European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

The following day we were taken to Birkenau, 4 or 5 km away and there it was totally different.

Birkenau is a camp that was built on marshlands. There were old barracks. It made quiet an unsettling impression.

They gave us striped uniforms and took pictures of us.

They tattooed our registration numbers onto us.

They tattooed this number.

Of course that had a big effect on us.

We were no longer called so-and-so. We had this number and were supposed to respond to this number.

We had to learn it in German and in Polish, not easy. But we had to learn it quickly.

Arrest 21st of October 1941

I was not undercover, but I was arrested nevertheless on October 21st. 1941 for being a politically active communist.

The police in Seine-Maritime knew all the people that belonged to the Communist Party or to the Communist Youth Movement.

Before going undercover, we were politically active in public and therefore known.

They knew quite well that we would continue after the banning of the party and kept a close watch on us.

My parents did not really approve of my activities.

My father was more of an anarchist and did not accept that I was politically active.

He’d say: “You will see what happens to you”.

My arrest was not very spectacular.

When we went out to distribute the leaflets we’d hide them under our jacket. We didn’t take 500 at once.

Petit Quevilly was a little town of 20,000 inhabitants and the police knew everyone, especially those they shouldn’t have known.

The French and German police came to arrest us in the middle of the night.