Sarah Timperman, Stéphanie Perrin, Déportés de Malines à Auschwitz. Des témoins racontent..., 2015. (no. 3) [Deportees from Mechlin to Auschwitz: Witnesses Speak...]

The documentary Deportees from Mechlin to Auschwitz is the third volume in the ‘Words from the Archives’ collection produced by Remembrance of Auschwitz from audiovisual accounts collected by the Auschwitz Foundation.

This documentary, based on interviews with survivors of the Nazi camps selected from those collected by the Auschwitz Foundation in the 1990s, tells the story of the deportation of six survivors from Mechelen/Malines [Mechlin] to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

They talk about the conditions under which they were transported to their destination (escape attempts, fear, promiscuity) and their arrival at the Birkenau camp, where they were selected as soon as they got off the train.

Separated from their families, they are part of the very small minority deemed fit for work and enter the camp where, stripped of their identity and deeply humiliated, they become numbers. The so-called ‘quarantine’ period begins for them, during which everything is done to break them morally and physically.

These six witnesses tell of their various experiences: David Mandelbaum, who left with one of the first convoys, made the journey in a passenger train; Félix Lipszyc was an indirect witness to the attack on the 20th convoy, of which he was a member; Jacques Raffeld was put in charge of his wagon; Sarah Goldberg and Paul Halter, who left with the 21st and 22nd convoys respectively, were two members of the resistance; and finally, 14-year-old Marie Pinhas was deported with her parents on the last convoy from Mechelen to Auschwitz-Birkenau.


This film, directed by Sarah Timperman and Stéphanie Perrin of Remembrance of Auschwitz, is on sale at the price of €12.50.

Duration of the documentary: 44 min.

The film is in French, subtitled in Dutch.

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