Description
Object description
French civilian worked for Ministry of Information in Paris, France, 1939-1940; member of French Resistance in Dinard and Paris, France, 1940-1944; inmate in Ravensbruck, Torgau and Konigsberg camps, 1944-1945 [partly in French]
Content description
REEL 1 Background in France, 1919-1939: father's military service in First World War; visit to Germany, 1930s; reaction to reading Hitler's Mein Kampf. Aspects of period as civilian worker with Ministry of Information, 1939-1940: work monitoring émigrés and their opinions; observing manipulation of discussions to gain information from émigrés; observation of German and Russian émigrés; impact of Russo-German Pact, 1939. Aspects of period as civilian living in Dinard, 1940: character of journey from Paris to Dinard, 5/1940; role as interpreter for mayor in dealings with Germans; German requisitioning of houses in Dinard; Germans refusal to speak French; impressions of Admiral Canaris; reasons for remaining in Dinard after parent's return to Paris, 8/1940. Recollections of period as member of French Resistance in Dinard and Paris, 1940-194: initial contact with Resistance.
REEL 2 Continues: question of initial confidence in contact; degree of knowledge of contact; arrest for suspected espionage and treatment by military tribunal, 1/1941; conditions on release after imprisonment in Rennes Prison, 2/1941; return to Paris; work for association of businessmen working with Germans; types of information gleaned from work; means of passing on information; keeping parents ignorant of activities; arrest by Gestapo in house on coast on route to debriefing in London, 4/1944; interrogation in Rennes Prison; transfer to Fresnes Prison. Recollections of period as inmate of Ravensbruck, Torgau and Koningsberg Concentration Camps in Germany, 1944-1945: arrival in camp, 8/1944; question of using false names; refusal to work on production of ammunition in factory at Torgau; conditions at Ravensbruck and Torgau and Konigsberg; worked building runway.
REEL 3 Continues: number of layers need to produce surface of runway; got on truck taking victims of typhus back to Ravensbruck; finding accommodation in roof of hut; conditions in punishment block; called to report by loudspeaker; rescued by Swedish Red Cross; physical condition on arrival in Sweden and medical treatment; recovery from removal of one lung.