Published on 22/01/2025 23:22
Updated on 22/01/2025 23:36
Reading time: 1min – video: 7min
Holocaust: “When I talk about it like that, I don't have the impression that it's me I'm talking about. How could I endure all this? There is no answer,” says a death camp survivor
Ginette Kolinka, survivor of the Auschwitz Birkenau camp, and her son Richard Kolinka were the guests of the 20 Hours. They returned to the trying experience of Ginette Kolinka during the Second World War.
(France 2)
Ginette Kolinka, survivor of the Auschwitz Birkenau camp, and her son Richard Kolinka were the guests of the 20 Hours. They returned to the trying experience of Ginette Kolinka during the Second World War.
It took her more than fifty years to deliver her testimony on this dark page of History. Ginette Kolinka, 99, is a survivor of the Auschwitz Birkenau camp, in Poland. “Personally, I wanted to forget this period that I experienced. And then, everything that is said and everything that is read is nothing compared to reality. I was not talking about it out of modesty.”she explains on the set of “20 Heures” on France 2.
Arrested in March 1944 in Avignon (Vaucluse) with her father, her brother and her nephew, she arrived on April 16, 1944 in the Auschwitz Birkenau extermination camp. A painful experience from the first moments: “When we arrived, we had to get naked. And for me, it was terrible. I was naked in front of women I didn't know and I was ashamed. I didn't dare look. For me, this nudity was the beginning of the worst”she says.
Sorted and kept because the Nazis believed she was fit to go to work, Ginette narrowly escaped death. This was not the case for other members of his family. They were all sent to the gas chambers to be exterminated. “When I talk about it, I don't have the impression that I'm talking about myself. How could I endure all this? There is no answer”she continues.
