Pierre Volmer
Born in 1922
Strasbourg, April 14th 2001
I wasn't 18 yet in September 1939. I was 18 only in October. At the time, Strasbourg and all the villages alongside the Rhine were evacuated towards the southwest of France, and especially towards Périgord.
I was a secondary school pupil, I hadn't finished the final secondary school examination - only the first part of it. I arrived in Périgueux with my mother because she was a civil servant and the administration had been evacuated. There was the "phoney war". I was a boarder in the Périgueux secondary school, and things went on like during the "phoney war": we were waiting for the attack that was bound to happen.
They attacked and then there was the rout. The complete rout… And, in June '40, we wondered about a possible return to Alsace. So, after that, most of the people from Alsace and Moselle who'd been evacuated were thrown into complete confusion. But in the mind of most people, war was over.
It's understandable. At the time, the champion of anti-Bolshevism (that is to say Hitler) and the champion of anti-fascism (that is to say Stalin) had concluded what you can call a "gentlemen agreement" [
in English in the original]
, a pact. Except that they were no gentlemen [
in English in the original]
. And that's how all Europe (Norway, the Baltic States, Poland, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, France) were pocketed by the Nazis. Who could face Hitler? Not Russia as I've just said it… The United States were faraway and waited cautiously. Eventually, the only anti-fascist militants, if I may say so, were Churchill, General de Gaulle, the Queen of the Netherlands, the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg, some Poles, some Czechs, and that was it.
So, the prospects were gloomy and negative; only hope and clear-headedness remained. Because we already suspected it was only the beginning of a war which would become a world war… I won't paraphrase de Gaulle's speeches - people may have forgotten them: "This war is a world war".
In view of which, my mother and I took the decision to stay in Périgueux until the war actually became a world war. My aunt, who was single, went back to Alsace. A funny detail is that she managed to put our furniture in storage. The only persons who found fault with it were Alsatians who put new furniture in. But our neighbour could understand it pretty well since her family was German and her husband was Alsatian; she very clearly understood what the appropriate behaviour was, from a moral point of view. I'd like to pay tribute to this German woman who must have died since.
After the final secondary school examination, I arrived in Clermont-Ferrand, where the University of Strasbourg had been evacuated. And I registered at the faculty of sciences.
The Marshall got it all wrong… I'm not saying we shouldn't have signed the armistice; the argument can be justified… but Marshall Pétain shouldn't have promoted the armistice. It wouldn't have been that serious if some politician or other had signed it: things would have been clearer, and the French population wouldn't have been cheated, even if Marshall Pétain did it with the best intention. Well, forget it…
So, in Clermont-Ferrand, we were "protected" by the Vichy authorities. Yet, the professors and the students didn't subscribe to the "national Revolution" advocated by some revengeful right wing politicians, who besides were allied to some left wing defectors like Laval, Déat, Doriot, etc.
There was unrest among the teaching staff and the students at the University. They all joined resistance movements, and were in general guided by their professors. I joined les murs (?). It was passed on by word of mouth. The community of people from Alsace and Lorraine who'd withdrawn to Clermont-Ferrand actually was the breeding ground for the Resistance; after the war, letters between the Germans were found and prove it, if needed be.
At the same time, immediately after the armistice, Hitler hurried to annex Alsace and Lorraine totally, and thus broke his solemn promise made before the war saying that he wouldn't claim the French territory.
In 1942, at the end of November…
At the end of November there are a lot of anniversaries in Strasbourg. On November 22nd 1918, General Gouraud came into Strasbourg with all his troops by the street that is now called 22nd November Street… On November 22nd, 23rd, or 24th 1942, a Reichsüniversität Strassburg, the German University, was opened with great pomp; speeches celebrated the permanent return of the Germans from Alsace within the German country…
There are two other anniversaries, but I'm anticipating.
On November 24th 1943, a year after, the most important collective arrest of professors and students from the University of Strasbourg in Clermont took place; finally, on November 23rd 1945, General Leclerc entered Strasbourg. There's a coincidence about all these dates: 4 anniversaries within a few days!
But I'm going back a bit… Before speaking about these anniversaries, we were in Clermont, supposedly protected but the Marshall, who was completely senile.
When, I think it was in 1942, he received a delegation of worried students in Vichy, he welcomed us and said: "Welcome in the great French family!" But Alsace was French long before other French regions; I won't say a word about Nice, Corsica, Savoy, it's not really important.
Then he gave us a signed portrait of him as a present. At the time, when Admiral Darlant was the leader of the government, the Vichy government's nickname was SPA, the "Society for the Protection of the Admirals". Yet, one of the naval officers who was with Pétain stole the photograph and said: "We'll send it to you". But he never sent it.
