Around 300 people gathered in Brussels’ Marolles district for a commemorative march marking the mass roundup of Jews carried out there on 3 September 1942. Among those taking part was EJC Director of European Affairs Ariella Woitchik.
Eighty-four years later, residents, relatives, associations and artists came together to remember the victims.
The procession set off from Rue des Renards in the heart of the Marolles, stopping at several Stolpersteine, or ‘stumbling stones’, installed in memory of Jews deported from the neighbourhood during the Second World War and murdered at Auschwitz and other Nazi death and labour camps.
During the night of 3–4 September 1942, around 718 foreign Jews were arrested in the Marolles by the German occupying forces.
The march, entitled Le dit des morts aux vivants (‘The Dead Speak to the Living’), was organised by theatre director Richard Kalisz, actor Sam Touzani and filmmaker Luc Dardenne. Artists read aloud the names of Jewish victims and the dates of their deaths, while music also played a central role in the commemoration.
Among those taking part were several artists, as well as Brussels Mayor Philippe Close and Brussels CPAS President David Weytsman.
The organisers stressed that remembering the roundups and the Holocaust is not the responsibility of any single community, but concerns humanity as a whole.
A future memorial dedicated to the victims of the roundups was unveiled on Rue des Tanneurs. The monument takes the form of a human-sized concrete cube, with a crack running through it to symbolise the historical and human rupture caused by the Holocaust.
Together with the Stolpersteine already installed throughout the neighbourhood, the monument will become a permanent part of the public space, ensuring that future generations remember what happened in the Marolles.
