Stolpersteine in Charleroi

Generally, the stumbling blocks are placed in front of the building where the victims had their last self-chosen residence.

This community consisted mainly of poor families from Eastern Europe, who arrived in great despair and were desperately looking for work and survival.

Charleroi was one of four Belgian cities that hosted sizeable groups of Jews, the others being Antwerp in Flanders, Liège in Wallonia and the capital Brussels.

While the mines and industries were mainly looking for blue collar workers, the Jews tried to establish themselves mainly as craftsmen or with small businesses.

Altogether, 26 trains departed from Mechelen, bringing around 25,000 Jews and 350 Roma to extermination camps in the East, mostly to Auschwitz.

Parallel to the deportations, opposition among the general population against the treatment of Jews in Belgium grew.

Although the people did not have reliable information about the Holocaust, they sensed that something terrible was happening and started to hide Jewish men, women and children.

By the end of the occupation, more than 40 percent of all Jews in Belgium were in hiding; many of them were helped by Gentiles, particularly Catholic priests and nuns, others by the organised resistance.

The Comité de Défense des Juifs (CDJ, Jewish Defence Committee) provided food and refuge to Jews in hiding.

In the aftermath of Nazi occupation and WWII, the Jewish community of Charleroi was severely weakened.

It is correct, that on 31 October 1942 two transports left the Mechelen transit camp, generally called Malines.

[12] Kibel's wife Gitla, and daughter Mariette, miraculously survived World War II with the help of two Belgian citizens Renée Bouffioux and Albert Halloy, hiding them, as well an aunt and a cousin of Mariette in the village of Aiseau, about 15 Kilometers east of Charleroi.

[14] In 1999, Mariette reported the death of her father Abram Kibel to Yad Vashem and thereby unveiled the address of her work place in Brussels.

In October 2014, when he took part at the collocation of the Stolpersteine, according to a local newspaper Maurice Wislitski lived in Israel.