For many children on the Kindertransports, Belgium was just a transit station on their escape route from the German Reich. Due to the decision of the Belgian Ministry of Justice to grant Jewish children from Germany only a temporary residence permit, it was up to the Comité d’Assistance aux Enfants Juifs Réfugiés (Assistance Committee for Jewish Refugee Children, CAEJR) in Brussels and the Œuvre du Grand Air et de la Protection de l’Enfance (Work of the Open Air and of the Protection of Childhood) in Antwerp to enable the children to continue their journey. In cooperation with the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany in London, 75 children were able to emigrate to Great Britain. By May 1940, more than 200 children could move on to other neighbouring European countries, Palestine and overseas – with or without parents.
Flight and repatriation to the German Reich
After the German invasion of Belgium on 10 May 1940, parents left behind in Germany were worried about their children, who were again exposed to National Socialist persecution. In some cases, the parents tried to get their children back from Belgium. Also, under pressure from the German occupation authorities, repatriations began in January 1941 of children living in Belgium to their parents in Germany. At least 52 children were returned to Germany by 1 April 1941. As a result, they ended up trapped. Most of these children were later deported and murdered along with their parents.
Twelve-year-old Max Ansbacher from Würzburg arrived in Brussels on 31 January 1939 with the Kindertransport. In January 1941 he returned to his parents in Würzburg. In September 1942 he was deported together with his mother. He survived the Theresienstadt ghetto, the Auschwitz and the Dachau concentration camps. After emigrating to Palestine, Max, now Mordechai, Ansbacher became the director of the museum department of the national memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem. In 1961, he testified as a witness in the trial of Adolf Eichmann.
Adi Bader from Cologne escaped repatriation to Germany because of the courage of his Belgian foster mother. On 19 June 1942, he and his brother Georg were supposed to arrive at the German Red Cross office in North Brussels station for transportation to Cologne. His foster mother prevented the handover and placed Adi Bader in the care of a children’s home where he was protected from arrest. His father, his stepmother and his half-brother Kurt were deported from Cologne to Malyj Trostenez near Minsk on 20 July 1942 and were murdered there. AS