“Dat ik niet bepaald wist dat het verlenen van hulp aan joden weerstand was”: onderduikhulp in de stad Antwerpen tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (1940-1944)

Providing assistance to those in hiding is an understudied type of resistance in Belgian Second World War historiography, which usually focuses on organized, armed resistance. Usually an unarmed and domestic form of resistance, providing assistance to those in hiding was performed more commonly by women and older people and in smaller, unconnected resistance networks. As resistance studies focus on an institutional perspective, Those providing assistance to Jews in hiding and certainly female resisters, often active outside of established resistance groups, have tended to be left out of the picture. By examining personal recognition files of civil resistance from a bottom-up approach, however, this study brings them to light. Moreover, thanks to its social, individual approach, this study also discovered ‘Groep H’, a resistance network centered around Antwerp city’s municipal services and specialized in helping people hide. The actual numbers of those providing assistance to Jews in hidingmay be higher, even in a ‘collaborationist’ city like Antwerp, as many family and peer hiding networks were established, but not all members realized they were engaged in resistance activities and many did not submit applications to be recognized as part of the resistance. In the context of hiding, there is a fine line between help and resistance. The fact that Those providing assistance to Jews in hiding in Antwerp were severely prosecuted by the German occupiers, however, indicates that providing assistance was indeed a form of resistance in its own right. Therefore, it is important to study it as such..