Les Derniers - Albert

Albert
Veissid

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. [...+]

My visit to Albert

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Albert

« The orchestra would rehearse to entertain the SS and their wives on Sunday afternoons »

Livres

Sophie Nahum
Les derniers
Rencontre avec les survivants des camps de concentration

There are not many left who can bear witness to the concentration camps. Barely a hundred men and women, who were silent for a long time in the face of a post-war France that was reluctant to listen to them. Survivors thanks above all to a succession of chance events, they were able to rebuild their lives with remarkable courage. Sophie Nahum went to meet the “Last Ones”, these extraordinary resilient people, including Ginette Kolinka and Élie Buzyn, for a series of short documentaries, from which results this choral book. Their testimonies echo each other, while revealing the singularity of each destiny. In this way, the last survivors of the Shoah – 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz – offer us a poignant look at their experiences.

“Touching. These men and women speak from the heart”. Paris Match

“My heart beat for [this] book.” Leila Kaddour.

Sophie Nahum has been making documentaries for over 20 years. After working for the major channels, most notably Arte, she decided to produce her films independently. Young et moi (2015, awarded at FIGRA) was the first, followed by the multi-media project “Les Derniers”, to which she has devoted herself entirely for the past four years.

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