The Potaszewicz family

Szmul Potaszewicz, a Polish Jew, arrived in Belgium in 1923. Marie Zawadzka joined him a year later. In 1925, their daughter, Juliette, was born in Charleroi.

Szmul Potaszewicz worked in the steel industry while his wife worked as a shopkeeper. Despite his occupation, he did not escape from being sent as a forced labourer to the North of France. His name was put down for Transport 16 on 31 July 1942 and he was brought to Mechelen with 1,229 other forced labourers. Informed of the imminent return of her husband by the AJB and invited to join him, Marie Zawadzka went to the assembly camp at Mechelen. Her name was entered on same transport list, but with 500 numbers between them it is unlikely that they travelled in the same carriage. Both disappeared without a trace upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the circumstances of their deaths are unknown. When they got off the transport, Szmul was 41 and Marie, 39, which meant they could have been chosen for work, especially as “only” 54% of the people on board this transport (forced labourers) were executed immediately, well under the average for the transports from Mechelen.

Their daughter, Juliette Potaszewicz, went into hiding in Jumet, the place where the Charleroi CDJ had its base. In the spring of 1943, Juliette became the courier for Pinkus Broder, cover name Pierre, who forged identity cards for the CDJ in his workshop. On 12 April 1944, at the age of 19, she was arrested in a park in Namur in the company of a certain Charles Gilbert. This was the official identity of Max, who in reality was called Israël Katz, and it was as Charles Gilbert that he was sent to a concentration camp . He was the person who maintained contacts with the local authorities, where resistance sympathizers supplied him with replacement identities. Juliette stayed a month and a half in prison before being taken to the Dossin Barracks on 30 June. She was put down for Transport 26, which left on 31 July 1944, and was the last transport to leave Belgium. Upon arrival she was considered fit for work in the camp. She was given women’s registration number 24,114 and interned in Auschwitz. On 27 October, she was transferred to Dachau, where she was allocated to the Kaufering Kommando. It was during the evacuation of this Kommando that the American army liberated her on 1 May 1945. She was repatriated to Belgium on 30 May 1945.