European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)
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The following day we were taken to Birkenau, 4 or 5 km away and there it was totally different.
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Birkenau is a camp that was built on marshlands. There were old barracks. It made quiet an unsettling impression.
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They gave us striped uniforms and took pictures of us.
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They tattooed our registration numbers onto us.
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They tattooed this number.
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Of course that had a big effect on us.
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We were no longer called so-and-so. We had this number and were supposed to respond to this number.
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We had to learn it in German and in Polish, not easy. But we had to learn it quickly.
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Arrest 21st of October 1941
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I was not undercover, but I was arrested nevertheless on October 21st. 1941 for being a politically active communist.
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The police in Seine-Maritime knew all the people that belonged to the Communist Party or to the Communist Youth Movement.
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Before going undercover, we were politically active in public and therefore known.
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They knew quite well that we would continue after the banning of the party and kept a close watch on us.
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My parents did not really approve of my activities.
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My father was more of an anarchist and did not accept that I was politically active.
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He’d say: “You will see what happens to you”.
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My arrest was not very spectacular.
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When we went out to distribute the leaflets we’d hide them under our jacket. We didn’t take 500 at once.
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Petit Quevilly was a little town of 20,000 inhabitants and the police knew everyone, especially those they shouldn’t have known.
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The French and German police came to arrest us in the middle of the night.
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