The Wekselman family

Moise Wekselman was a Polish Jew and arrived in Belgium in 1919, just after the First World War. Malka Altman left Poland in 1922 and settled in Antwerp, where their children were born: Juliette in 1927 and Alice in 1930.

Moise Wekselman was sent to work as a forced labourer on the Atlantic Wall sites in Northern France. On 31 October 1942, he was sent to Mechelen together with 1,229 other forced labourers. The transport which took him there stopped at Muizen station, where the numbers were made up with prisoners from the Dossin Barracks. He disappeared without trace upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 3 November 1942.

His wife, Malka Altman, and their two daughters, Juliette and Alice, went into hiding in the Liège area. They were sheltered by Marguerite Lambrecht in her home in Grivegnée. Because they went underground, they were able to escape deportation. Juliette, 17, and Alice, 15, became orphans of the Shoah.