Temporary refuge
Marollen and Merksplas

Laja as well had trusted to pass the green border in spring-time 1939 with Rudi, hardly two and a half years old.
In the meantime, there blew a more mild wind in the little kingdom.
The socialists and communists had asserted themselves and the minister of Justice Joseph Pholien was relieved of the promise not to send any more refugees back to Germany for the time being. One has let, even if unofficially, dispense forbearance. The borders remained closed, but who managed it to cross the border, wasn’t rejected any more and could hope for a residence permit. There was one condition: Belgium should remain a country of transit and the intention to emigrate stay conditio sine qua non. But the majority of the refugees wanted to leave Belgium as soon as possible, anyway. From Antwerp, they quested directly to or beyond London to America, Latin America or Australia.
Between 30th April and the middle of July 1939, again three thousand poor Jews passed the Belgian border illegally. At first, they were permitted to stay. The historian Franz Caestecker talks about am ambiguous policy of the Belgians. But as the neighbouring countries France and the Netherlands didn’t deport the refugees over the German border out of so-called humanitarian deliberations, but instead “marooned” them in the neighbouring country Belgium, and the Swiss borders stay closed hermetically anyway, the Belgians did have no other choice. They took in the refugees. Otherwise, they would have had to send them back to Germany since the intense parliamentary debates in the own rows, the Belgian government officers seem to shrink away from it.
Laja Menen surrendered on 31st March 1939, according to his own statement, sent by the Jewish community, the registration office of the town Brussels.
She denounced coming from Stettin, Pölitzerstraße 1 and being engaged to a certain Heinz Hoffmann, a coeval Jew, who had acceded the journey from Stettin to Brussels and had already arrived at Belgium. One believed her, and for the time being she and her little boy were registered as “Vaterlandslose,” political refugee” in the Rue du Dammier 29.
But the agency, namely the bureau Sureté publique, sent a demand to the Brussel police on 27th April, not only wanting more information about Laja Menen, but they also wanted to find out about where Heinz Hoffmann was staying currently and if he eventually was the husband of Laja Menen’s.
In the meantime, Laja had moved into the mediaeval Dambordstraat or Rue du Dammiier – named after the pub “In den Dammbord” – in the middle of the Belgian capital city’s heart, with the little boy. This was her first address to register.
Today there is not one residential house left.
After the war, a parking garage was bulit here.
Only a few months later, on 19th July 1939, Laja moved again, however within the same community, into the Rue Bodegem 74.
In the quarter, not hardly being a stone’s throw away from her apartment, a brisk Jewish life had developed over the twenty years of the last century.





