Jozef went to the
Yesodei Torah school in Antwerpen. It is still located today at Lange van Ruusbroeckstraat.
There are documents like school register where his name appear from year 1937 to 1942. There is no doubt about this referring to Jozef as father's name and birth date are mentionned, like this one :
Surprised to see that Belgian nationality has been strikedthrough and replaced by Romanian as he was born in Belgium.
The last comment "Speelziek" translates to "playful".
Playful.
Thanks to Kaserne Dossin, I got this picture from schoolyear 1941-1942. The last one ever for most of the Yesoida Torah pupils.
The chances that Jozef is on this picture are very high ; it is from school year 1941-1942 and with children of his age (+- 12 years old). Also the presence registry shows that except a few days in the year where he was ill, he attended all schooldays.
The leaves on the tree behind could give us an indication of which moment in the year it was taken. Let's list some observations on the tree (click on the photo to see it in its original -bigger- size);
- the leave shape indicates this is an oak.
- looking at the leaves on the lower side of the tree, they all have a similar darker colour.
- the leaves on top do have a lighter tan, but seem to be overexposed to light (the shadow on the wall on the left side of the picture indicates this was a very sunny day (or moment).
- if we look at the ground between the adults on the right side and on the left, we see not a single leave on the floor.
This leads me to think that we are not in the period where the oak would be in the process of changing colour (early fall), loosing leaves (later fall) or winter. I would thus exclude the November to February period from this picture could have been taken. As living conditions worsen every month, I would opt for a picture taken in September 1941 rather than in March 1942 or later.
We can count twenty-six children and four adults.
Each morning and afternoon a presence register was updated by the school.
If we look at the class presence registry for Jozef's class, we see that starting January 1942 the number of pupils present at school goes down.
Here an extract example from June 1942 ;
Each column is a day.
Red vertical lines are for Saturdays and Sundays ; no school.
So the first week of June we can see approx. 20 out of 25 registered pupils present.
The top line counts presence, the lower line the total registered children.
This picture is from June 1942, first week ;
In fact the only days where there were 26 or more pupils are registered present are the two first days of the first week of the schoolyear (week starting Sept 1st. 1941) ;
To have exactly 26 pupils would mean the only possible moment is the afternoon ("namiddag") of September 2nd 1941. That could match the tree condition on the picture. And indeed that first week Jozef was present all time in school ;
Going a bit enthousiastically fast, one would conclude that this picture is taken in the first week of september - promptly as school starts and that the 26 pupils present that day with their teachers are lined up for the picture. Unfortunatelly that is a risky bet. Indeed the Dossin research team was kind enough to share with me six possible identifications with names and one certain identification by name.
The names provided do not all appear on this list of pupils of Jozef's class. Because the one pupil that is by certainty identified by the Dossin research team is in fact not in Jozef's class, the above reasoning around the number of pupils falls apart. This picture for certain is one with children that at that time were not all in the same class. In fact they may even not be all of the same age.
