Daily Routine at Blechhammer Concentration Camp
Object numberM2019/033:005
TitleDaily Routine at Blechhammer Concentration Camp
Creator Bob McPhillips
DescriptionDaily Routine at Blechhammer Concentration Camp
Artist Bob McPhillips, charcoal on paper, undated, unsigned.
"Six days a week the whistle woke us around 5am at which time we ran to roll call only to stand for hours while they counted us. While music played we marched out of the camp for our 12 hour day of work."
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 Fransman to illustrate his Holocaust experiences.
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’.
Artist Bob McPhillips, charcoal on paper, undated, unsigned.
"Six days a week the whistle woke us around 5am at which time we ran to roll call only to stand for hours while they counted us. While music played we marched out of the camp for our 12 hour day of work."
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 Fransman to illustrate his Holocaust experiences.
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: 1260.00 mm
height: 880.00 mm
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Harry Fransman