wealthy to downright poor. On 28 October 1940, the Germans made a decree ordering that all Jews aged 15 and older must be registered with the municipality.
An unintended outcome of this registration was that it offered previously unknown census data, revealing the structure of Jewish society that had blossomed in Antwerp and Brussels and, to a lesser extent, in Liège and Charleroi.
The numbers showed a distinctive Polish presence and a high number of Germans, while Belgians only accounted for, at most, 10% of the total population – 55,000 to 60,000 people (the Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst registered 56,000 individuals as of 1941).
The migration background of most Jews in Belgium inspired a key project initiated by the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance (JDMR), a predecessor of Kazerne Dossin. In the early 2000s, Ward Adriaens, director of the JMDR, was able to convince the Minister of Internal Affairs to allow the JMDR access to over 2.7 million immigration files, created by the Belgian Office for Immigration Affairs.
Rejestracja żydowskich kobiet i mężczyzn po otrzymaniu nakazu pracy przymusowej, lipiec 1942.