European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I want to show what National Socialism was about, with all its horror and its atrocities.

How important it is to develop fraternity between human beings.

You are young people. Don’t fight with each other. Be collegial.

Be friends because you don’t know what tomorrow will be like.

You are human beings and the future is in you, you carry tomorrow in you.

Be fraternal, because that is the only way it will work. It doesn’t matter how people look like.

You are all human beings, you can have dark-skinned friends, why not?

That will also help you to work better, work more seriously.

Be fraternal with each other no matter what origin you are from.

Liberation at Auschwitz; coming home

Liberation came in 1945.

But it wasn’t quite that simple because there were all these

Kapos that had taken on this bad habit of beating and massacring and liquidating people.

They played this role until the end. So again we lost many people.

Out of the 1175 of us deportees I think 19 returned.

Gradually we felt a certain degree of liberation, but we were in such a state, we barely reacted.

Take my case: I weighed 70kg/72kg upon my arrival, I used to do exercise, to bike, I was strong.

In the end I had reached half my weight: 35kg/36kg.

Under those conditions, so weak, things don’t work the same way anymore, including reactions and the way the brain works.

But we also started to take deep breaths of fresh air, telling ourselves that it was over.