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The Kotas – Kacai family were deported on a different transport from the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen to Auschwitz-Birkenau. No one survived.
Kotas – Kacai was a large family consisting of father Motelis Kotas, mother Keile Kacai and their three daughters Hoda, Ida and Eva. Motelis Kotas was born in Kaunas, a city in Lithuania, on June 28, 1901. Keile Kacai was born in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, on April 15, 1903. They married in Kaunas on August 28, 1924. A year later, on January 30, their first daughter Hoda was born in the same city. Another year later, on September 17, 1926, their second daughter Ida was also born there.
Motelis’ parents both lived in Lithuania. Keile’s parents lived in Antwerp. In 1928 Keile received a message from her father Morduch that he was seriously ill and wanted to see her. A doctor’s bill from Doctor Toutkowsky, who lived in Antwerp, confirmed Morduch’s terrible physical condition. For that reason, the Kotas-Kacai family applied for an indefinite visa in Lithuania to go to Belgium. That application was denied, but a fifteen-day visa was granted to Motelis, who began to work for his father-in-law as a tailor. Motelis arrived in Belgium in December 1928 and went to live and work with his parents-in-law at Borgerhoutsestraat 4 in Antwerp. At that time, Keile did not obtain a visa until February 1929. Keile then moved with daughters Hoda and Ida to Borgerhoutsestraat 4.
Shortly after, the whole family moved to Provinciestraat 132. At this address they lived for two years. Meanwhile they had a third daughter, Eva, who was born on January 5, 1931 in Antwerp. At the end of that month the family moved to Bleekhofstraat 66 in Borgerhout and later to Congresstraat 6 in Antwerp. In May 1940 Nazi Germany invaded Belgium. The Kotas-Kacai family obeyed the anti-Jewish laws of the occupation authorities. At the end of 1940 they registered in the municipal Register of Jews, and in 1942 they all became members of the Jewish Association.
Keile, Hoda and Ida accepted the Arbeitseinsatzbefehl, the employment order issued by the Sipo-SD, in late August 1942. As “obligated workers,” they were summoned to the assembly camp in Mechelen and then deported. They were placed on transport VI that departed from the Dossin Barracks with destination Auschwitz-Birkenau. In total, 823 of the 1,000 Jews on this transport obeyed the Arbeitseinsatzbefehl. The number of people reporting at that time of the raids is remarkably high. Transport VI left on August 29, 1942 and was the first transport to stop, on August 31, in Kosel, about 100 kilometers before Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, Keile and her two daughters traveled on to Auschwitz-Birkenau where they were murdered.
The youngest daughter, Eva Kotas, was placed in the Jewish orphanage in Lange Leemstraat in Antwerp when her mother and sisters left. The Germans held a raid there on October 9, 1942. All children from the home were deported with transport XIII. Transport XIII left the Dossin Barracks together with transport XII on October 10, 1942. Thus, they formed one train with 1681 deportees. It was the last transport from Mechelen to stop in Kosel. Eva, like her two sisters and mother, was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Father Motelis Kotas, the last of the family, was already sent in June 1942 as a forced laborer to the construction sites of the Organisation Todt in France just like 2,251 other Jewish men from Belgium. From October 27 to 31, 1942, an SS detachment from the assembly camp in Mechelen went to the labor camps in northern France. Passing by every building site, they added workers to the deportation lists of transport XVI and XVII. 229 of the men – one in five – jumped off the train on Belgian soil. Most of the escapees managed not to be caught again. One hundred fell a second time into the hands of the Germans and 94 of them were deported again. Motelis Kotas did not survive.
Publication info:
ADRIAENS Ward, STEINBERG Maxime (et al.), Mecheln-Auschwitz, 1942-1944. The destruction of Jews and gypsies from Belgium, 4 volumes (volume 1), Brussels, 2009.
