Research by Nico Hamme on the Chateau de Bassines and the children hidden there. Collection

Nico Hamme was born in Amsterdam in 1925 as the son of the Dutch-Jewish couple Manuel Hamme and Roosje Koekoek. On 11 June 1941, older brother John was arrested and deported to Mauthausen, where he perished. In July 1942, the remaining members of the Hamme family illegally crossed the Dutch-Belgian border : father Manuel, mother Roosje, son Nico and daughter Hanneke (born in 1933). Their acquaintance Maurice (Maurits) Bolle, a Jewish Dutchman from The Hague who was living in Brussels and who played a leading role in the resistance, first placed the Hamme family in a small hotel in the woods surrounding Brussels, near the village of Gistoux. After the summer holidays, Nico and Hanneke took the fake name Hamoir and were sent to a boarding school in the Chateau de Bassines near Méan, which was led by Eugène Cougnet. He housed about 60 boys and girls of whom 40 were hidden Jewish child. The staff also consisted of employees and people who were in hiding. In December 1942, Hanneke Hamme was placed with the Meddens family in Brussels since she could not get used to the French language in the chateau. In October 1943, Maurice Bolle transferred the Hamme parents from their villa in Uccle, Brussels, to a new safe house, where Hanneke and Nico joined them on 15 October, only a few days before the Chateau de Bassines was raided by the Nazis on 25 October 1943. Eugene Cougnet was arrested and did not survive deportation. The Hamme family did survive in hiding and returned to Amsterdam in late 1945. After the war, Nico Hamme strived to contact the other children hidden from the Chateau de Bassines. He corresponded with several of them and strived to commemorate Eugene Cougnet. In 1983, Eugene Cougnet posthumously received the title of Righteous among the Nations. Nico Hamme passed away in 2016.

The files in this collection were compiled by Nico Hamme in his search for fellow-hidden children who had lived at the Chateau de Bassines, near Méan, in the Belgian Ardennes. The files were entrusted to Kazerne Dossin by Nico Hamme in the course of several years.

Nico Hamme, 2013