Transport XXII A from Caserne Dossin (Malines-Mechelen), Camp, Belgium to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 20/09/1943

Transport XXIIA from Mechelen to Auschwitz left on September 20, 1943 and comprised 639 deportees (341 men, 298 women, among them 76 children under the age of 15). Like those that preceded it, this transport consisted of Jews who did not have the Belgian citizenship. Hence the designation "A" for Ausländer, the German term for foreign nationals as opposed to transport XXIIB where the "B" indicated that the entire transport was composed of Belgian Jews. It took the SiPo-SD 51 days to complete the deportation list. By spring 1943 most of the Jews in Belgium had gone into hiding. The SiPo-SD therefore abstained from mass raids and relied instead on special arresting squads, consisting of local SD staff members and further detectives who were sent from Berlin, in addition to members of the Flemish SS, and Feldgendarmerie. A host of collaborators were also recruited for this task, specifically bounty hunters who, in 1942, received 100 Belgian francs (BEF) per Jew and 200 BEF in 1943. The Sipo-SD nevertheless found it difficult to provide a constant flow of Jews into the camp. This is also shown by the numbers of daily arrests between the fall of 1942 and summer of 1943. By the end of July they had declined in Brussels from 41 to 14 and in Antwerp from 67 to 2 although just about a third of all Jews in Belgium had been deported so far....