European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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.

When we were liberated, they put us onto wagons, depending on the region we were going to.

I went back to Rouen. There were three or four of us. We had lost hundreds of friends.

Upon our arrival there were ambulances waiting for us, taking us where we told them to. In my case, that was to my parents.

The arrival at home was different for each of us. The parents were all different from each other of course.

I arrived home in the morning and my mother was there.

She was a textile worker, but they sometimes had days off, and she was home. Ah! That was …!

My father arrived in the evening. He was a coppersmith, working very hard. He was also very firm.

He said: