European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

They would let us in. We’d arrive at different times.

But then there was also the need to hide the material, the mimeograph, the typewriter etc…

We had to be careful with all of that.

There were various newspaper publications in the Rouen region,

talking about the number of political activists being arrested. One had to be very careful.

We had a certain amount of support in the population.

Some people said we shouldn’t do that, or when we were arrested, they’d say:

“They shouldn’t have done that”, but others did support us, some of them very quietly because they were afraid.

If the police detected a connection between a person and well-known political activist, you could be arrested.

It was dangerous for us as well as for the people we’d give the material to - if they were caught by the police etc. It was very difficult.

First political engagements

I started working in a factory in 1934/1935. And then were the big days of 1936.

It was then I joined the labor movement. I participated in the big strikes of 1936. I was 16, worked in a factory.

Later on, in 1937/1938 I joined the Communist Youth Movement.

There you could fight for your demands.

My friends at the time asked me, “Why don’t you join the Communist Youth Movement?” So I did.

In 1936 we participated in the Trade Union’s activities. We participated in the strikes and then I joined the Communist Youth Movement.

It meant that we had to prepare ourselves to go undercover. We were in a semi-undercover state.

The Communist Party and the Communist Youth Movement had been outlawed, which caused a lot of turmoil.

My father, who had anarchist tendencies,