European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

The major answered: “Don’t worry. We have very good surgeons in Germany, go ahead.”

I then got in touch with my superiors.

It was decided that I would be sent to a ‘maquis’ in Corèse.

Upon arrival in Brives, I was to contact the comrades.

When I passed the demarcation line, I was not able to establish contact.

The ‘maquis’ was under siege, after having derailed a German train filled with deportees.

I had already been controlled several times by the police with my false identification documents

and realized that the situation was getting dangerous.

So I returned to Nanterre and then was sent to work in a factory in the department of the Marne.

One day a few comrades and I – we were producing concrete platforms – sent a concrete wagon into a German barrack.

We did not wait for our wages… We left immediately and I returned to Nanterre where I stayed undercover.

I had a little basement room. My father did not know where I was.

He thought I had left for Germany, because when the Nazis and Pétain police

did not find the person they were looking for, they took their family along.

While I was undercover, we had very few weapons, a few hand arms.

My task was to organize an armed group to protect the people who would go to some public place to distribute leaflets or hold a speech.

The only entertainment that was allowed at the time was going to the movies.

Before the film itself they showed news/information edited by the Nazis, the French police, the French government.

That was when we intervened. We occupied the projectionists´ cabin and the directors’ office,

so that he couldn’t call the police, and one of our comrades, usually Louis Meunier, would get up and speak.