Alter Kleiman

Holocaust Survival in Antwerp : On Foreign Soil Alter Kleiman

The role of Christians who collaborated with the Jewish underground to assure Jews' survival begs for greater attention. Their informal cooperation emerges as a key element in Holocaust Survival in Antwerp: On Foreign Soil, a memoir of a Jewish Holocaust survivor, translated and with an introduction by Jeffrey Kleiman. Alter Kleiman fled Polish antisemitism in 1926 and settled in Antwerp.

By 1942, life under German rule became unsustainable, so he fled the city and found refuge in the Belgian region of Wallonia where the industrial city of Charleroi offered protection. There, he shared the basement apartment in a boarding house. In this memoir, Kleiman recounts how, despite his fears of betrayal, Christians not only sheltered him but helped him further by directing members of the Jewish underground to this apartment, who were then able to provide cash and food coupons.