- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Geoffrey D., a Catholic, who was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1924, the younger of two sons. He recounts attending Catholic school; German invasion; fleeing briefly; his mother's involvement in the Resistance; he and his brother cutting German telephone cables; joining a resistance unit; his parents arranging for him and his brother to escape to England in 1943; their arrest; incarceration in Fresnes; separation from his brother; transfer to Aix-la-Chapelle /Aachen; learning their “smuggler” was a double-agent; solitary confinement for eight months; seeing his brother during air raid evacuations; learning his mother had been arrested; transfer to Essen in April 1944, then to Esterwegen, Gross Strehlitz, and Laband; slave labor in a munitions factory, then the kitchen, where he obtained extra food; a death march with a brief stop in Ratibor; many deaths from starvation and exposure; arrival in Buchenwald; hospitalization; assistance from a French prisoner-doctor; being unconscious during liberation by United States troops; recovering in Weimar; repatriation; reunion with his father; informing him of his brother's death; refusing visitors for a year; feeling unsatisfied when attending the execution of the double agent who exposed him; and becoming a professional pilot. Mr. D. discusses his isolation and despondence in camps and prisons; not being able to learn the details of his mother's death in Ravensbrück; and sharing his experiences for the first time in this testimony. He shows a photograph.
- Author/Creator
- D., Geoffrey, 1924-
- Published
- Brussels, Belgium : Fondation Auschwitz, 1996
- Interview Date
- June 26, 1996.
- Locale
- Belgium
Brussels (Belgium)
Weimar (Thuringia, Germany)
- Cite As
- Geoffrey D. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4039). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Toussaint, Nina, interviewer.
Rosenfeldt, Michel, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in French.
