Archives
Extent and Medium
The archive collection of CEGESOMA consists of 1356 meters of paper records, 165 filing card boxes and 4675 microfilms from the period 1914-2000.
Scope and Content
The collection includes personal archives, archives of private organisations, of collaborators and collaborationist movements, of resistance fighters and resistance organisations, of official institutions and services that existed only between 1939 and 1946 (based under the terms of an agreement with the General State Archives) and of microfilms and photocopies of foreign archival collections. Some archive collections are already accessible online. The collection allows researchers to explore a variety of subjects, in the first place on the Second World War: the policies of the Occupation authorities, the Resistance, the collaboration, the policies of the Belgian authorities, the persecution of the Jews, the Belgian government in London. The post-war period also offers a wide range of research possibilities, mostly on war-related phenomena such as the Liberation, the post-war purges, post-war policies, the repatriation from Germany, the representations of the war in the media. On socio-political questions such as the extreme-right, human rights, the peace movement and third world policies ample material is available.
Three types of archival collections have a specific character. Databases have been created on a specific theme, often with research scopes, such as the surveys carried out by the Centre on subjects such as “the Church” and “Forced Labour” and the archives compiled for the broadcasts by the RTBF and the BRT (respectively Francophone and Flemish television) about Belgium during the Second World War.
System of Arrangement
There are 17 archive sub-sections of equivalent archive creators:
- Archives et documents des autorités alliées se trouvant en Belgique et responsables pour la Belgique pendant la libération et l'immédiat après guerre et des armées alliées
- Archives et documents d'institutions et organisations officielles (à l'exclusion des institutions qui fonctionnaient à Londres entre 1940 et 1944)
- Archives et documents de partis, mouvements et groupes politiques
- Organisations d'utilité publique, organisations privées et organisations patriotiques
- Archives et documents émanant de syndicats belges, y compris ceux liés à la clandestinité et à la Collaboration
- Archives et documents de l'Armée belge (à l'exclusion de la Grande-Bretagne)
- Archives et documents de et concernant les mouvements de jeunesse
- Archives et documents de formations de collaboration militaire
- Archives et documents de et concernant les prisonniers de guerre
- Archives et documents de et concernant les institutions belges et les Belges en Grande-Bretagne et en France
- Archives et documents du gouvernement militaire allemand, d'institutions allemandes civiles et concernant la Wehrmacht
- Archives et documents en provenance de et concernant les organisations belges de Résistance
- Archives et documents de et concernant les services de renseignement et d'action
- Archives et documents de et concernant entreprises et institutions financières belges, principalement sous l'Occupation
- Collections de documents, fonds de recherche et enquêtes
- Séries et documents d'archives étrangers concernant la Belgique, des pays étrangers (à l'exception de l'Allemagne) et archives d' organisations et tribunaux internationaux
- Archives personnelles
Finding Aids
The Pallas catalogue provides an inventory of all of the archive collections listed by the title of each collection. It is also possible to use the online catalogue to identify individual documents in the most important collections.
Archivist Note
Group collection to add all archival descriptions for CEGESOMA.
Rules and Conventions
EHRI Guidelines for Description v.1.0