Of Belgium’s 70,000 Jew­ish inhab­i­tants, only 4,000 were Bel­gian cit­i­zens. The rest were refugees. Bel­gium had been where the Jew­ish agen­cies estab­lished their safe camps for refugee chil­dren and oth­er refugee aid offices — until the Nazis invad­ed and they tried to flee to France. Bel­gium was a coun­try with a huge resis­tance move­ment, but also a home­grown Nazi par­ty. Fort Breen­donk was built dur­ing World War I, and orig­i­nal­ly used to defend Bel­gium from the Ger­mans. It became a Ger­man fort in World War II and even­tu­al­ly would be known for its bru­tal Ger­man guards at their most sadis­tic. The inmates were nev­er told why they were arrest­ed, but all Jews were kept togeth­er until deport­ed to con­cen­tra­tion camps — if they were still alive. Only half of them did as the guards grew more and more per­vert­ed and evil over the years and the food more sparse. Pris­on­ers were sim­ply locked up and kept uncer­tain about what would hap­pen next.

An album of Nazi evil, this is a well-illus­trat­ed book with pho­tos and draw­ings and sto­ries of many inmates from the start of their incar­cer­a­tion to its end. One pris­on­er, after hav­ing spent so much time in Breen­donk, was relieved to reach Buchen­wald. Some pris­on­ers were brave and noble; oth­ers were piti­ful and suf­fer­ing, but among them was one man, a Jew named Wal­ter Obler, who as a guard, a Zugführer, devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for extreme cru­el­ty. He was pun­ished along with the Nazis at the end of the war. This is a plain-spo­ken, well described and doc­u­ment­ed nar­ra­tive with plen­ti­ful pho­tographs and maps, includ­ing por­trait sketch­es by a pris­on­er, Jacques Ochs. 

Rec­om­mend­ed for ages 14 and up.