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Leib Brener, also known as Leon, was born on 28 October 1892 in the Polish village of Kolo. He became a shoemaker and emigrated to Belgium in July 1920. After spending a few weeks in Antwerp, Leon settled in October in Transvaalstraat, Anderlecht. In November 1920, his fiancée Laja Cymerman joined him there. They married in a religious ceremony, and their first daughter, Rachel, was born on 18 September 1921 in Brussels. On 28 February 1923, Leon and Laja formalized their marriage at Anderlecht Town Hall, and with the birth of their second daughter, Dora, on 18 June 1924, the family was complete.
The Brener family faced many hardships. Leon struggled to find work and provide for his family, while Laja suffered from an eye disease that required long-term treatment. This prevented her from working or earning extra income, as many other homemakers did, for example by altering clothes. The family moved frequently, though always within the Brussels area.
It is unclear how the Breners ended up in northern France. They may have left Belgium as early as the late 1930s, but most likely they fled in May 1940 and did not return to Brussels after its surrender. Little is known about their lives in northern France: Leon and Rachel may have worked in agriculture, while Dora helped run the household as Laja became almost completely blind.
During the night of 11 September 1942, the Nazis carried out a large-scale raid in northern France, targeting Jews in Lille, Lens, and Douai. Leon and his daughters Rachel and Dora were arrested in Lens. Their names appeared as numbers 168, 169, and 170 on the deportation list for Transport X. It is unknown how Laja escaped arrest. Transport X left Mechelen on 15 September 1942 and arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau on 17 September 1942. Rachel and Dora Brener were immediately killed upon arrival, while Leon was selected for forced labor. His number, 64105, was tattooed on his arm, but he did not survive the war.
Laja Brener returned to Brussels in September 1944. In February 1945, she applied to the Belgian government for a passport to travel to France in search of her husband and daughters. She continued her search for years, repeatedly petitioning the authorities until 1953. Laja Brener passed away in 1971.
In 2023, Jo Peeters, curator of the House of the Belgian-French Resistance, entrusted the Calixte Vandevelde collection to Kazerne Dossin. The collection includes about thirty objects, found in the Dossin Barracks in September 1944 by Jo’s grandfather Calixte, who worked there repairing telephone and telegraph lines. In a corner of a storage room next to the rear exit of the barracks, Calixte found a broken pocket watch containing a piece of fabric with illegible text. Using advanced scanning techniques, Jo Peeters was able to decipher some Yiddish words: “In memory of Brener and children”. The identity of the person who left the message remains unknown.
