Raymond D. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4280) [videorecording] / interviewed by Yannis Thanassekos and Jean-Marie De Becker, April 23, 2001.

Brussels, Belgium : Fondation Auschwitz, 2001.

1 videorecording (2 hr., 57 min.) : col.

French

Videotape testimony of Raymond D., who was born in approximately 1938, an orphan. He recounts being hidden in Brussels in 1942 (he recalls a house, but does not remember with whom he was hiding); being moved to a convent in Borsbeek; transfer to Antwerp, then Malines; release with eleven other children to an Association des juifs de Belgique (AJB) children's home in Vlezenbeek, then to another elsewhere; the Resistance hiding him in a convent in Rixensart; liberation; placement in an AJB home in Aische-en-Rafail; living with a family of survivors who wanted to adopt him; transfer to an AJB home in Lasne-Chapelle-Saint-Lambert for two years; renouncing Judaism and belief in God; transfer to Jewish children's homes in Ronquières, Auderghem, and Brussels; not being allowed to see his “adoptive” family or to be adopted by other families; difficulties in school and with their enforced religion; military service from 1955-1957; changing his surname to one that did not identify him as a Jew; contact with a former Resistance member who tried to assist him to find out who he is; meetings with the children who were with him in Malines; receiving restitution; and marriage. Mr. D. discusses physical and sexual abuse after the war in the children's homes; the “black hole” of his identity; several trips to Israel; depression due to extensive press coverage of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz; and continuing contact with a person who had been in the AJB homes with him. He shows documents.

April 23, 2004

Raymond D. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4280). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Raymond D. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4280). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)