Drancy – History of Sorts

Holocaust Art by David Olère—A Survivor

David Olère was a Polish-French artist known primarily for his powerful and haunting artworks depicting the Holocaust. Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1902, Olère survived internment in several concentration camps during World War II, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

After the war, Olère settled in France and began creating art that bore witness to the atrocities he had experienced. His works often depicted scenes from the camps, capturing the brutality and inhumanity of the Holocaust. Olère’s art served as a form of testimony and remembrance, ensuring that the horrors of the Holocaust would not be forgotten.

One of his most well-known works is a series of paintings and drawings depicting the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz, based on his firsthand experiences. These works are particularly striking in their stark portrayal of the grim realities of the Holocaust.

Olère’s art continues to be a significant contribution to Holocaust remembrance, offering a unique perspective from someone who survived the horrors of the camps and felt compelled to document them through his art.

I did post some of his works before, the painting at the top is titled, “The Food of the Dead for the Living,” and below are more.

Admission in Mauthausen by David Olère.

The Experimental Injection by David Olère

The Oven Room by David Olère

Gassing by David Olère.

On 20 February 1943, due to his Jewish origin, he was arrested by the French police and placed in the Drancy Camp. On 2 March, he was deported from Drancy to the German Nazi Auschwitz Camp, where he was registered with number 106144. Throughout his entire stay at the camp, he worked in the Sonderkommando, a special work unit forced by the Germans to aid in the operation of the crematoriums and gas chambers.

“David Olère is the only prisoner of Sonderkommando who transferred his traumatic experiences from the shadow of the crematorium chimneys on paper and canvas.” — Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński

Sources

https://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/resource/gallery/olere.htm#D54

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/18-paintings-by-former-sonderkommando-prisoner-david-olre-enriched-the-collections-of-the-auschwitz-memorial,1277.html

David Olère, art as an act of Remembrance of the Holocaust

Transport 70 from the Drancy Transit Camp, France to Auschwitz-Birkenau

Before I go into the main story, I’d like you to look at the photograph above. Drancy Transit Camp was an assembly and detention camp for confining Jews for deportation to extermination camps during the World War II German occupation of France. However, as you can see, there is only one uniformed person in the photo—a French police officer. It is a point I have made many times before, and I will make it again. Without the help of people in the occupied countries, the Nazis would not have been able to carry out the murders on such a large scale/ Many of the non-Germans were happy to participate in the murder and persecution of Jews, Roma, LGBT, disabled, etc.

On March 27, 1944, a transport left Drancy with the end destination Auschwitz Birkenau—the route of that transport.

Before reaching Auschwitz-Birkenau, the train passed eight or so stations. I don’t know if the train stopped at any of them. However, I presume it may have stopped at some of the stations. Rarely mentioned—every time that train stopped, the people inside had thoughts of fear or joy. Fear for the unknown, the uncertainty of what was about to happen. Joy because they may have thought they would get off the train, and perhaps the ordeal may be over. The psychological terror of that journey, and all the other journeys, is often forgotten.

There were two rail companies involved with Transport 70. Unsurprisingly, the German Reich railways, Deutsche Reichbahn. The other is the SNCF. The French National Railway Company, SNCF, Société Nationale des chemins de fer français. SNCF was formed in 1938, following the nationalization of France’s five main railway companies.

The French state-owned trains and state-paid rail workers were responsible for carrying approximately 76,000 Jews from France to Germany and the East during World War II. Only a handful returned.

According to the list prepared in the Drancy Transit Camp before the departure, there were 1,000 Jews on Transport 70. A copy of the list was sent to the Union of French Jews (Union générale des israélites de France [UGIF]), recovered by the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Centre (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine [CDJC]) after the war, and edited by Serge Klarsfeld in his 1978 work, Mémorial de la déportation des Juifs de France. However, Klarsfeld’s Le Calendrier de la persécution des Juifs de France records a total of 1,025 deportees (609 men and 416 women). Klarsfeld also notes that the Jews deported on this transport were arrested during roundups in the Paris region—the Isère, the Savoie, the Lyon region, Vichy, Toulouse, Marseille, and Côte d’Azur.

I won’t be able to go into the 1025 stories, but I will use Daniel Tytelman to commemorate all murders.

There is some confusion about Daniel’s age. Yad Vashem has two birth years, 1928 and 1930, but looking at that picture of him, he doesn’t look 14. After research, I found a document that puts his birthdate as April 11, 1928. nearly 40 years before I was born, just off by one day.

Daniel was murdered when he was still 15. There are also two versions of the way he was murdered. He was transported on March 27 from Drancy to Auschwitz. He died, according to one version, shot while trying to escape while the train was slowing down at Bar-le-Duc. According to another, he was gassed upon his arrival on April 1.

Only 15% of all those deported that day survived the Holocaust.

