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.