European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

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.

During war there is one essential rule:

If I don’t shoot first, he will shoot me. He didn’t do anything to me and I didn’t do anything to him.

I don’t know him. He has a family; I have a family as well. Why then, do we kill each other?

Why? Because the ones that decide on war are not the ones that fight it.

Liberation; Exchange of prisoners

Nanterre was liberated on the following day, August 21st, 1944.

The German officers all left for Mont Valérien, the only place they felt safe.