Bendel Weisz

Bendel Weisz, a Czechoslovakian butcher, emigrated to Belgium in 1928 with his wife, Jenta Junger. The couple settled in Brussels, where their son Georges was born in 1933. The family were living in the Belgian capital at the start of the occupation, in 1940. Hungarian Jews were initially spared from deportation, so Bendel tried to prove in the summer of 1942 that he and his wife were Hungarian nationals. The immigration authorities rejected his application for a change of nationality in August 1942, prompting Bendel to flee to France. He was detained in Pontarlier, a town near the Swiss border, and was interned for a month at the prison in Besançon. Bendel Weisz (36) was deported from the Drancy assembly camp via Transport 45 to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 11 November 1942. He managed to jump from the moving train and went into hiding in Belgium. Bendel, his wife and his young son all survived the war.