Art By Victims and Survivors

Photographic evidence of the camp at Drancy is slight. The German authorities at one point made some propaganda photographs in order to perpetrate the myth that the internees were well-fed and well-treated. These can be viewed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In the absence of truthful photographs, the art by a survivor who signed himself Georges Horan provides precious documentation. His charcoal drawings were smuggled out of the camp, and he published them shortly after the war in a volume titled Camp de Drancy (seuil de l’enfer juif) (Paris: Pouzet, 1946). The subsequent fate of this artist is unknown.The work of artist Jeanne Lévy was saved by a Red Cross nurse who later wrote an account of her 51-day internment at Drancy in La Vie à Drancy (Paris: Gedalgue, 1945). Lévy had been an artist at the Limoges porcelain works. She perished at Auschwitz. The account by survivor Georges Wellers in De Drancy à Auschwitz (Paris: Editions du Centre d Docmentation Juive contemporaine, 1946), contains additional art by the Ukranian artist who signed himself Gottko. He too, perished at Auschwitz.