Henri Sonnenbluck

The list for Transport 23 began to be compiled at the Dossin Barracks on 22 September 1943 and was only completed 112 days later, on 10 January 1944. At that point, 344 men and 315 women were registered. This transport also included a list of individuals who had previously escaped from earlier trains and who were placed under extra surveillance during the journey. During the journey, five people from Transport 23 attempted to escape, but the attempt was unsuccessful. One woman died of gunshot wounds; the other four were recaptured and later deported on another transport.

Among those on board Transport 23 was Henri Sonnenbluck, a sixteen-year-old schoolboy, travelling with his mother Chana. His father, Wolf Sonnenbluck (born 26 July 1895 in Budziwoj), and his mother, Chana Malka Insel (born 26 October 1901 in Kolbuszowa), were Polish Jews who had migrated to Belgium. In 1926, they first solemnised their marriage in a religious ceremony conducted by a rabbi, and one month before the birth of their first son they married under Belgian civil law. Their first son, Henri, was born on 20 February 1927 in Borgerhout, Antwerp. Two years later, the couple had a second son, Mayer (born 25 November 1929 in Borgerhout). The family held Polish nationality and was not strictly religious.

When the German army invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940, the family fled to northern France, but they were arrested and returned to Antwerp. Wolf Sonnenbluck was arrested in June 1942 and deported to Auschwitz on Transport XVI on 31 October 1942, while the rest of the family went into hiding in Hoboken. In November 1943, the family was arrested and taken to Mechelen. Henri would never see his brother again. He was reunited with his mother on Transport 23. During the journey, he attempted to escape by sawing an opening in the cattle car, but fellow prisoners prevented him from doing so out of fear of reprisals by the SS. Upon arrival in Auschwitz, Chana was murdered in the gas chambers. Henri, only sixteen years old, escaped immediate death through forced labour. He was assigned to work in Buna-Monowitz, the third major labour camp of the Auschwitz complex.

As the Allied forces advanced, the Germans decided to evacuate Auschwitz in January 1945. Henri and the other prisoners were forced onto a death march and subsequently imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. He was liberated there in early May 1945 by the United States Army. Despite his severely weakened physical condition, Henri was determined to return to Belgium immediately.

After the war, Henri settled in Brussels, where he worked as a typographer in a printing house. On 26 July 1945, he married Sara Arbuz (born 25 June 1929 in Antwerp), a Belgian of Polish descent. Only in 1948, at the age of twenty-one, was Henri able to begin the procedure to obtain Belgian nationality. He remained in Belgium for the rest of his life, continuing his career first as a contributor to a Belgian communist newspaper and later at a training centre in Brussels. In 1990, he published his testimony in the book J’avais 16 ans à Auschwitz, after which he gave lectures about his experiences. The life story of Henri Sonnenbluck has been preserved for future generations through his published memoirs and through interviews conducted in Brussels in 2005 by Johannes Blum.