Auguste V. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Auguste V., a Roman-Catholic, born in Mouscron, Belgium in 1920, one of eleven children. He recalls receiving his diploma as an auto mechanic in 1938; sheltering German Jewish refugees; twice daily prayers at home; working in Liège; German invasion; returning home; briefly fleeing to Bailleul, France; participating in the Resistance; his family hiding Jews; learning his arrest was imminent; fleeing to La Rochefoucauld in March 1943; arrest; incarceration in Angoulême and Poitiers; deportation from Compiègne to Buchenwald in June; remaining with one friend; slave labor in a quarry; transfer to the garage, then Gustloffwerke I; transport to Laura; working in the garage, a privileged position; receiving food from the civilian boss and German soldiers; sharing packages from home; evacuation in April 1945; escaping with four others; liberation by United States troops eleven days later; assistance from the Red Cross; returning home from Bamberg in May; learning all his brothers had survived; emigration to the Congo; and return to Belgium in 1961. Mr. V. discusses group relations in the camps; attending mass in Compiègne; prisoners' brutality toward friends due to circumstances; visiting Buchenwald and Laura with his wife and children in 1990; and the inhumanity of the SS.
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
- V., Auguste, -- 1920-
Corporate Bodies
- Compiègne (Concentration camp)
- Buchenwald (Concentration camp)
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
- Laura (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Video tapes.
- Men.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Postwar experiences.
- Escapes.
- Mutual aid.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Concentration camp inmates.
- Concentration camps -- Sociological aspects.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Forced labor.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Belgium.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Belgian.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Religious life.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German.
Places
- Mouscron (Belgium)
- Belgium.
- Gustloffwerke I (Germany : Concentration camp)
- Congo (Democratic Republic)
- Compiègne (France : Concentration camp)
- Poitiers (France)
- Bamberg (Germany)
- La Rochefoucauld (France)
- Angoulême (France)
- Liège (Belgium)
- Bailleul (Nord, France)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat