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Regina Sluszny, Hidden child in Belgium during the Second World War 23/01/2025 - 19h30 | Conférence apéritif

Baroness Regina Sluszny-Suchowolski
Hidden child in Belgium during the Second World War and Holocaust survivor

« 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz »


After the Holocaust one could have thought that the world brings an end to antisemitism. Yet today we are faced with the highest level of antisemitism after the Shoah.

For many years, Holocaust survivors have contributed to preventing antisemitism, racism and hatred by sharing the testimony of their survival in schools and public events.

On 27 January 1945, the Nazi death camp Auschwitz was liberated by the first Ukrainian Front of the Soviet Army. To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, you are invited to a conversation with Baroness Regina Sluszny, a Holocaust survivor.

In Belgium, out of about 66.000 Jews in the country in May 1940, around 28.000 were murdered during the Holocaust. More than 40 % of Jews in Belgium survived in hiding, 3.000 of them were children. Regina Sluszny is one of them.

Born in Antwerp, September 25, 1939 into an Jewish (Orthodox) family, Regina was a hidden child (from 1942 to 1945) at Charel and Anna Jacobs-Van Dijck’s home in Hemiksem and survived the Holocaust. After the war, she returned to live with her parents, who unlike millions of other European Jews had survived Nazi persecution. She retained close ties with her adoptive family throughout her whole life. In 1960, she married Georges Suchowolski, also a hidden child and they had two children, Roland and Sabine. After her professional career, when she retired in the 1990’s, she started to be fully involved in “Memory” work (WWII/Shoah). She is also the President of the Antwerp-based “Forum der Joodse Organisaties” (FJO), the Jewish umbrella organisation in Flanders.

During this evening, Regina Sluszny, ennobled by the King as a Baroness in 2022, will talk about her survival as a hidden child in Belgium, the bravery of the non-Jewish family that took her in at the risk of their own lives, as well as the challenges for Jewish life in Belgium and Europe today.

The conversation will be moderated by Baroness Katharina von Schnurbein, member of the Club and Coordinator on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life at the European Commission.

The discussion will be in English and in French.


INFOS :
• Welcome: 7 pm; Conference: 7:30 pm; Drink and cocktail: 8:45 pm
• Book sale and signing session after the conference