Junge Belgier

Jean Voste

Two survivors prepare food outside the barracks.
The man on the right, presumably, is Jean (Johnny) Vosté, born in Belgian Congo,
who was the only black prisoner in Dachau. (May 1945)

Hitler's Forgotten Victims also recalls the impact made by Black inmates on other inmates. A case in point is Johnny Voste, the Belgian Resistance fighter who was arrested in 1942 for sabotage in the town of Malignes, near Antwerp, and was deported to Dachau. The film's interview with Wily Sel reveals that "Johnny got the possibility to organise boxes of vitamins . . . and gave them to all his friends and buddies he had there. The survivors will say he saved our lives at that moment because it is true. The main technique to survive in the concentration camps was to like to live, not to die, to say 'No, you can't have my life: I will fight for it.'"

Uncovering the Black German Holocaust, Review by Delroy Constantine-Simms, University of Essex.