Icek Glogowski

Icek Glogowski
Nationality	Belgian of Polish origin
Other names	Gros Jacques
Occupation	Night porter
Known for	Jewish traitor, nazi collaborator

Icek (Jacques) Glogowski, nicknamed 'le gros Jacques' (Fat Jacques), was a Belgian Jew of Polish origin. Glogowski was an informant to the occupying authorities and Nazi collaborator in Belgium, responsible for the deportation of hundreds of Jews.

Biography

Icek Glogowski lived in Uccle, on the rue Vanderkindere. He was a night porter in the neighborhood close to the Brussels-North railway station. His wife, Eva Feldberg, and their three children, Elka (9 years old), Simon (7 years old), and Leon (5 years old), were arrested by the German Sicherheitspolizei on 3 September 1942 and taken to the Dossin barracks in Mechelen. They were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 10 October 1942 with Transport XII and were all murdered. After the deportation of his wife and children, Glogowski began to work as a traitor and collaborator for the Sicherheitspolizei.

Nazi collaborator

In the book 'From the Children's Home to the Gas Chamber: And how some avoided their fate' by Reinier Heinsman, two Holocaust survivors describe how their families were betrayed by Icek Glogowski.

'My father did business with people in Roosendaal and Belgium, and he also had a shop in Roosendaal. During the war, we went from The Hague to Roosendaal and from there to Belgium. My father knew people who gave us shelter before we crossed the Dutch-Belgian border. It was not easy. We first arrived in Antwerp, but almost everything was already free of Jews there. Then we moved to Brussels, we were always in contact with Jewish families. We actually wanted to go to Switzerland, but that was not easy. The Germans arrested us in Brussels after we lived there for two years. We were betrayed on Erev Pesach (the day before Passover) in 1944 by a Jewish traitor called Jacques Glogowski. We did not have a bathroom in our house, and we always went to the bathhouse near the station for that. On Erev Pesach, my parents had sent my three younger sisters and younger brother to the bathhouse, so they were not at home and were not arrested. My father was not at home either. He was out to buy wood to cover the table for Pesach. When the Germans invaded our home in Brussels on Erev Pesach, we said we were not Jewish. We had non-Jewish papers for which my father had paid a lot of money. The Jewish traitor walked around the house. He was in the kitchen and said: "What does that mean, that the meat and the chicken are in salt?" My mother was making our food kosher because we are required to eat kosher meat. The Matzos were there too. In the kitchen, the Germans saw the Gemarah (Jewish books). My father always learned Gemarah with my brother Moshe. The Jewish traitor said to the Germans: ‘They are not goyim but Jews.’ Everything was very bad and difficult to understand. My father was also arrested sometime later. I was deported with Transport XXV from Belgium to Auschwitz with my father, mother, brother Moshe and sister Esther. My parents and Moshe did not survive.'
— Lea Flinker Levi, ″From the Children's Home to the Gas Chamber: And how some avoided their fate.″ (2021)

'We all moved to Brussels and went into hiding with three other families in a three-story building. My sister and I were the only children. When there was daylight, we were not allowed to make noise or to go to the yard to play. Only at night we could go and play there. On Friday evenings and on Yom Tov the three families dined together. My mother did most of the cooking. On Pesach 1944 we were denounced. I remember that I woke up early in the morning because of the noise of breaking glass. The Nazis broke the backyard door and entered the house. Someone was standing near my bed; it was a Nazi. We were ordered to leave the house and to go on a waiting truck which took us to the prison at Avenue Louise. Later, we learned that we were denounced by a Jew called Jacques Glogowski. Here, we were locked up, every family in a separate cell. From here, my sister Sabine and I were taken to the orphanage in Aische-en-Refail. My parents were sent to Auschwitz via the transit camp in Mechelen.'
— Hadassa Goldrosen Langsam, ″From the Children's Home to the Gas Chamber: And how some avoided their fate.″ (2021)