David M. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2982) interviewed by Jean-Michel Chaumont and Claire Paulus,
Videotape testimony of David M., who was born in Oberhausen, Germany in 1922. He recounts moving to Charleroi, Belgium, then Brussels; attending public school; his father's support of trade unions; his participation in a leftist group; disbelief in German refugees' stories of concentration camps; German invasion; briefly fleeing to Abbeville, France; returning to Brussels; involvement in a Resistance group; arrest; incarceration in Saint-Gilles; interrogations; transfer to Malines; meeting his father there; not escaping due to his promise to escape with his father; deportation to Auschwitz; selection as a tailor; learning his father had perished in Birkenau; a doctor refusing his request to stay in the infirmary (this saved his life); transfer to Warsaw to demolish the ghetto; working as a tailor; evacuation to Dachau eleven months later in August 1944; and transfer to Waldlager V. Mr. M. recalls returning to Brussels; his family's disinterest in his experience; learning he had lost vision in one eye; marriage in 1947; and frequently talking about the war years with fellow deportees. He discusses concentration camp life: intergroup relations, organization, absolute arbitrariness, and contrast with normality. Mr. M. notes his dismay that his expectation that "things" would be better, did not occur.
- Published
- Brussels, Belgium : Fondation Auschwitz, 1992
- Interview Date
- December 9, 1992.
- Locale
- Belgium
Germany
Oberhausen (Düsseldorf, Germany)
Charleroi (Belgium)
Brussels (Belgium)
Abbeville (France) - Language
-
French
- Copies
- 2 copies: 3/4 in. dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
- Cite As
- David M. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2982). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
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View in Yale University Library Catalog: http://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/4289936
Record last modified: 2018-05-30 11:33:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/hvt4289936