Sources

https://www.deportesdelyon.fr/les-archives-par-famille-n-z/enfants-tytelman

https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/deportations/5092642

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11751246

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The Story of a Painting and its Owner—Who Took His Life in an Act of Despair

The above painting is titled Boats on Rough Seas Near a Rocky Coast, painted in the mid-17th century. It was seized in June 1944 from Minna Bargeboer-Kirchheimer. Minna was born on October 7, 1867, in Nieheim, Germany.

In 1893, Minna married Dutch Jewish cattle dealer Abraham Bargeboer from Winschoten, the Netherlands, and probably lived with him in Germany. At an unknown date, they emigrated to France, where they lived in Nice in 1939. They were discovered and arrested by the German Wehrmacht at the end of 1943.

Minna was arrested and taken from Nice to the French Transit Camp in Drancy. On July 31, 1944, they transported her to Auschwitz, where they murdered her on August 5, 1944.

Abraham Bargeboer was born on August 9, 1868, in Winschoten, the Netherlands. The Wehrmacht arrested him and sent him to the Excelsior Hotel in Nice, France, near the station. In September 1943, the Nazis requisitioned the hotel to imprison the Jews arrested. Of course, when you think of a hotel, you think of a place of leisure—the Excelsior Hotel was not.

There were a few accounts of Abraham’s stay in the hotel.

Author Philippe Erlanger described the psychological state of a man who escaped from the Excelsior as follows, “He went half crazy after listening all night to the moans of the tortured prisoners.”

Dr. Drucker, who was sent from Drancy to Nice to serve as a physician at the Hotel Excelsior for three months, said, “Day and night, the largest number of those arrested required medical care. Bandages for gunshot wounds to the thighs, legs, and buttocks, lacerations to the scalp, an ear torn off by the butt of a revolver, multiple hematomas, and bruises all over the body, broken teeth, split lips, facial abrasions, broken ribs, sprained, etc.”

By torturing the arrested Jews, the Nazis sought not only to extract confessions but also to oppress them, destroy their personalities, and humiliate them.

For this reason, some Jews, who could no longer endure the atrocities of the Gestapo, committed suicide. Such was the case of Abraham Bargeboer, who hung himself in his cell on January 23, 1944.

Sources

https://www.pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/mnr/MNR00645

https://ressources.memorialdelashoah.org/notice.php?q=identifiant_origine:(FRMEMSH0408707145628)

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/688449/abraham-bargeboer

https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/Abraham-Bargeboer/02/6641

https://oorlogsgravenstichting.nl/personen/6641/abraham-bargeboer

http://niceoccupation.free.fr/arrestations.html#NpVlKXNL

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The Haunting Words of Hélène Berr

Seeing images of death and destruction of the Holocaust can often be gut-wrenching. It is true that a photograph tells a thousand words, and it is also true that it doesn’t tell us the full story. A photo is always a snapshot in time.

That is one of the reasons why I do very few posts with horrific Holocaust images. I find the words of those who saw the horror unfolding much more haunting.

Hélène Berr was a young French woman of Jewish ancestry and faith who documented her life in a notebook during the Nazi occupation of France. She is frequently referred to as the French Anne Frank. Like Anne Frank, Helene was also murdered in Bergen-Belsen on 10 April 1945. That was 23 years before I was born.

The following are some of her words:

“…because you shouldn’t forget anything.”

“…I want to stay very elegant and dignified at all times so that people can see what that means. I want to do whatever is most courageous. This evening, I believe that means wearing the star.”

4 June 1942
“Life continues to be strangely shabby and strangely beautiful,”

June 1942
“Here we had tea on the small table, listening to the “Kreutzer” sonata… He sat at the piano without being asked and played some Chopin. Afterward, I played the violin.”

11 August 1942
“I couldn’t really make out Papa’s note because Maman was sobbing so hard that it stopped me concentrating. For the time being I couldn’t cry. But if misfortune does come, I shall be sorrowful enough, sorrowful for all time.”

20 September 1942
“All day long there’s a continuous line of women who have lost their children, men who have lost their wives, children who have lost their parents, people coming to ask for news of children and women, and others offering to take them in. Women weep. Yesterday one of them fainted.”

23 July 1942
“I forget that I have to lead a positive life,”

November 1943
“There aren’t many Jews in Paris anymore.”

December 1943

Helene and her parents were arrested on the morning of 8 March 1943. After incarceration at the Drancy Relocation Camp just East of Paris (for almost three weeks), she and her family were deported to Auschwitz. After eight months at Auschwitz, Hélène was deported to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in the autumn of 1944. In the winter of 1944–45, a raging typhus epidemic spread throughout the camp. This caused Hélène to contract typhus, making her very ill and weak. After the winter passed, she could no longer stand or walk. There was a roll call at the camp, which Hélène failed to attend, given her condition and illness. Because she had not participated in the roll call, she was severely beaten by a Nazi officer, thus making her even weaker. She died on 10 April 1945 from typhus, five days prior to its liberation by the British and American armies.