At the foot of the mighty palace of justice, thereabouts in the Marollen, where once a “Breughel” had his atelier and merchants of all Couleur had from time immemorial ballyhooed their goods and still ballyhoo, after the First World War, around 1920, numerous East Jews settled down on the run of “Pogromen” or in search of a better life, and like in their old polish homeland they held down their business, ran little repair shops, performed their craft.
Here in the narrow alleyways of the Belgian capitol affected by a long history, which partly outlasted the storms of the centuries, the plump life brewed.
A Jewish life like in the Huidevetterstraat, in the Zuinigheidsstraat and the
Bloemistenstraat, the Wasserijstraat and the Lenglentierstraat, the Hoogstraat and the Blaesstraat, names hardly pronounceable for foreigners. But who cared?
Here, Jewish greengrocers, bakers, butchers, watchmakers, tailors, shoemakers, leather- and fur fabricators, and aplenty chapmen according to their own gusto were able to do as they liked, as they always wished with all modesty .
Left alone. Amongst oneself. But in spite of everything, connected onto the narrowest with the quarter and its inhabitants. The hectic goings and the Yiddish singsong reminded them of their childhood in Warsaw around the Nalewkistraße. It was music in the ears of Laja. In any case a familiar biotope for the young polish Jew. Bittersweet wistfulness.
In the little streets they lived close-packed, their Yiddish palaver was not to overhears and filled space and air.
They had taken off the traditional costume of the Chassidim long ago, these emigrants.
Fur hats and silken caftans, “Peijes” and wigs weren’t a part of the street imagery over here.
But Laja as well was geared to the western world in the meantime.
The family of her Jewish benefactor Julius Gronemann had exemplified it trough his own life.
Every second shop in the poor Marollen streets, where rents were low and houses were densely packed together was firmly in Jewish hands. Diligent were all of them. But not quick and eager to learn. The business had to work. The children of those emigrants from Poland should at least have a better life sometime. They honoured the Sabbath, celebrated Bar-Mitzvah, Jom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Sukkoth and the Feast of Passover, but besides religion wasn’t important at all. This contradicted the Belgian constituency as in Belgian history books there was no Jewish part. Right before the German fascist propagated their insanity, the land only counted “Belgian people”. There were Belgian Protestants, Catholics, Atheists or Belgian Jews. You belonged to one religion and besides, like everyone else you were “inhabitant of the state of Belgium”. Neither more, nor less.
In 1938 about 4000 Jewish people lived in the Marollen of Brussels. They made up a third of the population of the whole district in town. They felt comfortable and didn’t even think about to leave their district. Not yet.
The connection with Austria came up and the Night of the Broken Glass made the sky over Germany glow.
Driven from fear and totally bereft the German Jews, often called “Jekkes” by the polish Jews, fleet over the green border. Most of them came, filled with desperation to the Brussels Marollen, searched for an accommodation, a humble doss and at least something to eat. They told the astonished people, the diligent merchants, the artisans, the chapmen, the bakers and butchers, who became homelike after all those years about their enormous ordeal.
Who should believe in this? Weren’t there enough illegal radio reports, flyers, disguised letters from
relatives from Poland alike, longest distributed shocking news? They seemed so absurd that they were ignored some time later. One listened to the news though and accepted them technically. But initialising?
No, that news weren’t initialised. That news was just not acceptable for normal people. Not until they were in the countenance with death, the Belgian Jews – or the Jews, who lived in the area a longer time - believed in these scenes of horror. Disastrous. But all too often it was too late now.
But not only the destiny of the spoiled and snobby German Jews, seen through the eyes of the Marollen Jews, unsettled the Belgian community and made the little folk which was on the go beneath the bombastic place of justice think. It was the tragedy of St. Louis, which convulsed the amazing ignorance of the Belgian people and Belgian Jews concerning the concept of cynical Jewish politics of the Nazis. This story went through the whole Belgian press.
Exactly 936 Jewish refugees from Germany had left the harbour of Hamburg on 13th May 1939 on board of the St. Louis, in hope of getting asylum in Cuba and to be saved from the Nazi barbarism. But this journey became an odyssey. Just having arrived in Havana, they found out that the authorisation to land wasn’t accepted by the government. Their visas were declared to be invalid. For days negotiations didn’t lead to any positive results. Finally, merely 29 passengers were permitted an entry.
The next hope of the refugees was America, but the Americans as well stayed bloody-minded. All appeals to the white house remained unanswered. After a stopover off Miami, the St. Louis was heading back home because the shipping company gave the command to sail back to Cuxhafen. The last appeal to Roosevelt – “Mr President, please help the 400 women and children on board.” - remained unanswered.
In the meantime four European states – Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and France – were willing to give asylum to respectively a quarter of the passengers. The odyssey on the ocean had an end on the 17th July 1939 in Antwerp. One part travelled to England. They survived the Holocaust.
Belgium gave asylum to 215 passengers. Anyway they didn’t get a work permit. The helpless people were immediately brought to Merplas. There, a new unknown destiny expected them. Just a year later - after Germany had occupied the Netherlands, Belgian and France – most of them were persecuted again and finally died in German extermination camps.
Already in July 1938 the “Comité d´assistance aux réfugiés juifs” had signed a treaty with the Belgian Attorney General, to adapt the “Weldadigheidskolonieen” in Merkplas and Wortel, idyllic little villages not far from Turnhout and Hoogstraten near the Dutch border, to create a Jewish refugee camp. The ministry should care for the accommodation costs, the accommodation itself and for the supervision. The daily sundry, the employment system and the medical care stayed in charge of the Committee. Until then it was peacetime. But no more for a long time. The ghost of war went around.
Also Heinz Hoffmann, the young motorist from Stettin, who fell in love with Laja Menen, whom she had declared to be her fiancé at her arrival in Brussels at the registration office, has been located in Merkplas since February 1939.
The investigations of the Brussels police already said on 1st May 1939: “Laja M. est fiancée à Hoffmann, Heinz, né en 1915, lieu et date ignorés, que se trouve à Merksplas, Centre des Réfugiés, depuis février dernier.”
Laja M., the fiancée of Heinz Hoffmann, born in 1915, exacter place and date unknown, has already been situated in Merksplas, refugee camp, since February. Hoffmann didn’t come to Belgium with the St. Louis but came over the green border on 5th January 1939 and was brought to Antwerp shortly after this, presumably with the help of some Jewish refugee organisations. There was enough space for over 3000 Jews.
Laja, who had moved again in the meantime, in fact on 7th November 1939 to the Rue Emile Féron 104, didn’t calm down. Without a working permit she and her little son lived from low paid jobs, fearing to get “detected”, to attract attention or to be designated, they were afflicted with hunger and the sorrow to loose their existence. She wasn’t 24 years old yet. But did she have another life than in Stettin and Torgelow? She took this for granted.
In the mid 1940’s, her friend Heinz Hoffmann left Merksplas and moved to Brussels into the Volderstraar, the Rue des Foulons, hardly a stone’s throw away from Laja.
In the middle ages the Walkers lived here, and Heinz, who found an accommodation in the Spoormakersstraat, Rue des Epéronniers, socialised with many Jewish people. But vainly. Heinz, should be one of the first murdered out of the little group surrounding Laja.

On 11th August 1942 he was transported by the second convoy from Mecheln to Auschwitz. He was number 659. About six weeks later, on 30th September 1942, the young and handsome Stettiner with the melancholic look was murdered beastly in the concentration camp. He was 27 years old.
Bernhard, his younger brother, who already was In Dassau from 9th February to 5th March 1938, fled likewise at the end of the year from Stettin to Brussels, where he arrived on Christmas Eve 1938. Thus, two weeks before his older brother Heinz.
Also Bernard came to Merksplas in July 1939. As the Germans invaded Belgium, he fled to France head over heals. But vainly. Again, he fell into the hands of the hangmen. Finally, he was deported to Auschwitz on 2nd September 1942. So, he arrived shortly after his brother Heinz. The escape didn’t bring anything about. It’s questionable that the two brothers have met again in Auschwitz. What happened to Bernard after the deportation is unknown as well. His destiny is not on records. But he as well will surely not have survived hell.

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