Born Jewish by Marcel Liebman

Author:Marcel Liebman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

The inspirational Gert Jospa, centre, a few months after his return from the camps.

Yura Livchitz.

Nevertheless, the transport still went on its way. Though not for long. Around Wespelaere, outside Leuven, the driver saw a man on the track waving a red lamp. It was Yura Livchitz. The locomotive braked and the transport came to a standstill. Immediately, Franklemont and Maistriau made a dash to open the wagons. Their plan was hindered when it turned out that the German guard was not, as they had thought, at the back of the train, but had, alas, been divided, with the first section at the very front, in a position to intervene and upset the whole operation. All in all, a mere five deportees were freed by the three partisans. But before the train had reached Wespelaere, and even after the operation, a much higher number had managed to escape. The statistics speak for themselves: 1,631 people had been put on board at Malines in the makeshift station the Germans had built right outside the Dossin barracks. Of these, 231 jumped off the moving transport and five were freed when the train was intercepted at Wespelaere. The Germans shot down twenty-six fugitives and arrested around ninety more, either immediately after or in the week that followed. Nonetheless, the combined action of resistance from the outside and from within led to more than 100 prisoners being saved. Despite their paltry resources, these men did more to hamper the hellish machine of Nazi genocide than did Great Britain and the United States, who were asked to bomb the railways leading to the gas chambers and found excellent reasons to decline.

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