European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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.

Our task was to ensure his safety.

While distributing leaflets, there was always an armed squadron to protect the comrades from the police.

Slowly the population itself started doing the protecting.

We had a certain amount of support in the population. In the beginning there was mostly fear.