Well, so we supposedly were protected. I must say that, apart from the refugee benefit, the University gave us a grant: it was enough to live, we weren't rich but we lived simply. And at the time, I lived in a students' hostel called the Gallia (like here in Strasbourg). It was a brand-new building that had been requisitioned and transformed into a hall of residence for boys - it wasn't mixed.
Since the Resistance became more and more active, there was a tactical conflict between Germans. On the one hand, the hardline Nazis wanted to put an end to the existence of the French University of Strasbourg in Clermont, because they thought it needed no longer to exist since there was a Reichsüniversität Strassburg [in German in the original] in Alsace. On the other hand, the diplomats and ambassador Abetz (?) (whose wife was Alsatian) were in favour of equivocation, they wanted to avoid scandal: "The irredentist Alsatians will never become good Germans, there's no need to drag them off. They can stay here and blend in with the local people, such as the Alsatians who, in 1870, had chosen to emigrate to the inland villages…"
A lot of dispatches were found dealing with their inner conflict. The SS claimed that we were the breeding ground for the Resistance of the Auvergne - (which was a bit exaggerated; the inhabitants of the Auvergne didn't need us to resist; even if there was a good relationship between the inhabitants of the Auvergne and Alsatians). So the Nazis hurried on to arrest us.
And one day, on June 24th 1943, a resistant fighter of the Auvergne was caught in a trap in Clermont-Ferrand. He was going to a meeting point but the Germans were waiting for him. He drew his revolver, killed two Germans, and turned back. It was an excuse to arrest us. They said the murderer was to be sought among the core of the University of Strasbourg. So the Gestapo surrounded the building called the Gallia during the night of June 24th to the 25th 1943: we were 37 or 38 to get kicked in a truck. They got this military operation done fast.
We stayed for two days in the military prison of the 92nd infantry regiment, in the suburbs of Clermont. They took the roll call and realised we were "ein und dreizig Man und sechs Juden" [in German in the original], that's to say 31 men and 6 Jews. It was very hot in June. They made the Jews stand in the sun to "get used to the warm climate of Palestine". Oh, good joke! Then an officer gave us a talking-to. He showed us the "filthy Jews because of whom we were there". He asked us: "Are there persons among you who were friends with these people?" Obviously we answered: "Yes."
Two days later, they made us get in a truck by night to go to the main prison in Moulin in the Allier, the name of which was "la mal coiffée". We stayed there until mid-July. They separated the Jews: they must have been sent to Drancy. After that, they stayed in Auschwitz, and they obviously ended up in the crematory furnaces. They all died.
As for us, in mid-July, we got in a train to Gare du Nord [a train station in Paris]. Then we went to Compiègne where the "Royal lieu" (?) was set. It was the transit camp for most of the prisoners who were sent to the concentration camps of the Nazis - I mean the non-Jews, the Aryans as they say. We stayed there for a very long time. Usually you stayed there less than a month and then: they gathered about a thousand persons and they sent them from the Compiègne station to Dachau, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Neuengam, and all the camps which went down in history…
We stayed there for about a month and a half. For a long time we wondered why. Once the war was over, I found a letter of protest from a general in the archives. General Bérard (?), who sat in the Wiesbaden Armistice Commission, had written that we were wise young persons, that we had done nothing wrong and that, if we owed someone an explanation, it was to the French justice… so, the German advocates of a soft collaboration (the diplomats) and the hardline SS must have chatted a lot…
The fact remains that, at the end of October, the fine bunch (except two or three) was made to get in a train heading to Buchenwald. We arrived there on October 28th or 29th.
In Buchenwald, we were confronted with the Nazi atrocity… Well, everything's been told in great detail.
But, since they were stubborn, the Gallia arrest and our internment in a concentration camp didn't teach the Vichy authorities a lesson! If they'd been more sensible, and less naive…
After the armistice, when I heard the Marshall talk about "seeking an honourable peace between soldiers", I said to myself: "Poor man, he's completely mistaken. An honourable peace between soldiers! Actually it's between gangsters! We're living in a time he's not yet accustomed to, the time of Hitler and Stalin!" Never mind.
After they had arrested us, it would have been wise simply to let - in Clermont - an organisation in charge of the liquidation of the University of Strasbourg, then to divide professors and students in different faculties: medicine in Montpellier; sciences in Grenoble; law in Aix-en-Provence, etc. In view of which, we'd have melted into the crowd, and the Germans would have left us alone until the treaty. I'm not saying the Alsatians wouldn't have been that agitated and willing to join the resistance, obviously!
Well, the fact remains that at the end of November, I'm quoting someone because I wasn't there, the Nazis surrounded the University district in Clermont-Ferrand and arrested lots of professors and students and sent them to concentration camps.
