page_title: Attack on the twentieth convoy
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Attack on the twentieth convoy / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Op 19 april 1943 brengen Youra Livschitz, Robert Maistriau en Jean Franklemon in Boortmeerbeek Transport XX tot stilstand. Ze slagen erin om 17 gedeporteerden te bevrijden. Bij deze gewapende aanslag gebruiken ze een revolver en lantaarn van het type dat u hier ziet. (Kazerne Dossin)English: Items used by Youra Livschitz, Robert Maistriau and Jean Franklemon in their attack on the 20th rail transport during the Holocaust in Belgium This is a file created at the museum: Kazerne Dossin Memorial in Mechelen
context_page_description: On 19 April 1943, members of the Belgian Resistance stopped a Holocaust train and freed a number of Jews who were being transported to Auschwitz concentration camp from Mechelen transit camp in Belgium, on the twentieth convoy from the camp. In the aftermath of the attack, a number of others were able to jump from the train too. In all, 233 people managed to escape, of whom 118 ultimately survived. The remainder were either killed during the escape or were recaptured soon afterwards. The attack was unusual as an attempt by the resistance to free Jewish deportees and marks the only "mass breakout" by deportees on a Holocaust train.
context_section_description: The attack was unusual as an attempt by the resistance to free Jewish deportees and marks the only "mass breakout" by deportees.
  The twentieth convoy was an exceptionally large convoy and was the first transport to use freight cars with doors fenced with barbed-wire. The previous transports used 3rd class wagons on which it was easy to escape through the windows. After the twentieth convoy, each convoy was reinforced with a German reserve company (based in Brussels) until it reached the German border.
  The three resistance members who executed the raid met the following fates:
  Youra Livchitz (1917-1944): a month after the raid on the convoy Livchitz was arrested by the Gestapo. He managed to overpower his guard, put on his uniform and escape from Gestapo headquarters in Brussels. On June 26, 1943 Youra Livchitz and his brother Alexander were stopped by the Feldgendarmerie. In their car weapons were found and they were arrested. On February 17, 1944 Youra Livchitz was executed by firing squad in Schaarbeek.
  Jean Franklemon (1917-1977): after the raid on the convoy Franklemon was arrested on August 4, 1943 and imprisoned at Fort Breendonk. On March 14, 1944 a German court-martial sentenced him to six years imprisonment. In April 1944 he was transported to Sonnenburg concentration camp as a Nacht und Nebel prisoner. In November 1944 he was moved to Sachsenhausen. After the liberation, Franklemon remained in Germany where he died in 1977.
  Robert Maistriau (1921-2008): after the raid on the convoy, Maistriau fled to the Ardennes forest, where he hid with the partisans for seven months. He took part in La Grand Coupure, a resistance action which on January 15, 1944 destroyed 20 electricity pylons. On March 20, 1944 Maistriau was arrested by the Sicherheitspolizei. He was held at Fort Breendonk before being transported to Buchenwald. After further periods in concentration camps near Harzungen (a subcamp of Mittelbau-Dora) and Elrich, he was moved to Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated on April 15, 1945. He moved to the Belgian Congo in 1949. He died in 2008 in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert.
  In remembrance of the action of the resistance, a statue was inaugurated in 1993 near the train station of Boortmeerbeek. It remembers the Holocaust and the transport of 25,483 Jews and 351 Roma over the railway track Mechelen-Leuven to the concentration camps.
caption: Items used during the attack, now in the collection of the Kazerne Dossin Museum in Belgium
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