avoid being transferred to another camp,” Blitz said. “According to him, he already knew the evil of Auschwitz and could not know what might await him elsewhere. My father knew how to protect himself, even when he had to work there in the most despicable jobs. Luckily at the end of the war he did not take part in the ‘death march’.”
In 1948, he was one of the IDF volunteers. After training in the south of France, he arrived in Israel and fought as a machine gunner on the southern front of the Palmach’s Negev Brigade. Although well absorbed here, he was forced to return to Antwerp, his hometown in Belgium, where he was active in the diamond industry. All his years there he was proud of his part in the War of Independence and also of the fact that two of his sons immigrated to Israel. He was laid to rest in the embankments, his son Allen’s kibbutz.
Alan Blitz, born in 1957, came to this kibbutz in 1973, to a summer camp organized by the Ha – No’ar ha – Tsiyyoni youth movement. Within two years he returned to the division fields there and enlisted in the Armored Forces. Since studying education and history at Oranim College, he has been involved in teaching.
Alan Blitz (Photo: Private)To conclude: “The Hidden Holocaust, Belgium as an Example,” the excellent book by Alan Blitz, which pours important content into one of the empty squares in Holocaust literature, is a must-read book.