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 in connection with the museum, formed part of an exhibition on the role of Belgian railways during World War II and was attended by more than 180 students.
Simon Gronowski, a 94-year-old lawyer, recalled a morning in March 1943 in Antwerp when Gestapo agents came for his family. He described being loaded onto a train bound for Auschwitz on April 19, 1943, and how, with his mother’s help, he managed to escape.
“It’s breakfast time. The bell rings, the three of us look at each other, my sister is in front of me. My mother is on my right. We were paralyzed. All our plans to escape through the back garden were in vain,” he said. He later recounted: “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 could not follow; they were later murdered at Auschwitz.
Gronowski reflected on the scale and variety of Nazi victims: “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 whose family collaborated with the Nazis. “I was born into an extreme Nazi environment. As a result, my two brothers, who were 10 years older than me, went into the SS. And my father was a camp chief in France,” he said, tears in his eyes. Tinel was six when the Holocaust began. He later broke with his family and devoted much of his art and writing to bearing witness and explaining the gravity of what happened.
Tinel and Gronowski have been friends for more than 14 years. Tinel said that on first meeting, after reading Gronowski’s story, he cried and apologized. Gronowski replied, “The children of the Nazis are not guilty.”
The exhibition centers on the Belgian railway system. During the German occupation, trains were used as instruments of deportation — their organization, the materials supplied and the personnel involved creating an efficient apparatus that raises difficult questions about collaboration and responsibility.
After the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, the Wehrmacht Verkehrsdirektion (WVD) took control of the Belgian railway network and assumed parts of management in the National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS/SNCB). German administrators ran central workshops, while the SNCB supplied substantial raw materials and food for both civilians and the occupying forces.
“Nico Wouters, historian and director of the Study and Documentation Centre for War and Contemporary Society at Belgium’s state archives in Brussels, explained the SNCB initially cooperated because it was legally obliged to do so under wartime and Belgian law, which required cooperation with an occupier in the interest of the population,” the exhibition notes state. Over time, the WVD regarded the SNCB effectively as an executive department of the Reichsbahn. From early 1941, the Belgian company operated all railway traffic with its own rolling stock and personnel on behalf of the occupying forces.
“The deportations were carried out by Belgian personnel up to the German border, under the armed supervision of German guards,” Wouters said. According to an SNCB report, between 1941 and 1944 the Belgian national railway assisted in deporting approximately 189,542 Belgian forced laborers, 25,490 Jews, 16,081 political prisoners and 353 Roma to Germany and to concentration and extermination camps in the east.
Trains traveled routes starting from Mechelen in northern Belgium and passing through towns such as Leuven, Boutersem, Liège-Guillemins, Verviers and Astenet before heading toward Aachen in Germany; routes could vary. Payments for transports were managed by the Mitteleuropäisches Reisebüro, a state-controlled agency that handled pro-regime tourism while providing logistical and financial infrastructure for deportations. Payments rose sharply between 1941 and 1942, then declined through 1944.
The form of transport also changed. Of 28 transports of Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the first 19 used third-class passenger carriages — with benches, windows and steps — which outwardly resembled normal compartments even as conditions were brutal. After multiple escapes, authorities switched on April 19, 1943 — the day of Gronowski’s transport — to sealed freight cars to prevent further attempts to get out.
At the Train World event both men condemned the far right and urged the students to educate themselves before voting so past mistakes are not repeated. Gronowski emphasized his personal stance against hatred: “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, urging young people to protect their hearts. “Because hatred is bound to turn people against each other.” Edited by: Rob Mudge