European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

“We are going to Germany, to meet some people. But of course we won’t ask you to come along.”

I said: “Why won’t you ask me to go with you? Are you afraid that I will say that all Germans are fascists?

Not way. If you want me to, I will come along. I promise I will behave correctly towards the Germans we meet.

That won’t stop me from saying what happened in the camps.

But I will not say THE Germans.”

Activity as eyewitness; message

I was invited as a witness to a school.

I had a teacher friend and as we talked he said:

“You should come talk in schools, otherwise it will be forgotten history.”

I agreed, but hadn’t really thought about what that meant.

So I went.

It was difficult.

When you are with 30 students, it is very difficult to talk about all these things:

about the arrival of Jewish or Gypsy convoys, the children, sometimes babies in their mothers arms.

I wondered if one should talk about it or rather not talk about it.

I decided to talk about what National Socialism had done,

about what we had gone through and about what we had seen with our own eyes.

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.