Joseph Hakker

Joseph Hakker was a Dutch Jew who arrived in Belgium in 1907 when he was only 20.

In Antwerp Joseph Hakker worked as a baker, and secretly tried to get to Switzerland at the end of October 1942. He was asked to pay BEF 45,000 for the journey but then it turned out that his contacts were in the pay of the Currency Protection Kommando. After spending two weeks in Antwerp’s Begijnenstraat prison, he was eventually taken to the Dossin Barracks on 13 November 1942 for Transport 18 of 15 January 1943. The train was made up of third-class passenger carriages. Joseph Hakker managed to lower the window and jumped out of the moving train near Boutersem, just past Leuven. He went into hiding in the Liège area, joined the resistance and published “La mystérieuse Caserne Dossin à Malines” in the Coq Victorieux in July 1943. In September 1944, he published a collection of his clandestinely published articles in a pamphlet of the same name.