Herbert Lustmann

Herbert Lustmann was a Polish student. In 1937 he was granted a student visa on the recommendation of the future Belgian prime minister Camille Huysmans, which enabled him to enrol at the municipal business school in Antwerp. Herbert was in the city when war broke out on 10 May 1940. Along with thousands of other recent immigrants in Antwerp, he had to move to Limburg at the end of the year, on the order of the occupation authority. On 1 July 1941, he was put to work at the Op den Holven labour camp in Overpelt, where two hundred Jewish detainees were made to carry out drainage and land reclamation work. 

The camp was closed in July 1941 and Herbert Lustmann moved to Brussels. In early August 1942 he received an Arbeitseinsatzbefehl – an order to report to the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen for a labour assignment in the east. Rather than comply, he attempted to flee to Switzerland, but was arrested at the village of Pontarlier on the Swiss-French border and interned at Drancy. Herbert Lustmann (19) was deported from the assembly camp on 21 August 1942 via Transport 22 to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Although he was selected for forced labour on arrival, he did not survive deportation. According to the Auschwitz Sterbebücher (death books), Herbert died on 20 October 1942.