Paul K. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Paul K., a non-Jew, who was born in Ans, Belgium in 1921. He recalls a happy childhood; moving to Liège with his family in 1938; working for an insurance firm; German invasion; distributing Resistance leaflets in 1942; forming a group aiming to escape to England; traveling from Arlon to Chalon-sur-Saône; imprisonment in Dijon; a two-month sentence; transfer to another prison; refusing to "volunteer" for work in Germany; transfer to St. Gilles, then Forest; deportation to Dachau in February 1943; forming friendships; hospitalization for typhus; a prisoner physician treating him for tuberculosis; slave labor repairing trench periscopes; sabotage; bartering with prisoners and guards; receiving Red Cross and family packages, which he shared; group solidarity based on ethnicity and language; clandestine communications with his parents; liberation by United States troops; repatriation to Brussels; reunion with his family; and recuperating in Leysin. Mr. K. discusses the prisoner hierarchy; the importance to his survival of his will to live; participating in a Dachau survivor group; annual visits there; dreams, not nightmares, about his experiences; and his daughter's reluctance to hear about his experiences.
Extent and Medium
5 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- K., Paul, -- 1921-
Corporate Bodies
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
- Dachau (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Survivor-child relations.
- Postwar experiences.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Belgian.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Belgium.
- Video tapes.
- Men.
- Forced labor.
- Sabotage.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German.
- Concentration camp inmates.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Dreams.
- Friendship.
- Concentration camps -- Sociological aspects.
- Hospitals in concentration camps.
- Postwar effects.
- Resistance.
- Mutual aid.
Places
- Belgium.
- Liège (Belgium)
- Ans (Belgium)
- Chalon-sur-Saône (France)
- Arlon (Belgium)
- Leysin (Switzerland)
- Brussels (Belgium)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat