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Albert

« The clarinet saved my life. »

Albert Veissid

Albert was born in Constantinople, Turkey, in 1924. He was just eight months old when his family moved to Lyon, France. Then, his brother was born. As a teenager, he worked as a salesman in a fabric store and attended the music conservatory, where he studied guitar and clarinet.
Arrested at work, he was taken to Drancy, where he made friends with the person in charge of the garbage bins, who would use them to pass on messages and objects. That's how he managed to send a letter to his parents, telling them to hide; it would save them. Deported to Auschwitz on convoy 75, he pretended to be a bricklayer, and was selected to work in a building outside the camp, alongside Poles. T The Nazis decided to look for musicians among the Jewish inmates to form an orchestra, and Albert successfully auditioned.
Albert was now the clarinet player for the Auschwitz orchestra. They played in the mornings, when the deportees left for work, and in the evenings, when they would return to the camp. The rest of the day, the musicians would rehearse in a room located under the Auschwitz brothel, which was another one of the "entertainments" the Nazis enjoyed, as well as Sunday family concerts.
Albert narrowly survived the death marches. After the war, he was diagnosed with a collapsed lung. He would lose a lung and never played the clarinet again. He nevertheless continued his musical career, playing the guitar. In 2009, while renovation was taking place in a building in the Auschwitz camp, a glass bottle containing a message was found in a wall. On the message were inscribed the names of seven deportees: six Polish Christians and one French Jew - Albert Veissid. For Albert, who had no recollection of the existence of this genuine “bottle in the sea”, launched at the time by the prisoners in the hope that they would not be forgotten, it was the greatest surprise of his life.
Albert died in 2019, just two months after sharing his story with Les Derniers/The Last Ones.



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