Hakker-Wach family. Collection

Simon Hakker was born in Antwerp in 1912, as the son of the Dutch couple Joseph Hakker and Rachel Simons. Like his father, Simon became a pastry chef. The family had a bakery in Provinciestraat in Antwerp. In 1934, Joseph Hakker won a baking competition by creating the "Antwerps Handje", a hand shaped cookie which remains the symbol of Antwerp until this day. Before the war Simon Hakker had already met milliner Phyllis Wach, born in London in 1919. Her parents had met in the United Kingdom : Wolf fled from Antwerp, Peggy had migrated with her family from Lublin to London. In 1925, the family – in the mean time with two daughters Phyllis and Sylvia (born in 1923) - settled in Antwerp. In 1933 Sylvia Wach passed away, suffering from a kidney disease. In 1941, the engaged Simon Hakker and Phyllis Wach fled to France where they were housed by family members in the south. They got married in the main synagogue in Lyon, while Simon’s parents were stuck in occupied Belgium. Rachel Simons, Simon’s mother, would pass away in the Sint-Erasmus hospital in Antwerp on 29 October 1942. Joseph Hakker, Simon's father, was arrested on 30 November 1942 and deported from the Dossin barracks via Transport XVIII on 15 January 1943. However, he was able to escape from the train and went into hiding with the armed resistance in Wallonia. He assisted the Armée de la Libération Clandestine (armed resistance) and wrote a testimony about his captivity at the Dossin barracks. This booklet, “The mysterious Dossin Barracks in Mechlin - The Deportation Camp of the Jews”, would be the first eye witness account of the Mechelen transit camp to be published, only a few weeks after the liberation of Belgium. The father of Phyllis Wach, Wolf "Wolly" Wach, would be arrested during a raid in France and was deported via transport 51 from the Drancy transit camp to Maidanek, where he was killed. His wife Peggy Rosenzweig survived the war. In 1942, Simon Hakker and Phyllis Wach managed to flee to Switzerland. There, Phyllis gave birth to oldest daughter Rachel Hakker in December 1942 and to second daughter Joyce Sylvia in February 1945. Both were born in the Clarence-Territet refugee camp. In the summer of 1945 the family returned to Antwerp, where they were reunited with grandfather Joseph Hakker. The bakery reopened in November 1946. Simon Hakker passed away in 1991, Phyllis Wach in 1996. Both Joyce and her sister Rachel Hakker got married and have children. Joyce Bloch-Hakker still lives in Edegem today.

Joyce Sylvia Bloch-Hakker collected her family photos in albums and added objects related to her family's bakery to the collection. The three table cloths were the only objects from Phyllis's trousseau that were recovered from their neighbour whom had stored the objects, but later on acted as if he never received anything. After contact with dr. Veerle Vanden Daelen, deputy director and curator of Kazerne Dossin, Joyce Bloch-Hakker gave Kazerne Dossin in December 2016 permission to digitize a selection of photos from the family albums. An agreement for a long term loan of the objects was also signed.

Joyce Sylvia Bloch-Hakker, daughter of Simon Hakker and Phyllis Wach