European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

asked me if I was going to stop my activities as he thought I was going to pay dearly.

I answered him, that it was my business. I was 17 at the time and argued: “Should one stop just because…”

I asked him how he could work as a coppersmith on ships in 1936/1937 and not even join the trade union.

We had quite a discussion. He himself was not politically active. That took some effort and he worked a lot.

We had to keep a low profile. You can not really call it undercover; we were known to the police.

So we had to take some precautionary measures:

Only going out at night, and also being careful because of police raids. It was extremely difficult. But we did not give up.

When distributing leaflets we would try to go out at night, but also not too often, because one had to be careful.

Under these circumstances I became politically active, at work and in my daily life.

Introduction: family, school, work

My name is Lucien Ducastel. I am from the Seine-Maritime, in Normandy.

For three years, I was an apprentice butcher, but did not like it at all. I started working in construction, as a metal worker.

I worked very hard.

My parents, my father was a metal worker, a hard working man. He repaired ships.

Sometimes he worked on two or three ships a week. My mother was a textile worker.

I have my elementary school certificate. I was barely twelve years old.

My birthday is in the end of August and I got the certificate in June.

It was important to me. Afterwards, I started working.

And as I had very little ideas about what I wanted to do I became an apprentice butcher.

I worked there for three and a half years. I started to learn about the work. But in the end I never became a butcher.