Hiding Behind the Bodies Outside the Crematorium
Object numberM2019/033:011
TitleHiding Behind the Bodies Outside the Crematorium
Creator Lyndsey Hatchwell
DescriptionHiding Behind the Bodies Outside the Crematorium
Artist Lyndsey Hatchwell, charcoal on paper, undated, unsigned.
"I had survived three years in Blechhammer when panic arose due to the approaching Russian Army. I did not want to leave the camp. I knew that I would likely die due to the very cold weather. I ran away and hid behind a pile of naked bodies at the crematorium. I saw two SS men with drawn pistols looking for people but they did not see me.
Eventfully I had no choice and I could not hide forever. I joined some hundreds of inmates collected by the SS and taken out of the camp on the now well-known Death Marches."
Part of a collection of drawings by Lyndsey Hatchwell, Joanne Morris and Bob McPhillips commissioned by Harry J. 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 Lyndsey Hatchwell, charcoal on paper, undated, unsigned.
"I had survived three years in Blechhammer when panic arose due to the approaching Russian Army. I did not want to leave the camp. I knew that I would likely die due to the very cold weather. I ran away and hid behind a pile of naked bodies at the crematorium. I saw two SS men with drawn pistols looking for people but they did not see me.
Eventfully I had no choice and I could not hide forever. I joined some hundreds of inmates collected by the SS and taken out of the camp on the now well-known Death Marches."
Part of a collection of drawings by Lyndsey Hatchwell, Joanne Morris and Bob McPhillips commissioned by Harry J. 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
Subjectsurvivors, Post-Holocaust Art
Object namedrawings
Materialpaper
Dimensions
- width: 1230.00 mm
height: 870.00 mm
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Harry Fransman