My Daring Escape
Object numberM2019/033:026
TitleMy Daring Escape
Creator Bob McPhillips
DescriptionMy Daring Escape
Artist Bob McPhillips, oil on canvas, signed McPhillips, November 2014.
"It was dark but there was some moonlight. I woke up from being in a feverous coma where I saw my mother telling me not to give up. Feeling so sick and starving, I shook Joe who was laying by my left but he did not respond. I shook Bruno many times until he looked at me with frost on his face. I told him that I have to get out of this train or I will die. Bruno embraced me and he said G-d Bless you Harry, I hope you will make it. Slowly I forced myself to get up and crawling over the bodies of the men I made my way, hoping not to be seen by the SS man sitting in a lookout box but he was a sleep. I pushed myself up and went over the side and fell into the snow. After lying there for some time the all clear siren started and lights along the tracks went on. I pushed myself closer to the rails so not to be seen. The train started slowly and then it regained speed, until all the box cars with their mostly dead cargo went past. I watched until the red light on the last carriage disappeared. As I lay in the snow it went through my head that for the first time in three years I was a free man, but I was in the lion’s den."
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, oil on canvas, signed McPhillips, November 2014.
"It was dark but there was some moonlight. I woke up from being in a feverous coma where I saw my mother telling me not to give up. Feeling so sick and starving, I shook Joe who was laying by my left but he did not respond. I shook Bruno many times until he looked at me with frost on his face. I told him that I have to get out of this train or I will die. Bruno embraced me and he said G-d Bless you Harry, I hope you will make it. Slowly I forced myself to get up and crawling over the bodies of the men I made my way, hoping not to be seen by the SS man sitting in a lookout box but he was a sleep. I pushed myself up and went over the side and fell into the snow. After lying there for some time the all clear siren started and lights along the tracks went on. I pushed myself closer to the rails so not to be seen. The train started slowly and then it regained speed, until all the box cars with their mostly dead cargo went past. I watched until the red light on the last carriage disappeared. As I lay in the snow it went through my head that for the first time in three years I was a free man, but I was in the lion’s den."
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, trains
Object namepaintings
Dimensions
- width: 1720.00 mm
height: 1416.00 mm
depth: 50.00 mm
Credit lineSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Harry Fransman