- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Auguste V., a Roman-Catholic, born in Mouscron, Belgium in 1920, one of eleven children. He recalls receiving his diploma as an auto mechanic in 1938; sheltering German Jewish refugees; twice daily prayers at home; working in Liège; German invasion; returning home; briefly fleeing to Bailleul, France; participating in the Resistance; his family hiding Jews; learning his arrest was imminent; fleeing to La Rochefoucauld in March 1943; arrest; incarceration in Angoulême and Poitiers; deportation from Compiègne to Buchenwald in June; remaining with one friend; slave labor in a quarry; transfer to the garage, then Gustloffwerke I; transport to Laura; working in the garage, a privileged position; receiving food from the civilian boss and German soldiers; sharing packages from home; evacuation in April 1945; escaping with four others; liberation by United States troops eleven days later; assistance from the Red Cross; returning home from Bamberg in May; learning all his brothers had survived; emigration to the Congo; and return to Belgium in 1961. Mr. V. discusses group relations in the camps; attending mass in Compiègne; prisoners' brutality toward friends due to circumstances; visiting Buchenwald and Laura with his wife and children in 1990; and the inhumanity of the SS.
- Author/Creator
- V., Auguste, 1920-
- Published
- Brussels, Belgium : Fondation Auschwitz, 1995
- Interview Date
- February 15, 1995.
- Locale
- Belgium
Mouscron (Belgium)
Liège (Belgium)
Bailleul (Nord, France)
La Rochefoucauld (France)
Angoulême (France)
Poitiers (France)
Bamberg (Germany)
Congo (Democratic Republic)
- Cite As
- Auguste V. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3471). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Inchusta, Elisabeth, interviewer.
Rosenfeldt, Michel, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in French.
