In a hall at Brussels’ Train World museum two elderly men stood side by side — one a Holocaust survivor, the other the son of a Nazi collaborator. The event, organized by the German Embassy and the museum, was part of an exhibition examining the Belgian railways’ role in World War II and drew more than 180 students.
Simon Gronowski, a 94-year-old lawyer, recalled the morning in March 1943 when Gestapo agents came to his family home in Antwerp. He described being loaded on a train bound for Auschwitz on April 19, 1943, and how, with his mother’s help, he escaped. He remembered the paralysis of that moment and his mother lowering him from the carriage: “My legs were dangling in the air. Then she lowered me gently until my feet were on the edge of the carriage. My mother was holding me by my clothes when the train slowed down a bit. She pushed me out of the wagon.” His mother and sister were unable to follow and were later murdered at Auschwitz.
Gronowski also reflected on the broader scale of Nazi persecution, urging people to recognize the magnitude of suffering even amid debates over numbers: “Some people argue about figures. All I’m saying is, let’s accept for a moment that he didn’t kill 6 million people, but only 1 million — in both cases the pain is extraordinary. Hitler also killed his own people, the disabled, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and others. All were victims.”
Standing with him was Koenraad Tinel, 92, a sculptor and cartoonist born into a family that collaborated with the Nazis. “I was born into an extreme Nazi environment,” he said, noting that two older brothers joined the SS and his father served as a camp chief in France. Tinel was six when the Nazi persecutions began; he later broke with his family and used much of his art and writing to confront and explain what had happened.
Tinel and Gronowski have been friends for more than 14 years. When they first met, Tinel said he read Gronowski’s story, cried and apologized; Gronowski responded, “The children of the Nazis are not guilty.”
The exhibition focuses on the Belgian railway system and the practical role it played under occupation. After the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, the Wehrmacht Verkehrsdirektion (WVD) took control of the Belgian rail network and assumed parts of management in the National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS/SNCB). German administrators operated central workshops while the SNCB supplied raw materials and food for civilians and occupying forces.
Historian Nico Wouters, director of the Study and Documentation Centre for War and Contemporary Society at Belgium’s state archives, explains that the SNCB initially cooperated in part because Belgian law and wartime regulations required cooperation with occupying authorities in the interest of the population. Over time, the WVD treated the SNCB effectively as an executive arm of the Reichsbahn; by early 1941 the Belgian company was operating all railway traffic with its own rolling stock and personnel on behalf of the occupiers.
Deportations were carried out by Belgian personnel up to the German border, under the armed supervision of German guards. According to an SNCB report, between 1941 and 1944 Belgian railways assisted in deporting approximately 189,542 forced laborers, 25,490 Jews, 16,081 political prisoners and 353 Roma to Germany and to concentration and extermination camps in the east.
Typical routes began at Mechelen in northern Belgium and passed through towns such as Leuven, Boutersem, Liège-Guillemins, Verviers and Astenet before heading toward Aachen; routes could vary. Financial and logistical arrangements for transports were handled by the Mitteleuropäisches Reisebüro, a state-controlled agency that also managed pro-regime travel; payments for transports rose sharply between 1941 and 1942 and then declined through 1944.
The type of carriages used changed over time. Of 28 transports of Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the first 19 used third-class passenger carriages — benches, windows and steps that outwardly resembled normal compartments even as conditions inside were brutal. After multiple escapes, authorities switched on April 19, 1943 — the day of Gronowski’s transport — to sealed freight cars designed to prevent further attempts to flee.
At the Train World event both men condemned the far right and urged the students to learn the history before voting so that past mistakes are not repeated. Gronowski stressed his personal refusal to give in to hate: “Despite everything I’ve never felt hatred. I’ve never been angry. Hate wouldn’t have brought my mother and sister back to me,” he said, asking young people to guard their hearts because “hatred is bound to turn people against each other.”