The 23rd convoy is a Jewish transport and consist of 662 persons, including 62 children. 5 prisoners managed to escape before the border, one of them has been shot down on the spot. The list of this convoy started on 22 September 1943. Till 10 January 1944, the average number of registrations in Mechelen had dropped to 6 per day.
Convoy Z is not a Jewish but a Gypsy transport, the only one which has left from Belgium. It consist of 351 persons, including 175 children. Unlike the Jews the Gypsies had not special status. For the most part, they were aliens, just like the Jews, but they were nomads and were constantly monitored by the Belgian police. Their movements troughout the country were recorded and they were therefore easy to trace as soon as the occupiers started the action against the gypsies. It started in November 1943: 14 Gypsies were admitted to the Jewish assembly camp in Mechelen on 5 November. Their massive arrest took place at the beginning of December: 173 were registered on 9 December 1943.
The letter Z characterizing the gypsy transport, is not from the abbreviation Gypsy in German language "Zigeuner". Also Jewish concoys who left before convoy Z of 15 January 1944, bore the letter Z. This rather indicated the convoys of the “final solution”, which were not intended for immediate eradication on arrival. In the case of the Jewish convoys, they were Hungarian or Turkish Jews. They were protected for diplomatic reasons and were sent to concentration camps that were not equipped for the “final solution”.
On 13 December 1943, a convoy Z with 132 Turkish Jews left Mechelen: the men to Buchenwald, the women and children to Ravensbrück. More than half of them survived the captivity. On 19 April 1944, another convoy Z with 14 Hungarian Jews left for Bergen Belsen, 4 of them survived the Liberation. Finally, 2 convoys of Jews from the warring countries departed from Mechelen to Vittel in France: 29 people on 23 April 1944 and 43 people on 20 June. The majority of them survived: 26 of the convoy of 23 April and 31 of the convoy of 20 June 1944.
The convoy Z of 15 January 1944 however, was sent to Auschwitz, just like the 23rd Jewish transport. Unlike the previous departures of double convoys, these convoys were not merged before their arrival at their destination. The Gypsies were not “treated” like Jews on arrival at Auschwitz. The 351 deportees from convoy Z, including the children, were all locked up in the concentration camp. Even the little Jacqueline Vadoche, on 34 years old, the younges deportee from Mechelen, received a registration number.
Locked up in the gypsy family camp, the gypsies did not survive the terrible condtions of their existence in the concentration camp. Only 13 survived the Liberation of the camps. Finally, the convoy Z that escaped the selection on arrival, was destroyed just as much as most Jewish convoys. Even worse than the 1944 convoys, whose survival rate is higher than the 3,7% of the gypsy convoy.
The 23rd convoy, which also arrived on 17 January 1944, was subject to immediate eradication and in the same proportion as the other Jewish convoys. 63,9% of the Jewish deportees – 420 people – were killed after their arrival. The 237 people who were admitted and enrolled in the concentration camp would be better able to withstand imprisonment than the gypsies, who arrived on the same day: 97 of them were still alive at the Liberation, a survival rate higher than the previous one, namely 14,8%.
Source: The Memorial of the deportation of the Belgian Jews, pages 33 and 34.