European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

General De Gaulle’s speech and the Shoah.

That is very important, but it is not enough to explain the complexity of World War II.

We were asked by history teachers to talk about our experience in class.

We thought it was important to do even more

and started organizing school trips to different memorials, the places where Nazi crimes were committed.

We organized school trips to Oradour s/Glane,

to Struthof, the only Nazi concentration camp there was in France, in Alsace.

We took classes of three different schools to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

We want to show young people the atrocities of racism and xenophobia, the total absence of freedom.

There are several of us.

One comrade, Lucien Ducastel had been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

We also do this in memory of our comrades who died in Auschwitz.

Today more than ever it is necessary to do this work, because in Europe

because in Europe there is a dangerous rise of fascism.

Let us remember that Hitler got to power legally.

Nowadays, there a few European countries that have a right-extremist government.

It might seem pretentious but we think we have not finished our work.

We need to talk to young people, guide them for the future, show them the importance of being brotherly.

I don’t answer all questions. When they ask me how many Germans I killed I won’t answer.

I don’t think it is interesting.