Johannes Brans and Bertha Mertens. Collection.

Judith Sylvia Dachinger was born in Gmünden, Austria, in 1937. The following year her parents, Aron Dachinger and Jochwed Rapaport, fled to Belgium. In the fall of 1942, Aron and Jochwed contacted Le Centrale, a Jewish welfare organisation in Antwerp, to hide their daughter Judith Sylvia. She was placed with Johannes Brans and his wife Bertha Mertens, whom learned Judith Sylvia to speak Dutch and whom treated the girl as a member of their own family. Aron Dachinger did not survive deportation from the Dossin barracks via transport I, but Judith Sylvia was reunited with her mother Jochwed Rapaport who had survived the war by hiding in a convent. Judith Sylvia Dachinger and her mother migrated to the United States, but they remained in contact with Johannes Brans and Bertha Mertens until their death in 1975 and 1989. In 2006 Yad Vashem recognised Johannes Brans and Bertha Mertens as Righteous among the Nations.

As the Brans family didn't have any heirs, upon request of Judith Sylvia Dachinger-Kolton, the Israeli embassy handed the certificate of Righteous among the Nations to sir Natan Ramet, founding president of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, predecessor of Kazerne Dossin, in 2006. Judith Sylvia Dachinger-Kolton also provided Kazerne Dossin with other documents which had been given to her by Johannes Brans and Bertha Mertens.

Judith Sylvia Dachinger-Kolton, 2006