Sources

https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-materials/books/helene-berr.html

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher/das-tagebuch-der-helene-berr-kopf-hoch-so-sind-sie-huebscher-1773022.html

https://secretsofparis.com/french-culture/helene-berr/

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Iwan Illfelder-Murdered this day 80 years ago.

He is just one of the 6 million. But I believe that remembering all those Jewish fellow citizens, is best done one at a time. They were all human beings like everybody else. The same ambitions, the same emotions.

Iwan was born in Iserlohn, Germany, on 31 March 1903.

He came from Cologne to The Netherlands and was registered on 4 July 1933 in the Peoples Registry of Amsterdam. He resided since then at various addresses in the city. On 15 August 1934 he married Hilde Rosendahl, a daughter of Max Rosendahl and Emma Henriette Kussel, who passed away already 12 May 1917 in Odenkirchen (Germany).

Iwan’s wife Hilde, had already been living for four years in Amsterdam, when her family in 1938 (her father Max and his 2nd wife Julie Stern and brother Erich) also came to Amsterdam were they were registered at the address Onbekendegracht 9 II.

On 29 July 1938, Iwan and his wife Hilde also moved to live there. Hilde’s younger brother Erich, child from the 2nd marriage of her father, was housed in February 1940 in the so called Lloyds Hotel at Oostelijke Handelskade 12 in Amsterdam, a reception centre for German refugee children but he was transferred from there to refugee camp Westerbork in July 1940.Iwan was arrested in France on 15 May 1940 and was put in prison in camp St. Cyprien and later in Drancy, from where he has been deported to Auschwitz on 17 August 1942, where he was murdered upon arrival on 20 August 1942, while his wife Hilde, was murdered in Auschwitz just over a year later, on 30 November 1943.

source

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/153360/iwan-illfelder

Dagobert Stibbe- Not just a name or statistic, but a Human Being.

Dagobert Stibbe was born in Amsterdam, 13 October 1918. He was murdered in Auschwitz, 23 June 1943.

He was a student at the Technische Hogeschool(Technical University)Delft. He tried to escape to Switzerland, but this failed. He was caught on 2 June 1943 just 15 meters away from French-Swiss border. He was sent to the transit camp Drancy in France From there he was deported to the ‘Aussenkommando Jawischowitz’, that was part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

There he had to work in a coal mine. His last letter was sent on June 18,1943.

But he was not just a victim of the Holocaust. He was also a student, a son, a friend. A Human Being who contributed to society. A young man who still had a life to live.

His fellow students from the Lyceum in Amsterdam, where he as a student in 1935, were very fond of him. He was described as a spontaneous, lively young man. He played the accordion, and his awkwardness endeared him to the people around him. His honesty and his bravery to stand up for his convictions made him stand out. He was overall a fun guy to be around.

His fellow students were so fond of him that they couldn’t bother finding out the actual date he died. In a memorial piece about him they said that he died after July in the coal mine. The memorial was posted in 1947, 2 years after the war. However in their defense the date of June 23, appears to be an estimate. On his death certificate the date is given between June 23,1943 and May 1, 1945.

I often see these types of memorials of victims of the Holocaust, written or compiled by friends or colleagues. But to me they really are quite hollow. I don’t want to be judgmental, but what did they do to help the victims?

I know it is easy for me to say because I was never put in that situation, but I would hope I would at least have some level of bravery, even if it was to speak out.

Sources

https://www.oorlogslevens.nl/tijdlijn/Dagobert-Stibbe/02/148282

https://www.wiewaswie.nl/nl/detail/85029256

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/149814/dagobert-stibbe

https://www.geni.com/people/Dagobert-Stibbe/6000000000351944519

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About

Remembering Günther Ernst Aronade

Günther Ernst Aronade was born on March 19, 1918 Kattowitz, Germany, now Poland.

I am not sure on the exact date but it looks liked Günther and his wife Alisa (Ilse) Heymann moved to Amsterdam in 1938, I can only imagine because of the Nazi regime in Germany.

In September 1943 the couple ended up in Camp Westerbork, they managed to escape on September 15, 1943. They fled to France in December,

In France they were captured again and were sent to Auschwitz on February 10,1944 via Drancy.

Günther was murdered in Auschwitz on February 1943. he was aged 25.

His wife survived the war, she died on January 8, 1986. in Israel.

Source

https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/358450/gunther-ernst-aronade

https://www.geni.com/people/G%C3%BCnther-Aronade/6000000002292874170

https://www.geni.com/people/Alisa-Ilse-Heymann-Elsberg/6000000030450294861