Alfred C. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Alfred C., a non-Jew, who was born in Ciply, Belgium in 1921, the oldest of three children. He recounts attending school in Mons; working as a butcher to support his family; German invasion; fleeing to Marseille; returning home; working at a slaughterhouse in La LouvieĚre; his father's death in December 1940; hiding with friends in Frameries to avoid compulsory labor; arrest; imprisonment in Mons; transfer to Watten; slave labor for Organization Todt; escape; returning home; hiding in Brussels; joining the underground; obtaining false papers; living in Braine-le-Comte; destroying trains, power plants, and executing collaborators; arrest; incarceration in St. Gilles; interrogation and torture; deportation to Neuengamme in August 1944; transfer to Deutsche Werft, Hamburg; volunteering to join a friend who was a welder; a beating and transfer to a live bomb removal unit after it was recognized he did not know how to weld; reassignment peeling potatoes and sharing peels with friends; French prisoners of war leaving extra food; being wounded in a bombing; hospitalization in Neuengamme; transfer to Sandbostel; liberation by British troops; repatriation with assistance from the Red Cross; marriage; and divorce. Mr. C. discusses constant terror in the camps; identifying collaborators after the war; visiting Neuengamme and Sandbostel; sharing his experiences with his children; speaking at schools; and attributing his survival to luck and help from friends.
Extent and Medium
12 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
- C., Alfred, -- 1921-
Corporate Bodies
- Sandbostel (Concentration camp)
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
- Organisation Todt (Germany)
- Neuengamme (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Concentration camp inmates.
- Forced labor.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Belgium.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German.
- Men.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Belgian.
- Video tapes.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Postwar experiences.
- Hospitals in concentration camps.
- Mutual aid.
- False papers.
- Resistance.
- Hiding.
- Belgium.
- Prisoners of war -- France.
- Prisoners of war -- Germany.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Escapes.
Places
- Watten (France: Concentration camp)
- Deutsche Werft, Hamburg (Germany: Concentration camp)
- La LouvieĚre (Belgium)
- Frameries (Belgium)
- Brussels (Belgium)
- Braine-le-Comte (Belgium)
- Marseille (France)
- Mons (Belgium)
- Ciply (Belgium)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat