A SS Man Tried to Kill Me
Номер объектаM2019/033:012
НазваниеA SS Man Tried to Kill Me
Создатель Bob McPhillips
ОписаниеA SS Man Tried to Kill Me
Artist Bob McPhillips, charcoal on paper, undated, unsigned.
"In the camp I got to know a gentleman from Austria and his twin brother. During the Death March the SS were killing anyone not able to keep up. Those who could not walk any longer were shot in the neck. This is what happened to one of the twins. The one brother fell upon his dead brother’s body, pleading with the SS man to kill him too. The SS man was laughing and said your brother is not dead yet.
I, along with other friends, was trying to persuade him to walk when the SS man pointed his rifle at me but it did not go off. He was screaming and angry. He swung the rifle by the barrel at me but he missed by head and hit me on the shoulder. The rifle broke, enraging him further. He pulled out his pistol and the bullets flew by my head as I started to run."
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 I got to know a gentleman from Austria and his twin brother. During the Death March the SS were killing anyone not able to keep up. Those who could not walk any longer were shot in the neck. This is what happened to one of the twins. The one brother fell upon his dead brother’s body, pleading with the SS man to kill him too. The SS man was laughing and said your brother is not dead yet.
I, along with other friends, was trying to persuade him to walk when the SS man pointed his rifle at me but it did not go off. He was screaming and angry. He swung the rifle by the barrel at me but he missed by head and hit me on the shoulder. The rifle broke, enraging him further. He pulled out his pistol and the bullets flew by my head as I started to run."
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’.
Дата 2014 - 2014
Наименованиеdrawings
Материалpaper
Размерность
- width: 1220.00 mm
height: 750.00 mm
Кредитная линияSydney Jewish Museum Collection, Donated by Harry Fransman