European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

In Birkenau,

the first big camp we went to, these convoys arrived, filled with Jews, with Gypsies.

There were men and women, but children as well, and babies in their mother’s arms.

We saw them, we were not far away and we knew what was going to happen. That hurt a lot, it still does.

Whenever I go to a school and have to talk about these subjects, concerning children…

the soup doesn’t taste as good in the evening.

What is remarkable when you go into a classroom is that you never have to ask for silence.

They are very attentive to what one says. That encourages us to go to the schools.

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