From Poland to Argentina, the last Nazi death camp survivors talked to AFP

In Yannick Pasquet's special report - "Tell what happened to us": the last death camp survivors - they told of what was done to them and so many millions more during those dark years. "We are the very last generation" who can personally testify to the horrors of what happened, said 86-year-old Evelyn Askolovitch, who was four when she was taken from her home in France to the camps. Some, like 97-year-old Austrian Erich Richard Finsches, feel the need to keep the memory alive is even more pressing now, because "these are dark times" too.

 

The idea was to document, film and photograph as many survivors as possible and to give them a chance to speak while they still can, said Samantha Dubois, AFP's Europe Photo Editor, and Deborah Pasmantier, a deputy editor-in-chief who is in charge of long reads. The youngest of the survivors AFP talked to were actually born in the camps. They are now in their 80s, the oldest was nearly 110. Some were afraid the Holocaust would be forgotten, "drowned out" by the weight of history or by the constant stream of social media.

AFP journalists on five continents interviewed the survivors between November 2024 and January 2025. Often they had their portraits taken in front of walls covered in the pictures of their descendants -- a living, breathing rebuke to the Nazis' murderous madness that swept away six million Jews.

 

"I wanted them to be photographed straight on so they were looking straight at us, so we were exchanging not just a look but their personal history -- how they have lived their lives as survivors of the unimaginable," said Dubois, who drew up the guidelines on how they should be shot. "This is our common history -- we are the children of this history -- and of what it brings us back to today with the rise of anti-Semitism and populism in Europe" and elsewhere, she added. "It was important too that they were with their families because that represents transmission, continuity and the force of life." 

 

AFP photographers asked the same four questions of all the survivors, starting with their deportation; what they have been able to pass on, and what will happen to that legacy when they are no longer there. Finally, we asked about their hopes and fears for those who have come after them.

Most of the survivors had been interviewed several times before. Questions about the usefulness of putting them through the trauma again to ask about what we already know obviously arose. But Holocaust historians we consulted pointed to the importance of direct testimony when there would soon be no one alive who was actually there. Our approach was "to concentrate on them as people, asking open questions to let them decide what they wanted to say, be it for the first or the last time," said Pasmantier. And the survivors went much further in their replies than we expected.

 

"At this historical pivot point," when many may soon be gone, "we also wanted to look at how the younger generations are taking on this heritage", said Pasmantier. Particularly "at a time when anti-Semitism is surging in a way we haven't seen since the end of World War II, with some even questioning the facts of what happened."

"The hours of recordings were difficult to listen to," Pasmantier admitted. "The tears, the silences, the depth of the pain. But there were also happy childhood memories that would suddenly come up, as well as the love and affection between them and their grandchildren." And there were touching little exchanges with the photographers as well, she said, as when the South African survivor Ella Blumenthal told AFP's Gianluigi Guercia that "you really look like my cousin from Paris". Some found it very hard to talk but insisted on doing so "because we must", while Pasmantier found others were surprisingly upbeat, joyful even, talking of "the miracle of life, despite everything."

Of the survivors contacted through the Auschwitz Museum in Poland "not all of them agreed" to talk, said AFP photographer Wojtek Radwanski. "For some it was too difficult, for some too exhausting." In Argentina too, some survivors "were very old, had trouble talking and had memory problems", said photographer Juan Mabromata in Buenos Aires. He confessed he was "uncomfortable" too about asking to photograph the camp tattoos on their arms. But after meeting them, Mabromata's only regret is that "I wish I had done (the story) before" when they were younger. Polish-born Lola Mandelkier Sztrum, now 101 -- who came through both Majdanek and Auschwitz -- had such a "peaceful face", he said. "She fell asleep while we were there taking photos and talking with her daughter."

There was also a "really intense moment for everyone" when 88-year-old Czechoslovakia-born Petr Polacek was telling Mabromata about his time in the Theresienstadt camp. "We realised his daughter was upset -- she was hearing part of his story for the very first time" and she asked him why he hadn't told her before.

"Every now and then" AFP's South Africa-based photographer Gianluigi Guercia listens again to the recording of the conversation he had in Cape Town with Ella Blumenthal, who lost all her family in the Holocaust. She "had the greatest impact on me", he said. "I was touched by how a human being who went through such events as surviving Auschwitz and Majdanek could still be so life-affirming, even at 103. "She kept mentioning the 'art of surviving', and indeed, she was an artist at it. "One of the anecdotes she told me was particularly moving," he said. "She and her niece were inside the gas chamber, waiting to be killed. They had already said goodbye to each other, but someone realised they were in the wrong group. They were called out, and their lives were spared. Such a story and experience helps put things in perspective," Guercia said.

He also brought up the image of 100-year-old Henia Bryer that for him said everything about what the Nazis inflicted on them. It "captures the identification number tattoo of Henia Bryer -— a true symbol of dehumanisation. It is a visual and physical testimony to the perpetration of evil and a mark of the systematic method used for the complete extermination of a specific group of people."

"We've done a lot of stories about the Holocaust, World War II and the death camps -- this is part of the job in Poland unfortunately," said Warsaw-based photographer Radwanski. "I learnt a lot from each one. But probably the most impressive to me was the session with Marek Dunin-Wąsowicz and his grandson. The bond between them and their shared sense of humour is wonderful, even though Marek is 99 years old."

Athens bureau chief Yannick Pasquet -- who in her previous post in Berlin covered the last Nazi trial there -- had the job of weaving together all these testimonies. In a poignant twist, there were no Greek Jewish survivors left from Thessalonica able to talk to her -- even though they once made up the majority of the population of Greece's second city. "The idea was to make each testimony personal so we could reach something universal about the human condition," she said. 

 

One phrase from Marta Neuwirth, who was 15 when she witnessed women being walked calmly into the gas chambers, immediately jumped out to Pasquet: "How did the world allow Auschwitz?" "She allowed us to get at the fundamental question which has haunted the world since 1945," she said. The story of Polish-born Canadian Pinchas Gutter also marked her. The 92-year-old talked about not being able to remember his twin sister Sabrina's face. She was murdered in Majdanek when they were 11. "All he remembers of her is her beautiful blonde braid. It said everything. Everyone in the world can identify with a testimony like that." "Reading through all these testimonies took considerable time and was tough," Pasquet said. "But at the same time, despite what they went through, and the depressing state of the world now, these survivors all had a message of hope, and they carry that hope with them."

 

 

A dozen video portraits of survivors were also shot, using the same guidelines and the same four questions as the photo interviews. "Their testimonies were so strong that for our long format videos we decided we should just let their words speak for themselves, without the need for narration or banners or captions for context," said Gabrielle Chatelain, deputy editor in chief for video. The 12-minute-long film ended "naturally" on Julia Wallach, she said. 

 

Because Wallach found it so difficult to speak about what had happened to her, the rough images of the French Auschwitz survivor seemed at first difficult to use. But they were hugely moving at the same time. Her granddaughter Frankie trying to guide her, hugging her and gently pushing her on. In the end, she told her grandmother's story for her -- history being transmitted in front of us.