First Experience with Death

‘My First Experience with Death’, by Bob McPhillips, c 2014, charcoal and pastel on paper, is part of a collection of works by three artists - Lindsey Hatchwell, Joanne Morris and Bob McPhillips - commissioned by Harry J. Fransman to illustrate his Holocaust experiences.

Harry describes this scene in which he narrowly escaped death:

"I was 17 and an apprentice in the men’s section of a department store when on the 14th of May 1940 Rotterdam was bombed. People were gathered around the store talking about what was going to happen now that the Germans have invaded our country. The first bomb exploded on the street outside smashing the windows, the next fell on our building. I dove into an open lift nearby as the ceiling came down with a big chandelier. Lying flat on the floor of the lift, with rubble pressing heavy on my back, I was choking dust and cement filled air. Sometime later I crawled out of the elevator towards the light. I was the only survivor from that building. The earth was still shaking as the bombs were still falling."

Harry recalls countless brushes with death. On 10 May 1940, Germany invaded The Netherlands. It was the beginning of a five-year fight for survival. From the German bombing of Rotterdam where he was the only survivor of the bomb blast, through the increasingly brutal antisemitic measures of the occupation, the inhumane treatment he experienced as a forced labourer, the harsh conditions he encountered in Blechhammer (sub-camp of Auschwitz), to his daring escape from a death march in the last chaotic weeks of the collapsing Third Reich, Harry’s story is expressed through drawings.

These seminal events, seared into Harry’s memory, confront the viewer with the harsh reality of the war years and illuminate why Harry attributes his survival to a miracle.