Youra Livschitz

On 19 April 1943, around 10 p.m., the twentieth deportation train slowly departed from the station in Mechelen. Over 1,600 desperate and frightened people—almost all of them Jews—began a grim and terrifying journey to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. Conditions on board were inhumane: fifty to sixty people crammed into cattle wagons with barely enough space to sit or move, and hardly any food or water.

That same evening, three childhood friends—Youra Livschitz, Robert Maistriau and Jean Franklemon—gathered on Meiser Square in Schaerbeek. Former pupils of the Uccle Atheneum and ex-students of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), they had been shaped by a strong humanist and anti-fascist education. No fewer than seventeen students and teachers from the school would lose their lives in the resistance, eight of them by execution. The recently deceased Andrée Dumon, who played a key role in the Comet escape line, also studied there.

Tension was high—they were about to carry out a seemingly impossible plan. Resistance leader Richard Althenhoff briefly joined them at Meiser Square to hand Youra a revolver, then left. Armed with that revolver, some pliers and a red storm lantern, the trio cycled through Steenokkerzeel and Kampenhout to Boortmeerbeek.

There, they left their bikes and took up position at a curve where the train would slow down. They placed the lantern on the tracks. According to railway rules, a red light meant the train had to stop—and it did. Despite the presence of SS troops, the three managed to force open the seventeenth wagon. In Boortmeerbeek, 17 prisoners jumped from the train, most of whom later took the tram back to Brussels. Further down the line, amid the chaos and confusion, more than 220 others escaped before the train reached the Belgian border—an unprecedented act in Western Europe. Among them was Simon Gronowski, now 93 and still sharing his story. Sadly, 25 people were shot on the spot and 91 were recaptured. Ultimately, 121 people escaped deportation for good.

One month later, Youra Livschitz was arrested by the Gestapo. In a daring escape, he overpowered his guard, put on the man’s uniform, and walked out of Gestapo headquarters as if it were his daily routine. Together with his brother Alexandre, he planned to flee to England. But they were betrayed: their car was stopped. Alexandre was imprisoned and tortured in Fort Breendonk on 12 January 1944, later transferred to Saint-Gilles prison and executed on 10 February in Schaerbeek.

Youra also ended up in the “Hell of Breendonk.” He was imprisoned there from 26 June 1943 until 17 February 1944, when he too was executed, along with five fellow prisoners.

In spring 1944, Rachel Livschitz-Mitchnik read the final letters from her sons Alexandre and Youra. Alexandre wrote he faced death “with head held high and a clear conscience.” Youra told her he had hoped to work by her side in creating a “new reality.” It must have brought her some comfort that their surviving comrades continued to visit her for years—until she passed away at the age of 93.

For decades, the liberation of the twentieth convoy was little more than a footnote in history. Today, it is rightly recognised as one of the most heroic and legendary acts of resistance in Europe. Nowhere else in Western Europe did anyone manage to stop a deportation train—let alone help so many people escape.

Sources:

• Ledenmagazine Helden van het verzet, september 2024
• Marion Schreiber, Rebelles silencieux, Editions Racine, 2002