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In the early morning darknessOn May 10, the Germans unleashed their Blitzkrieg against the Netherlands and Belgium. The attack sent the defending troops reeling. The roads were overflowed with refugees fleeing the front. That same morning the arrest of all “enemy aliens” is organized in Belgium, among the men targeted there are mostly Jewish refugees. All men between 17 and 65 who are/were citizens of the Reich territory are ordered to register in police stations or are simply arrested in the streets. This roundup, which was programmed by the Belgian authorities to occur the day of outburst of the war, breaks together with the exodus of the population southward, escaping the war zone. A record from dated May 10, about a meeting from May 9 gives specific information on arrests and how the communal administration should guard the “enemy aliens”. 
Many witnesses report on the arrest and on the very difficult journey which took the men and sometimes women to southern France internment camps. Between 6 and 10 000 people were arrested during the May 10 roundups. 7 500 men arrived after an exhausting journey which lasted sometimes two weeks to the camp of St Cyprien in southern France near the Spanish border.
Very few Jews will return in Belgium after the signature of the armistice on June 22 .
The new regulation on “suspects» allows the arrest of refugees for many reasons and allows the custody of any one who might be an enemy state : German emigrants, illegal refugees and clandestine ones are priority targets; however men in regular situation are also arrested. This law of the suspects does not make any difference between extreme nationalist, fascists or Nazis, communist or ex citizens of the Reich who are stateless because Jewish. The arrests begin at dawn. Police officers and gendarmes are in duty to control the identities of the suspected people and to gather them in the agreed places (Merkxplas, Marneffe, barracks, police stations…). Each suspect must take with him 48 h food rations. No one was expecting the length of the journey, 40 people in hermetically closed wagon, sometimes more than 40 hours without water supply. The rides are disturbed by the invasion of the German army, slowing down the convoys which some arrive at destination more than ten days after their departure of Belgium. With the help of the files from the camp of St Cyprien from October 1940 it is possible to account the stages of these convoys: Tournai in Belgium then in France Orleans, Fauga-Mazères, Sainte Livrade, Vigeant, Toulouse, Villemur, Albi, Cerdon en Loiret, Cepoy… The first massive deportation is indeed the fact of the independent Belgian State because it was in fact the Belgian police force that carried out the arrest of the “suspects” and proceeded to the appropriation of the currencies and jewels that the internees owned.
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