Van Beylen-Beirnaert family. Collection

Frieda Beirnaert was born in 1926. As of September 1940, she attended the “school voor handel en administratie” [school of commerce and administration] at Durletstraat 8 in Antwerp, Belgium. Frieda befriended her Jewish classmate Rebecca Weinstein (born on 14 June 1926 in Antwerp, Belgium) during her first year at the school (1940-1941) and Jewish classmates Rosa Seewald (born on 17 December 1926 in Krakow, Poland) and Miriam (Maria) Hauser (born on 3 August 1926 in Antwerp, Belgium) during her second year at the school (1941-1942). In July 1942, Rosa and Miriam signed Frieda’s poetry album. All three of Frieda Beirnaert’s Jewish friends would be killed during the Holocaust. Both Miriam Hauser and Rosa Seewald were deported from the Dossin barracks to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport II on 11 August 1942, not even a month after they wrote their messages of hope in Frieda Beirnaert’s poetry album. Rebecca Weinstein was arrested in 1943 and was killed after deportation from the Dossin barracks to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport XXIIB on 20 September 1943. Frieda Beirnaert survived the war and continued to use her poetry album. It was signed by several British soldiers she encountered after Liberation. On 10 September 1949, Frieda Beirnaert married Jules Van Beylen. Upon the occasion, Frieda received a tablecloth from misses Huyskens, who was the mother of Ivonne Huyskens, the wife of Frieda’s half-brother Karel Selis. During the war Misses Huyskens was a concierge at the apartment building at Steenbokstraat 28 in Antwerp, where a lot of Jewish families lived. One of these families gave misses Huyskens a tablecloth for safekeeping before their deportation. However, the family never returned and misses Huyskens gave the tableware to Frieda as a wedding gift in 1949. Jules Van Beylen asked his wife not to use it out of respect for the deported Jewish family, so they never did. Jules passed away in 2000, Frieda in 2021. Contact Kazerne Dossin Documentation Centre: archives@kazernedossin.eu This collection contains : the poetry album of Frieda Beirnaert with drawings created by her Jewish classmates Rosa Seewald and Miriam (Maria) Hauser in 1942, as well as autographs of several British soldiers who signed the album after Liberation ; a table cloth given by a Jewish family to concierge misses Huyskens for safekeeping during the war, who presented it to Frieda Beirnaert as a wedding gift in 1949 ; a post-war newspaper clipping regarding the city of Antwerp and the persecution of its Jewish population ; a book entitled “Antwerpen”, which was owned by Frieda’s uncle Marcel Beirnaert and which promoted the port city among German soldiers ; two magazines dedicated to the 1936 Olympic Games ; a copy of the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung “Sonderheft zur 700-Jahrfeier der Reichshauptstadt”, 1937.