Selection
Object numberM2019/033:007
TitleSelection
Creator Lyndsey Hatchwell
DescriptionSelection by Lyndsey Hatchwell, charcoal, pastel on paper, 2014, unsigned.
Part of a collection of drawings by Lyndsey Hatchwell, Joanne Morris and Bob McPhillips commissioned by Harry J. Fransman to illustrate his Holocaust experiences.
"Sundays we did not work. This was when Lindner, a SA man, came to select us. Those too sick to work were sent to the gas chambers. My legs and buttocks were badly ulcerated with puss running out. Two of my friends were holding me up when he pointed his skeleton finger at me.
I was saved by Karl Demerer, a Jewish man in charge of the prisoners. He intervened by saying that this morning I had blisters on my feet and I was a good worker. Lindner looked angry but he sent me to the infirmary anyway."
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’.
Part of a collection of drawings by Lyndsey Hatchwell, Joanne Morris and Bob McPhillips commissioned by Harry J. Fransman to illustrate his Holocaust experiences.
"Sundays we did not work. This was when Lindner, a SA man, came to select us. Those too sick to work were sent to the gas chambers. My legs and buttocks were badly ulcerated with puss running out. Two of my friends were holding me up when he pointed his skeleton finger at me.
I was saved by Karl Demerer, a Jewish man in charge of the prisoners. He intervened by saying that this morning I had blisters on my feet and I was a good worker. Lindner looked angry but he sent me to the infirmary anyway."
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
SubjectPost-Holocaust Art, survivors
Object namedrawings
Materialpaper
Dimensions
- width: 1210.00 mm
height: 860.00 mm
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Harry Fransman