Description
Object description
Austrian schoolchild and student in Vienna, Austria, 1921-1938; refugee in Belgium and France, 1938-1940; member of French Resistance in France, 7/1943-9/1943; inmate in Drancy Internment Camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenay, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp and Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, Poland and Germany, 1943-1945
Content description
REEL 1 Recollections of period as schoolchild and student in Vienna, Austria, 1921-1938: family; anti-Semitism experienced at school; brother's fighting with right wing students at university, 1936; family origins; father's employment; sense of Jewishness; non-Jewish friends; playing as musical trio with brothers; interest in Zionism; effect of Anschluss on his education, 3/1938; political propaganda during plebiscite, 1938; sight of elderly Jewish man being mistreated in street; how his brothers left for America and GB, 1938.
REEL 2 Continues: burning of local synagogue during Kristallnacht, 11/1938; fate of neighbour during Kristallnacht, 11/1938. Aspects of period as refugee in Belgium, 1938-1940: entering Belgium illegally, 12/1938. Aspects of period as member of French Resistance and inmate in Drancy Internment Camp in France, 7/1943-10/1943: arrest on train, 9/1943; character of interrogation by French police; imprisonment in camp; attempts to construct escape tunnel in camp. Recollections of period as inmate in Auschwitz II-Birkenay and Auschwitz III-Monowitz Concentration Camps, 1943-1945: description of train journey from Drancy Internment Camp to Auschwitz Concentration Camp; reception on arrival at camp.
REEL 3 Continues: atmosphere during train journey from Drancy Internment Camp to Auschwitz Concentration Camp; allocation of Doctor Robert Weiss to camp hospital and rations he received from him; march into camp; tattooing and delousing of inmates; issue of stripped clothing; accommodation in barrack block; reaction of new arrivals to separation from family; behaviour of Kapos; allocation to work commando; punishment received for receiving cigarette from British prisoner of war his personal survival strategy.
REEL 4 Continues: selection of inmates; witnessing hanging of inmates on appell platz; hearing of progress of war; reaction to hearing Soviet Army artillery firing; Allied bombing of factory. Aspects of journey from Auschwitz-III Monowitz Concentration Camp, Poland to Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp, Poland, 1/1945: march away from Auschwitz-III Monowitz Concentration Camp, 1/1945; attaching political prisoner red triangle to his clothing. Aspects of period as inmate in Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp, 1945: nature of work; production of V2 rockets; discipline and hanging of inmates for sabotage. Aspects of period as inmate in Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, 1945: removal to camp; conditions in camp; reaction of inmates to arrival of first British Army troops.
REEL 5 Continues: treatment of German farmer after finding picture of Adolf Hitler. Reflections on Holocaust experience: importance of letting future generations know about experiences; attitude towards Germans.