The Prisoners of Breendonk: Personal Histories from a World War II Concentration Camp

By James M. Deem

Stories of the Holocaust victims imprisoned at the little-known Belgium concentration camp. “A sobering study of man’s inhumanity to man.”—Booklist (starred review)

Fort Breendonk was built in the early 1900s to protect Antwerp, Belgium, from possible German invasion. Damaged at the start of World War I, it fell into disrepair . . . until the Nazis took it over after their invasion of Belgium in 1940. Never designated an official concentration camp by the SS and instead labeled a “reception” camp where prisoners were held until they were either released or transported, Breendonk was no less brutal. About 3,600 prisoners were held there—just over half of them survived. As one prisoner put it, “I would prefer to spend nineteen months at Buchenwald than nineteen days at Breendonk.”

 

With access to the camp and its archives and with rare photos and artwork, James M. Deem pieces together the story of the camp by telling the stories of its victims—Jews, communists, resistance fighters, and even common criminals—for the first time in an English-language publication. Leon Nolis’s searing photography of the camp in its current state accompany the wide range of archival images.

 

The story of Breendonk is one you will never forget.

“Deem’s unflinching look at the prisoner experience at Breendonk . . . gives voice to Breendonk’s victims . . . a thorough history.”—VOYA


“An important book that demands serious consideration and discussion.”—Booklist (starred review)

“For many, Breendonk had been only the beginning, and by following a handful of prisoners to their various ends, Deem illustrates that each story had a unique trajectory.”—Horn Book Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9780544556447

James M. Deem

James M. Deem is the author of numerous books for young readers, including 3 NB of Julian Drew, Bodies from the Ice: Melting Glaciers and the Rediscovery of the Past, and Faces From the Past. Mr. Deem lives outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

Reviews for The Prisoners of Breendonk

[jrnewman-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

James Deem's The Prisoners of Breendonk is not what one would call an enjoyable read. This historical document draws upon a wealth of primary and secondary sources to paint a bleak, sometimes hopeless portrait of human cruelty in a Belgian concentration camp during WWII. Deem, a practiced author and retired college professor, extensively researched this lesser known facility, which is generally left out of discussions including the likes of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. The complex was small, yes, but its legacy stands as a testament to the depths of sadism and indifference which people can reach when backed my oppressive, nationalist, militarist, racist power structures. The book takes the reader through a history of the names, faces, and words of many of those who spent time in (and often died in) Breendonk. While the author does admit to some guessing of particulars for individual prisoners where direct citation were not available, he points to their shared experience enough to justify these extrapolations (3). With that being said, The Prisoners of Breendonk is a fascinating, horrifying in depth look at the rise and fall of this brutal Belgian concentration camp.In keeping with the deadly serious topic being covered, Deem keeps to a mostly neutral tone throughout the book. This tone holds even when talking about gross human rights violations and occurrences such as murdered prisoners' causes of death being falsified on official documents to cover up the abuses taking place in the camp (79-80). More vivid and figurative language is primarily reserved for direct quotations taken from primary sources - such as the arrival of prisoners being characterized as being “vomited” from the vehicles delivering them to the camp (13) or when an overseer sneers, “A bullet costs too much for you; my fists cost nothing” before beating a prisoner to death (196). The stark contrast between the fairly monotonous prose and the shocking quotations lends some life to what sometimes comes across as an extremely heavy, even cumbersome, literary journey. Deem's writing isn't bad (far from it), but the gloomy, violent, unrelenting nature of the subject matter left me in need of something less depressing every time I sat the book down. I suppose, however, that this is the point, and that it would be rather troubling to not feel a bit downtrodden after reading a work like this. The book is organized pretty much chronologically, starting with the camp's early use as a fort then moving to its designation as a “reception” camp under the Nazi regime, and ending with the closing of the camp. It makes sense to organize this way, as it seems the author was trying to fit as much information and human experience as possible into a fairly compact space. The end result feels a little cluttered at times, and, in chapters heavy with individual stories which amounted to brief snippets about each person and archival photos I felt almost like I was looking at a long line of people with whom I could never really relate (34-41). (Admittedly, this copy is an advanced copy, and the final , published work will likely have a more polished appearance, and many of the photos will likely be better positioned and colorized.) Possibly the single most interesting and humanizing features found in the pages of The Prisoners of Breendonk are copies of the original sketches by a Mr Jacques Ochs, who was assigned to draw many of the prisoners by order of the camp's commanding officer. These images run the gamut from realistic and saddening to arguably racist – showing a possible anti-Semitic slant which many of the non-Jewish prisoners shared (69). Ochs' drawings speak, in a surprisingly real way, both to the suffering faced by the prisoners at Breendonk and the prejudice at the core of so much of the suffering visited upon the Jewish people during WWII.On the whole, this book was an amazing educational read. Though it felt bogged down, sometimes, by the neutral tone and morose subject matter, the work speaks, in a real way, to human depravity and perseverance. This book would be an excellent work to cover, at least in part, in a high school world history class during a WWII unit, and I will likely pick up a copy when it becomes commercially available. Furthermore, the topic itself, Breendonk, is often passed over in surveys of WWII, and the UNO Education library doesn't seem to have a single other book on this camp (though books on other concentration camps abound. I would highly recommend this work be included, when available.