You can read this article in Spanish: http://latinodada.blogspot.de/2014/03/es-gibt-hier-keine-kinder-aqui-no-hay.html
Auschwitz,
Groß Rosen y Buchenwald
Thomas Geve – Drawings of a 15
year old boy made in a concentration camp
Thomas Geve was only 15 years
old when he was liberated in Buchenwald. US-American soldiers reached the
Concentration Camp near Weimar, the city of Goethe, in April 1945. Two years of
humiliation, torture and sickness ended. Right after that Thomas Geve started
to draw what he had seen from the moment of his deportation from Berlin to the “Extermination
Camp” Auschwitz Birkenau to his liberation in Buchenwald in 1945.
[Foto: Thomas Geve after his liberation, Switzerland 1945 - www.pianetapia.blogspot.com]
An exhibition in Cologne, Germany – May to August 2014
In 1939 Thomas Geve’s father
succeeded to immigrate to England. His plan was to provide VISAS for his wife
and his son as well. Then the Second World War started and all boarders were closed.
Thomas Geve was separated from
his mother by their arrival in Auschwitz in summer 1943. Therefore they had
delivered themselves to the Gestapo as their life in Berlin, even in the lowest
terms a human being could accept, had become impossible for Jews.
The SS killed in Auschwitz more
than one millions Jews, Gypsies, Russians, Ukrainians and other members of
races called by them the “unnecessary life” – “Unwertes Leben”. One more time Thomas
Geve met his mother. After some minutes she had to leave. He never saw her
again.
As if by a miracle the young
boy survived not even the hell of Auschwitz – he worked there as a brick layer – but also
the transport in spring 1945 to the concentration camps of Groß Rosen and later
to Buchenwald.
Only some days after his
liberation Thomas Geve started to draw his memories. The papers he used were
the applications for leave of the SS-officers. Before he met his father again he
created 79 children’s drawings about daily life in concentration camps.
Thomas Geve describes it like
this:
“After the liberation in
Buchenwald they sent me to the Block 29 in the main center. There I was the
only Jewish boy in a group of German Antifascists. From April to June I put my
memories down to paper. I wanted to show them my parents."
[Foto: Drawing of T. Geve - "Selection for the death" - http://corsowebwriting.wordpress.com/]
Thomas Geve lives today in Haifa,
Israel. For many years he refused to expose his work. Only in the last years,
after his retirement, he started to talk about his time as a prisoner. In 1985
he donated the drawings to the memorial-institution of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
From May 9th to August
3rd 2014 reproductions true to original of Thomas Geve’s drawings
will be exposed in the “EL-DE-Haus”, The Cologne NS-Documentation Center.
Thomas Geve will attend the
inauguration on May 8th 2014 at 7 p.m. in the EL-DE-building.
In June 2014 Mr. Geve will meet
several grades of German schools. In the last years he has been traveling to different
European countries to talk with school children about the custody in Auschwitz,
Groß Rosen and Buchenwald.
[Foto by Tanja Bosch: Thomas Geve showing German schoolchildren the tattoo with the prisoner number from Auschwitz]
An exhibition of Dr. Jörn
Wendland and Markus Thulin.
In
cooperation with the “NS-Dokumentationszentrum Köln”
The
memorial “Gedenkstätte Buchenwald Mittelbau-Dora“
And
the German foundation “Konrad Adenauer Stiftung”
You can join public tours in
the exposition on the following dates:
May 25 –
2 p.m. (no inscription required)
June 15
– 2 p.m. (no inscription required)
July 27
– 2 p.m. (no inscription required)
Private guided
Tours in German, English, Spanish and French can be booked under the homepage
of the Cologne’s museums service:
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