European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

Often they were Germans, Poles.

It was very difficult, very hard. We got lots of beatings.

In the beginning we thought we shouldn’t take that, but we soon saw that there was no way out, as life there was so terrible.

It was difficult to form a group.

Those of us that had been arrested as French resistance fighters were scattered.

They knew exactly who we were.

It was very different from the camp in Compiègne. There we were still active, we resisted, discussed, talked.

But here we were seperated and with all the block leaders, the Vorarbeiter, the team chiefs, the Kapos

it was extremely difficult, as they were very loose with their batons.

We were not necessarily amongst French people at all. Sometimes there were 2 or 3 French people in a group of 150 or 200 men.

Most of them were Poles. They did not like us very much.

There were Germans as well, so-called Reichsdeutsche. They had mostly been arrested for political reasons.

Deportation to Compiègne and Auschwitz-Birkenau

I had been under observation by the police for some time.

When the Communist Party and leftist organizations were banned and had to go underground,

I was known to the police and was being watched.

On October 21st, 1941, they knocked on my door at four o’clock in the morning and I was arrested bay French and German police.

I was taken to Rouen, along with another 100 resistance fighters from the who had been arrested the same night.

We were interrogated, but not too harshly. We were not obliged to talk about things we didn’t want to.

Then we were taken to the camp of Compiègne and from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau.