My First Experience with Death
Object numberM2019/033:002
TitleMy First Experience with Death
Creator Bob McPhillips
DescriptionDrawing, titled: My First Experience with Death, Artist Bob McPhillips, c. 2014. Charcoal and pencil on paper.
In June 2014, the Sydney Jewish Museum launched an exhibition titled, ‘Drawing on Memory’, consisting of artworks by Lindsey Hatchwell, Joanne Morris and Bob McPhillips - commissioned by Harry J. Fransman to illustrate his Holocaust experiences.
"I was 17 and an apprentice in the men’s section of a department store when on the 14th of May 1940 Rotterdam was bombed. People were gathered around the store talking about what was going to happen now that the Germans have invaded our country. The Manager, Mr Vermeer, handed me a hastily written note on the back of a store bag and said Harry will you give this note to my wife, I said are you not going home after you leave here he replied please do as I ask and give this note to my wife. At that moment I heard a strange sound coming from above.
The first bomb exploded on the street outside smashing the windows, the next fell on our building. I grabbed the note and dove into an open lift nearby as the ceiling came down with a big chandelier. Lying flat on the floor of the lift, with rubble pressing heavy on my back, I was choking dust and cement filled air. Sometime later I crawled out of the elevator towards the light. I was the only survivor from that building. The earth was still shaking as the bombs were still falling. At Mr Vermeer’s funeral I delivered the note to his wife." Harry Fransman
Harry J. Fransman recalls countless brushes with death but survived due to a series of ‘miracles’. On 10 May 1940, Germany invaded The Netherlands. It was the beginning of a five-year fight for survival. From the German bombing of Rotterdam where, as a 17-year-old apprentice in the men’s section of a department store he was the only survivor of the bomb blast, through the increasingly brutal antisemitic measures of the occupation, the inhumane treatment he experienced as a forced labourer, the harsh conditions he encountered in Blechhammer (sub-camp of Auschwitz), to his daring escape from a death march in the last chaotic weeks of the collapsing Third Reich, Harry’s story is expressed through drawings.
Focusing on these events experienced throughout the war, Harry does not hold back on relating graphic details for the artists to depict: selection, roll call, punishment (beatings, whippings, hangings), humiliation, sexual abuse, starvation, exhaustion, infestation with lice, and cannibalism in Gross-Rosen concentration camp, all illustrated through the direction and narration of the survivor in collaboration with the skilled artists. These seminal events, seared into Harry’s memory, confront the viewer with the harsh reality of the war years and illuminate why survivors, like Harry, attribute their survival to a ‘miracle’.
In June 2014, the Sydney Jewish Museum launched an exhibition titled, ‘Drawing on Memory’, consisting of artworks by Lindsey Hatchwell, Joanne Morris and Bob McPhillips - commissioned by Harry J. Fransman to illustrate his Holocaust experiences.
"I was 17 and an apprentice in the men’s section of a department store when on the 14th of May 1940 Rotterdam was bombed. People were gathered around the store talking about what was going to happen now that the Germans have invaded our country. The Manager, Mr Vermeer, handed me a hastily written note on the back of a store bag and said Harry will you give this note to my wife, I said are you not going home after you leave here he replied please do as I ask and give this note to my wife. At that moment I heard a strange sound coming from above.
The first bomb exploded on the street outside smashing the windows, the next fell on our building. I grabbed the note and dove into an open lift nearby as the ceiling came down with a big chandelier. Lying flat on the floor of the lift, with rubble pressing heavy on my back, I was choking dust and cement filled air. Sometime later I crawled out of the elevator towards the light. I was the only survivor from that building. The earth was still shaking as the bombs were still falling. At Mr Vermeer’s funeral I delivered the note to his wife." Harry Fransman
Harry J. Fransman recalls countless brushes with death but survived due to a series of ‘miracles’. On 10 May 1940, Germany invaded The Netherlands. It was the beginning of a five-year fight for survival. From the German bombing of Rotterdam where, as a 17-year-old apprentice in the men’s section of a department store he was the only survivor of the bomb blast, through the increasingly brutal antisemitic measures of the occupation, the inhumane treatment he experienced as a forced labourer, the harsh conditions he encountered in Blechhammer (sub-camp of Auschwitz), to his daring escape from a death march in the last chaotic weeks of the collapsing Third Reich, Harry’s story is expressed through drawings.
Focusing on these events experienced throughout the war, Harry does not hold back on relating graphic details for the artists to depict: selection, roll call, punishment (beatings, whippings, hangings), humiliation, sexual abuse, starvation, exhaustion, infestation with lice, and cannibalism in Gross-Rosen concentration camp, all illustrated through the direction and narration of the survivor in collaboration with the skilled artists. These seminal events, seared into Harry’s memory, confront the viewer with the harsh reality of the war years and illuminate why survivors, like Harry, attribute their survival to a ‘miracle’.
Production date 2014 - 2014
Object namedrawings
Materialpaper
Dimensions
- width: 800.00 mm
height: 1070.00 mm
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Harry Fransman