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The Concentration Camp Clothes of Henri Vanstok

Written by Tom Theis

The featured pictures show the three parts that made up the clothing of a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp: shirt (made of fabric, blue and white stripes, 80x50cm), trousers (made of fabric, blue and white stripes, 94x38cm) and jacket (made of fabric, blue and white stripes, 67x44cm). The items shown here belonged to Henri Vanstok (Weinstock) from Luxembourg, who was of Jewish-Polish descent and was detained as a forced labourer at Auschwitz from 1942 to 1945. The prisoners received these clothes upon arrival at the camp and were forced to wear them all the time. As their only possession, the uniform is a symbol of the prisoners’ loss of identity.

The pictured concentration camp clothes (shirt, trousers and jacket) belonged to Henri Vanstok, who was born into a Jewish family in Poland in 1910. His family moved to Luxembourg in the interwar period, and he settled there and started his own family. In 1939 his daughter was born. As a businessman, Vanstok often travelled to Brussels. It was there that he learned about the proclamation of anti-Jewish laws in Luxembourg in 1940. On 22 July 1942, Vanstok was imprisoned during a raid in the Belgian capital. From the Fort of Breendonk he was deported to Auschwitz, where he was held as a forced labourer from 1942 to 1945. Vanstok himself wrote: “Upon our arrival they [the inmates] told us: “Here you work or you go through the chimney.””[1]

As the front approached the concentration camp, Vanstok was relocated with the other prisoners during a death march to Buchenwald and then by the “death train” to Dachau, where he was finally liberated on 28 April 1945. Vanstok described this experience years later: “Those who couldn’t keep up were shot like dogs […]” and “No one will ever be able to describe what we went through on this journey.”[2]

After the war, Vanstok rejoined his family – who had managed to stay hidden – in Brussels, and they returned together to Luxembourg.

Strong symbolism

Henri Vanstok brought this uniform back to Luxembourg. But why?

In the camps the prisoners were subjected to a form of standardisation through their uniform. Upon their arrival, the prisoners received these clothes and were forced to wear them all the time. They were not only deprived of their freedom and all their possessions, but they also lost their individuality – what distinguishes every person and makes them special. The prisoners were robbed of their personality and their identity was reduced to a number – their only means of identification. Perhaps Vanstok developed a strong attachment to his clothing – after all it was his only possession in the camp, the only thing that still really belonged to him. These clothes were what defined him for years.

The prisoner’s camp number and a triangular-shaped piece of coloured cloth were stitched on the uniform and served as a means of identification. The triangle denoted the prisoner’s “crime” (e.g. political prisoner, homosexual, etc.). Jews wore two yellow triangles which looked like the Star of David. The uniform itself was rarely cleaned or replaced.[3] Since Vanstok’s appears to be comparatively clean and undamaged, and since the identification marks are missing, one might wonder if this was really the uniform he wore in the camp. It is possible that he received a new one before his departure. Nevertheless, this doesn’t make it any less symbolic. The fact that Vanstock kept his uniform might show that he was well aware of the symbolism associated with the uniform. He might have kept it to show that he had lived through a horrendous ordeal and survived, that he was one of the survivors who had endured so much suffering. Maybe he kept the clothes to honour his fellow inmates who had not survived – people who died in that uniform. But it’s also possible that he kept it as a memento, a reminder of a terrible time when various people were robbed of everything and lived through a fate worse than death. The garment is a message to us in the present and to future generations. It exposes the horrors of the past and warns us never to inflict such a fate on anyone again.

In 2016 Henri Vanstok’s daughter Gitty donated her father’s uniform to the Musée national de la Résistance in Esch-sur-Alzette.

Luxembourg and its Jewish population

In the 1930s, immigration of Jews fleeing the policies of the new antisemitic German government – about 1,400 anti-Jewish laws were enacted from 1933 to 1939 – shot up. Within a decade, the Jewish population in Luxembourg almost doubled, notwithstanding numerous expulsions and refusals of asylum applications by the government. Parallel to this rise in migration, even before the German occupation, there was a significant rise in antisemitic tendencies among the Luxembourg population. On 10 May 1940, the day of the German invasion, approximately 3,900 Jews were living in Luxembourg, about 1,000 of whom were of Luxembourg nationality. Following the establishment of the civil administration under Gauleiter Gustav Simon, the social life of the Jewish population declined gradually. Simon’s aim was to declare the country “free of Jews” as fast as possible. On 5 September 1940, the Nuremberg Laws were introduced in Luxembourg. Several anti-Jewish laws followed in the period up to summer 1941. By October 1942, Jews were no longer authorised to emigrate to or from Luxembourg. The same month, deportations began. Many were murdered in gas chambers, but many also died because of the inhumane treatment and conditions to which they were subjected. Several died as a result of illness, weakness, deprivation or abuse, either during transportation or in the camps. Of the 3,900 Jews who lived in Luxembourg in 1940, more than a third were murdered. In 2015, the historian Vincent Artuso concluded that the Luxembourgish authorities participated in this process “with diligence, if not with zeal”.[4]

In numbers[5]

The Jewish population in Luxembourg:

In 1930:

2,242 (0.7% of the total population)

In 1935:

3,144 (1.1% of the total population; only a quarter had Luxembourgish citizenship)

In 1940:

3,907 (of which 1,384 (35.4%) subsequently died as a result of antisemitic persecution)

Number of Jewish people whose asylum applications were refused in 1935:

651 (more than 50%)

 

[1] Extract from Henri Vanstok’s “Ma déportation” (1985), taken from: Collection Madame Gitty Vanstok, Musée national de la Résistance.

[2] Extract from Henri Vanstok’s “Ma déportation” (1985), taken from: Collection Madame Gitty Vanstok, Musée national de la Résistance.

[3] Compare: Rawson, Andrew, Auschwitz. The Nazi Solution, Barnsley 2015, p. 93-5.

[4] Moyse, Laurent, Between Shade and Darkness. Le sort des Juifs du Luxembourg de 1940 à 1945 / Das Schicksal der Juden Luxemburgs von 1940 bis 1945, Luxembourg 42016, p. 97.

[5] Compare: Moyse, Between Shade and Darkness, p. 16-26; Wagener, Renée, Der Umgang mit der Shoah im Nachkriegs-Luxemburg, in: Franz, Norbert [et al.] (ed.), Identitätsbildung und Partizipation im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Luxemburg im europäischen Kontext, 2016 Berlin, p. 219-46, p. 220 ff.

See also

https://www.ushmm.org/ (consulted on: 21.06.2020).

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/death-marches-1 (consulted on: 21.06.2020).

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-camp-system?series=21822 (consulted on: 21.06.2020).

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz (consulted on: 21.06.2020).

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/concentration-camp-system-in-depth (consulted on: 21.06.2020).