Apsel-Szulchan family. Collection

Moses Pinkas alias Maurice Apsel was born in Dolynyany, Poland (today Ukraine), on 11 November 1909 as the son of Markus and Pesie Apsel. In September 1927 Moses obtained the necessary papers to emigrate to Belgium where he was to be employed as a diamond clover by the diamond trading company ‘Apsel, Dattner & Mire’. Moses arrived in Antwerp on 8 May 1928 and temporarily lived at Justitiestraat 22, before finding a permanent residence at Mercatorstraat 54. Moses still lived in Antwerp when Nazi-Germany invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940. He was forced to obey the anti-Jewish decrees, and therefore registered himself in the municipal Jewish register on 19 December 1940. In the Summer of 1942 Moses received an order to present himself at the Antwerp Work Bureau where it was to be determined if he was fit enough to be sent to France to work as a slave labourer on the construction of the Atlantic Wall supervised by German engineering company Organisation Todt. Moses was approved for labour and was ordered to report himself at the Antwerp central train station on 14 July 1942, but instead he went into hiding in Brussels. It is likely that, by Summer 1942, Moses was already acquainted with Fanni Szulchan. Fanni was born in Vienna, Austria, on 30 October 1910 as the daughter of Israel Szulchan and Chaja Richter. She had attended a Handelsschule [trade school] in the Austrian capital before working as an administrative employee for several companies. Shortly after Kristallnacht Fanni fled to Belgium where she hoped to obtain papers to emigrate to the United States where she had relatives. Her widowed mother, Chaja Richter, joined Fanni in Antwerp in January 1939. Fanni and Chaja resided at Isabella Brantstraat 58 in Antwerp, and received financial support from a public welfare organization as they were not allowed to work in Belgium. In December 1940, both women obeyed the first anti-Jewish decree, registering themselves in the municipal Jewish register. On 4 January 1941 Fanni and her Chaja were relocated to Limburg. They lived at Wildekerslaan 49 in Waterschei until 2 April 1941, when they returned to Antwerp. In September 1942 Fanni and her mother Chaja officially moved to Rue Ernest Laude 27 in Schaarbeek, but the women were in fact hidden in the basement of the Tassoul family at Rue du Viaduc 59 in Ixelles. It is likely that Moses Apsel joined them there. On 3 May 1943 Fanny gave birth to a daughter named Paula, and on 6 May 1944 to a second daughter named Renée. On 22 July 1944 the Apsel-Szulchan family received a certificate confirming that they were on the German-Palestinian exchange list and that they were therefore exempted from obeying the anti-Jewish decrees and from deportation. Moses, Fanni, their daughters Paula and Renée, and Fanni’s mother Chaja thus all survived the war. In June 1945 the family returned to Antwerp and settled at Plantin en Moretuslei 132. Moses and Fanni officially married in Antwerp on 25 April 1950. On 22 June 1950 Fanni gave birth to a son named Marcel Jacques Apsel. Moses provided for his family by working as a diamond broker. In 1954 the family obtained Belgian nationality. Moses Apsel passed away in 1995, Fanni Szulchan in 1982.

On 18 October 1994 Marcel Apsel donated two original brochures (T000003) to the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance. On 12 April 1995 he added a photocopied document (A000542), an original document (A000541), several original banknotes (A000540) and an original press clipping (J000300) to his collection. On 8 November 1995 Marcel Apsel also donated a digital copy of a Jewish calendar to the Jewish Museum (A000631), followed by a lot of 41 original books and brochures (T000072 to T000110) on 30 August 1995. On 18 September 2023 Marcel Apsel donated the following items to Kazerne Dossin, successor of the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance: several documents regarding Samuel and Jeanne Birnbaum-Apsel, a letter and postcard written by Mircha Mann and her son Oscar Kirsztein, and a file on financial compensation from Germany (Wiedergutmachung) as requested by Moses Pinkas alias Maurice Apsel, Fanni Szulchan-Apsel and Chaja Richter-Szulchan.

Marcel Apsel, 1994, 1995 and 2023