Immigration files in Archives of Antwerp & State Archives of Belgium

In the courtyard of the Felixpakhuis complex

I posted a few times in a few newsgroups/forums with as subject Jewish Genealogy a short explanation on the files in the Belgian archives.
I hope to publish once an article on my blog with more details about my experience in the archives, for the moment being I think it could be  useful  for other researchers to read the following short explanation according to my view:

Hi,

Usually all documents were kept in twofold. One copy stayed in the city/town and the other copy went to the state archives in Brussels.

In Antwerp you have a few boroughs which have separate administrations and were independent cities/towns . Nowadays these cities/towns are part of Antwerp, the most interesting boroughs for Jews researching their ancestors is: Borgerhout, Berchem and Antwerpen. The archives from the other boroughs besides, Antwerp, are not in the felixarchief (each city could choose whether to save the files or whether to throw them away).

The index you found on familysearch is only about the Antwerp borough. All records are kept by the Antwerp City Archives (in the Felixpakhuis, an old and very nice building near the port of Antwerp).

It is free to view the copies of the microfilmed scans and you can copy them to your USB-stick. There is no limit and you can get as many as time allows. For non-microfilmed documents they have set a limit of 15 files/day.

In the Brussels State archives you can get the copies of files. They ask a fee which is 15 Euro / Year.

Viewing and photographing is free of charge. The maximum allowed files you can order is 15/day.

Documents which are older than 100 years since the opening of the document, are no problem to get. For newer documents they ask you to sign a document in which you agree to adhere to the rules of privacy (documents with a file number lower then 1.000.000 are usually easy to get, other documents are the newer ones).

Of course it is always cheaper to get the files via someone you know. For Antwerp you could use a forum on http://www.geschiedenisvanantwerpen.be where you   can try to post any question (translations, someone to get the files, etc). For Brussels you can also try to get someone to copy the files, another option is to get the archives to scan all files, but this could become very expensive.

Kindest Regards,

Gershon Lehrer

gershon.lehrer@gmail.com

Antwerp, Belgium

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