Dealing with the arrests, I couldn't find any other protest from anyone in Vichy. If some people protested when we were arrested, very politely indeed, no one protested during the November arrests.
But deportation was something very hard. I was both lucky and unlucky. I was able to understand what was being hatched since I was Alsatian and I could speak German. I didn't need subtitles to understand the movie that was being screened.
People only remember the names of the of the most famous concentration camps: Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen, Neuengam, where thousands and thousands of people were sent. But with Germany's war effort, in this camp sickness, the Nazis systematically set up what I call metastasis and they call Kommandos, Nebenlager or Aussenlager [in German in the original]. Kommandos of about a thousand prisoners worked in small factories. Some were more infernal than others.
I was sent to a commando unit in the suburbs of Leipzig, where cabins of Messerschmitt were built. My lot was a bit better since, as I could speak German, I was an interpreter.
In the factory we were in contact with civilian workers from all nationalities. One day, one of our work mates had been stupid enough to give a civilian worker a letter for his family in France. He'd written "Mr so-and-so, n° such-and such, Buchenwald, block 17" on the back of the letter. It was the block in charge of the correspondence with commando units which were working outside the camp. The board of censors noticed it. Of course the commander of the camp called him up - and I went with him since I was the interpreter. The commander started to question my stupid work mate who'd been hit 50 times with a stick. Then he asked me: "Your German's not that bad; have you lived in Germany?" - "No, I'm from Strasbourg". He told me: "I'm from Lahr". It's not very far from here… so we talked together, he in Baden-German and me in Alsatian-German... We understood each other very well. He told me: "You can go out immediately if you want to, make yourself Germanised". I told him: "I'm precisely here because I don't want to make myself Germanised; I'm here because I'm French, and it means that I'd have to disown myself." - "You may believe Germany will lose the war?" - "You know, now that I'm here, my opinion won't change anything! But I think you can't win; the whole world's against you: Russia, Great Britain, the USA, even Australia, Canada". - "Oh, they're faraway!" - "Yes, but they're coming" - "We've got secret retaliation weapons"… When you're young, you're foolhardy… But the conversation remained polite… Or perhaps because we both were from the Rhineland… I answered: "I think the British and the Americans have got secret weapons too"… Well, the conversation was put to an end.
Then the camp was bombed. In April '44, I was transferred to a unit called the Flossenburg which was about 15 km from Kemnitz. The SS warrant officer class II in command of the camp made me the same proposal. He talked to me in a less formal way (whereas the other had a higher rank and was a better-mannered man). He too told me: "Make yourself Germanised". And again I refused - which besides got me a hiding! I'd say the other one was kinder. That's it.
Life was hard in the camp. But I arranged with the kapos [in German in the original; "prisoner put in charge of the other prisoners in concentration camps"]. They weren't fanatical Communists, as those I'd known before; they were crooks, and we called "the green triangles", they were non-political prisoners. You could talk to them.
One of them had explained me that it was unfair; that he'd served his time; of course he'd killed his wife and her lover; but he'd been sentenced to such-and-such years' of imprisonment; and he'd been out of it when the Nazis who were coming to power kicked him back to the nick… so, when I understood the injustice, I sympathised. We could understand each other a bit… which wasn't the case for the other French. But then I wasn't the interpreter.
The camp was evacuated and we went on a forced march. There were 700 prisoners. The day after the forced march, about 60 sick friends were executed by firing squad. Then the forced march continued. One day, while I was trailing along the rear - the SS really are strange people - an SS patted me with his revolver and said: "So Volmer, you're lagging behind: is it going to be your turn tomorrow?" As a result, it gave me a lot of courage and I quickly found myself walking at the head of the line.
On May 8th, it ended in Theresienstadt, a ghetto-town for the favoured Jews, well they were favoured until they were sent to Auschwitz. Here's my journey…
When I was freed, I didn't weigh much. I was repatriated by plane rather late. I was in the Russian area. I arrived in Paris on June 23rd, that it to say two years to the day. My mother came to the hospital. It was a big ward. She came close to my bed because I could be as old as her son. She told me: "I'm looking for Pierre Volmer". Here's a summary of what happened. That's how we met again. She hadn't recognised me. Obviously I had; but she hadn't.
I don't think it will teach the young generations a lesson. I don't believe it. Horrors have existed since mankind exists - with different practical and technical details. What the Nazis couldn't imagine and the Chinese realised is that the prisoners would be used as organ banks for the transplants… So, you see, for each generation, other atrocities appear thanks to what's called technical progress.
All the same, everyone must fight to make sure this won't happen again. This is perhaps the last message I want to pass on.
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