Jean Lafaurie, 102 years outdated: surviving the camps and nonetheless resisting | EUROtoday

“I am still resistant. I resist everything! The proof, I am still here.” In a mischievous smile, Jean Lafaurie sums up the watchword of a lifetime: resist in opposition to all odds. His 102 years appear to have no affect on him. He has lived alone at residence, in Seine-et-Marne, for the reason that dying of his spouse and manages his busy schedule himself. Dressed to the nines, he receives his guests with a smile on his face and a tie round his neck. The centenarian nonetheless faces the world with the glowing eyes of a former child who stated “no” very early on.

“The red one is the Legion of Honor. The yellow one is the Military Medal. The other one is that of the volunteer fighters of the Resistance. And that is the deportation medal. The other one, I don’t remember anymore…”, he lists in entrance of his quite a few decorations. “The most beautiful for me is the Military Medal, because to have it you have to have done something special, a major act of the Resistance,” he provides with a sure satisfaction.

“Patriotism stuck to the skin”

This dedication was born tons of of kilometers away, in Souillac, a small city in Lot, within the southwest of France, the place Jean Lafaurie grew up in a modest household. The boy left college on the age of 13. He was then immersed within the concepts of the Popular Front and commerce unionism and joined the Young Communists. “The elders spoke to us from 14-18. We had patriotism stuck to our skin,” he remembers.

In May 1940, when he found photographs of Germans marching by way of Paris in a newspaper, the shock was extreme: “I started to cry because it seemed impossible to me.” A number of months later, when a pal supplied to distribute leaflets and underground newspapers, Jean Lafaurie didn’t hesitate: “I said yes straight away!” During the day, he works as a scrap steel employee. At night time, he broadcasts the writings of the Resistance. In March 1942, he realized from the gendarmes that they’d acquired a letter of denunciation about him. The younger man denies it, however he is aware of his days are numbered.

He then determined to affix a maquis in Corrèze which bears the title of Guy Môquet, in reminiscence of a younger communist resistance fighter shot in 1941. “There were 17 of us in the woods. We just had an old parachute to shelter us from the rain. We slept on the ground. We didn’t eat every day. We had weapons that didn’t work.” In June 1943, whereas touring, he was lastly arrested by a patrol of the Mobile Reserve Group (GMR), a Vichy police unit: “When they saw us coming out of a small path with our weapons, they understood that we were not walkers.”

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The rebellion on the Eysses energy station

For Jean Lafaurie, it’s the begin of a protracted jail journey. Imprisoned in Tulles, then in Limoges for “acts of terrorism”, he lastly discovered himself on the Eysses detention middle, in Villeneuve-sur-Lot. In this jail, the Vichy authorities gathered greater than 1,200 resistance fighters, primarily communists.

Very politicized, the inmates arrange themselves and procure the goodwill of the director. Among the actions arrange by the prisoners: theater, programs and sports activities competitions. “We had a youth party. We asked all the young people to come with white, blue and red jerseys to form a flag. There was also a portrait of De Gaulle.”

This “Republic of Eysses”, because it calls itself, isn’t solely festive. The prisoners are actively making ready a collective escape. On February 19, 1944, making the most of the go to of a Vichy inspector common, the inmates took him prisoner and took management of the jail. The preventing raged for twenty-four hours and Jean Lafaurie forgot nothing of this rebellion: “One of our friends, Louis Aulagne, received a grenade at his feet. He stooped to pick it up and threw it towards a watchtower, but it exploded before. It was open everywhere. Half an hour later, he died.”

But the struggle is unequal. The insurgents should give up when the Germans threaten to bomb the jail. Twelve mutineers have been shot on February 23. Jean Lafaurie’s throat tightens as he remembers the reminiscence of his comrades. After a protracted pause, he murmurs: “They refused to be blindfolded…”

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In the hell of Dachau

The surviving rebels don’t escape sanctions. More than 1,000 males, together with Jean Lafaurie, have been handed over to the German authorities by Vichy. After passing by way of the Royallieu camp in Compiègne, they have been deported in June 1944 to the Dachau focus camp, the primary opened by the Nazis in 1933 to lock up their political opponents. “My first memory when we got off the train were these kids throwing stones at us. We told these children that we were criminals, that we had killed Germans,” remembers the previous resistance fighter. “We were also surprised to see prisoners in striped uniforms hitting others.”

Jean Lafaurie understands that he has simply entered one other world: “We could have said like Dante: ‘If you enter here, all hope is lost.'” Yet for eleven months, the younger man, then aged 20, held on. Assigned to the BMW manufacturing facility which manufactures components for the German military, he should work 12 hours a day. The speeds are hellish and the blows rain down.

In January 1945, he injured himself with a rusty piece of steel: “It becomes infected very quickly and turns into phlegmon. I cannot get treatment. One day, I am so fed up because my arm has swollen that I tell my friends that I am not going to eat. I would rather die than continue to suffer like that. But one of them replied to me: ‘Little one, if you let yourself go, I will kick your ass and it will hurt more than your arm’ It made me laugh and I forgot what I had just said.”

As in Eysses jail, the camaraderie permits the deportees to carry on. Every day, the prisoners hold items of bread or somewhat soup to offer to the weakest. “For me, what was most striking was solidarity. When we have nothing left, what can we give? We realize that we can give a lot of things. Nothing but a word of comfort,” insists Jean Lafaurie.

In the spring of 1945, after quite a few bombing alerts, the prisoners knew that the Allies have been making progress. They feared that the SS would execute them in order to not go away any traces, however the German troopers ended up leaving the camp.

On April 29, American troopers entered Dachau. “They had to help me get up to go to the fence to see their arrival,” remembers the resistance fighter from Lot. “So obviously there was joy, but we also thought about everyone we had lost.” In complete, almost 15,000 French individuals handed by way of this focus camp, 1,600 died there.

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A protracted silence

When he returned to France, Jean Lafaurie weighed solely 36 kilos. Those near him discover it laborious to consider what he skilled: “The worst was my mother. She asked me to tell her how things were going in the camps. So I wrote and after three pages, she told me that it wasn’t possible and that I was talking nonsense. From then on, I told myself that it wasn’t worth it and that we shouldn’t talk about it.”

Seven months after his launch, he married a younger woman from his area. Together they’ve six kids. His job in dealing with requires him to journey lots. For many years, the previous resistance fighter remained silent. It was solely as soon as he retired, in 1983, that he lastly determined to go on his story.

Since then, he has traveled throughout France all year long to fulfill college students. “I’m the only one who can do it,” he notes. “I want this story of Eysses and the deportation to be known. We must make them understand that what we did made it possible to liberate France.”

The centenarian who noticed his youth shattered by the conflict doesn’t conceal his concern about present occasions and the rise of hatred. “The situation scares me, like many people. History teachers bring me here because they see what is happening in Europe. It is the hard right that has been elected almost everywhere and everyone is in the process of rearming.”

At 102 years outdated, the previous mutineer remains to be as combative as ever. Despite his nice age, there is no such thing as a query of sitting on his couch. On behalf of his lacking comrades, he has a message and values ​​to convey: “I especially speak to young people about solidarity and I tell them that freedom and democracy must be defended. Because one day or another, they can be suppressed.”