- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Michel V., a non-Jew, who was born in Ixelles, Belgium in 1916, one of three brothers. He recounts moving to Lier; encountering veterans of World War I; attending school; working in Anderlecht; marriage in 1936; his son's birth; serving in the military; an influx of Jewish refugees; becoming a policeman in 1939; German invasion in May 1940; arresting Communists, Rexists, and those identified as enemy aliens in Brussels; attempting to re-join his military regiment; Belgian capitulation to Germany; capture by the Germans in Antwerp; returning home; joining the underground; distributing anti-German leaflets; providing false papers to British soldiers; his wife's illness and death in 1941; arrest with his father in 1942; imprisonment in St. Gilles; interrogations; transfer to Louvain; receiving Red Cross packages; transfer to Aachen, then Neuengamme; starvation, beatings, and public hangings; slave labor; a serious leg infection; hospitalization; a prisoner nurse helping him; clearing rubble from Allied bombings in Hamburg; group sabotage by working more slowly; separation of Jewish prisoners by checking for circumcision; transfer to Cologne; digging trenches at Ford-Köln; transfer to Essen; working in the camp hospital; transfer to Buchenwald; a death march, then train transfer to Dachau; liberation by United States troops; returning home; reunion with his mother, brother, and son; learning his father had not survived; rejoining the police; and remarriage in 1947. Mr. V. discusses relations between national groups in the camps and nightmares resulting from his experiences. He names many individuals and shows documents.
- Author/Creator
- V., Michel, 1916-
- Published
- Brussels, Belgium : Fondation Auschwitz, 1994
- Interview Date
- May 9, 1994.
- Locale
- Belgium
Ixelles (Belgium)
Lier (Belgium)
Anderlecht (Belgium)
Antwerp (Belgium)
Brussels (Belgium)
- Cite As
- Michel V. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3006). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Inchusta, Elisabeth, interviewer.
Fichefet, Frederic, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in French.
