The Kazerne Dossin, a former casern in Mechelen, Flanders, Belgium, was partially renovated for civil housing and, upon the Flemish Government, the Province of Antwerp and the City of Mechelen's financing the purchase of the ground floor and the basement of the right wing, in 1996 these became the site of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance. It was renamed Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights for it is being expanded. The former casern part will be a memorial. It was there that the Nazis established SS-Sammellager Mecheln, a collection camp run by the Schutzstaffel from where between 1942 and 1944, 24,916 Jews and 351 Gypsies were transported to the Holocaust camps in the east. Two thirds were gassed upon arrival. By the time of the liberation, only 1,221 people survived.
The temporarily closed Jewish Museum covered the following aspects of the Final Solution in Belgium and Europe:
In 2001, the Flemish Government decided to expand the site by a new museum complex opposite the old barracks. It is expected to reopen its doors in Autumn 2012 and its website (in July 2011) already carries the new name in full: Kazerne Dossin – Memorial, Museum and Documentation Centre on Holocaust and Human Rights.
The Porajmos