- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Henri W., who was born in 1925 in Poland. He recalls living in Brussels; moving to Paris with his parents in 1939; German invasion; fleeing to Creuse in the unoccupied zone; assistance from the locals; working since he could no longer attend school; arrest with his parents; incarceration in Poussac and elsewhere; transfer to Drancy, then Birkenau; separation from his mother (he never saw her again); transfer to Mysłowice (Fürstengrube); slave labor for I. G. Farben; adjusting to starvation, cold, disease and beatings; trying to save his strength; his father's return to Birkenau (he was killed); transfer in June 1943 to Gräditz; working as a locksmith; a high death rate during a typhus epidemic; translating for prisoners and the SS; transfer to Faulbrück; working as a mason; transfer to Gross-Rosen in early summer 1944; forming a group of French speakers; a death march to Flossenbürg in January 1945; train transport to Dachau in March; liberation by United States troops; prisoners killing kapos and guards; repatriation to Paris; living with an uncle; emigration to Israel; fighting in the 1948 Independence War; being wounded; and returning to France. Mr. W. discusses his physical and emotional problems after the war; his relatives' inability to understand him (they had not been deported); readjusting with assistance from other deportees in Menton; his strong secular Jewish identity; and sharing his story with his children, but not his grandchildren.
- Author/Creator
- W., Henri, 1925?-
- Published
- Paris, France : Témoignages pour mémoire, 1992
- Interview Date
- February 11, 1992.
- Locale
- Poland
Brussels (Belgium)
Paris (France)
Creuse (France)
Poussac (France)
Menton (France)
Israel
- Cite As
- Henri W. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2166). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Wieviorka, Annette, interviewer.
Drame, Claudine, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in French.
