Paul L. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony Paul L., who was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1910, an only child. He recounts his bar mitzvah; attending university; teaching statistics in Ghent; marriage to a Catholic; his daughter's birth in 1935; joining the Belgian Labor Party in 1932, then resigning in 1938; working as a journalist for Belgian radio; German invasion in 1940; his wife, daughter, and parents fleeing to France; broadcasting news from Ostend, then Poitiers; traveling to Toulouse; returning to Brussels, as had his wife and daughter; refusal to collaborate with the German-controlled radio; arrest; incarceration in St. Gilles; interrogation; a visit by his wife and daughter; transfer to Avenue Louise, then Breendonk; forced labor digging ditches; being beaten by Kommandant Philip Schmitt; prisoner shootings and suicides; bribing civilian workers to send letters to his wife; learning Radio Belgique in London had broadcast that he had been killed; his release so the Germans could discredit the London broadcasts; reunion with his wife; conversion to Catholicism; his wife fleeing to Sarlat; sending information to London for radio broadcasts; the underground arranging his flight to England via Lille, Paris, Dijon, Chalon-sur-Saône, Lyon, and Sète, where he visited his parents (he never saw his father again); continuing via Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar; working at the BBC in London; traveling to Paris in 1944 as a war correspondent; returning to Brussels; entering Sachsenhausen and Dachau as a correspondent shortly after liberation; locating several friends in Dachau; returning with two of them to Belgium; helping locate Breendonk's Kommandant Schmitt; and reunion with his wife and daughter. Mr. L. discusses testifying in several war crimes trials; his careers in journalism, government, and academia; his leadership role at the Breendonk memorial; and sharing his experiences with his children.
Extent and Medium
8 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
- Schmitt, Philipp-Johann-Adolf.
- L., Paul, -- 1910?-
Corporate Bodies
- Breendonk (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Christian converts from Judaism.
- War crime trials -- Belgium.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Belgium.
- Forced labor.
- Postwar experiences.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Resistance.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Men.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, Belgian.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Bar mitzvah.
Places
- Paris (France)
- Lille (France)
- Chalon-sur-Saône (France)
- Dijon (France)
- Sète (France)
- Lyon (France)
- London (England)
- Gibraltar.
- Ghent (Belgium)
- Belgium.
- Poitiers (France)
- Ostend (Belgium)
- Brussels (Belgium)
- Toulouse (France)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat