A Coat Sent from Heaven
Object numberM2019/033:016
TitleA Coat Sent from Heaven
Creator Bob McPhillips
DescriptionA Coat Sent from Heaven
Artist Bob McPhillips, charcoal on paper, undated, unsigned.
"In the camp Blechhammer there was a shortage of striped suits so we were issued with civilian clothes with a square cut out and replaced with a striped patch of fabric to identify us as prisoners. This saved my life as I was able to cover this patch with a grey blanket. A short time after my escape it was still dark. I saw a big building in the City of Leipzig but I did not know that at the time. As I stood there a boy in a Hitler youth uniform came down the stairs. I told him I was a free worker from Holland, working for a baker in Poland, until the Russian army approached. I did not like the Russians so I took off and I jumped from the train. He did not know what to do with me so he took me to the police. The Lieutenant wouldn’t be back on duty until the next morning so he took me a police cell down below, as I wasn’t a prisoner they left the door open. I knew the next day that I could no longer use the blanket to cover the patch. I was silently praying to G-d ‘please give me an overcoat’. I pulled the blanket off my bed to find an overcoat, my prayers were answered, and that saved my life."
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 Bob McPhillips, charcoal on paper, undated, unsigned.
"In the camp Blechhammer there was a shortage of striped suits so we were issued with civilian clothes with a square cut out and replaced with a striped patch of fabric to identify us as prisoners. This saved my life as I was able to cover this patch with a grey blanket. A short time after my escape it was still dark. I saw a big building in the City of Leipzig but I did not know that at the time. As I stood there a boy in a Hitler youth uniform came down the stairs. I told him I was a free worker from Holland, working for a baker in Poland, until the Russian army approached. I did not like the Russians so I took off and I jumped from the train. He did not know what to do with me so he took me to the police. The Lieutenant wouldn’t be back on duty until the next morning so he took me a police cell down below, as I wasn’t a prisoner they left the door open. I knew the next day that I could no longer use the blanket to cover the patch. I was silently praying to G-d ‘please give me an overcoat’. I pulled the blanket off my bed to find an overcoat, my prayers were answered, and that saved my life."
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: 1210.00 mm
height: 900.00 mm
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Harry Fransman