I'm the son of Hungarian immigrants who were Jewish communists. You see, that's a good start. And so, I was born in Paris; moreover, a few days after my parents' arrival. So I've always been immersed in a very ambiguous antifascism. In my family, being Jewish wasn't important at all. I didn't get a Jewish education at all. Before I started on my own, I knew nothing.

We were prepared… we immediately felt the threat of war because there was a kind of historical intuition, of political intuition, which made we were slightly ahead of others…

My brother and I were deeply attached to each other. My brother always was top of the class and he spoke French perfectly well, blahblahblah…, and he must have developed some kind of underhand patriotism. But I remember that when the Germans entered Dinard - we were there when it happened - my brother was really impressed by those fair-haired athletes and mad with rage - like many others - that an army of tramps, the French army to be more precise had been had by this beautiful army of beautiful young people. It doesn't mean he liked them, it was quite the contrary.

From then on he tried to do something. At the very beginning of the war, we hadn't got the slightest idea of what should be done: we had no connection, my parents were communist, my brother wasn't, besides he'd never been one of them, and he didn't really know what to do. We went straight back to Paris because my mother had a family hotel, so she closed it for the season (but that's a small detail). We would have done something, my brother and I, but we didn't really know what we could do. So we painted graffiti, we made butterflies: it was crafts…

One day, obviously it was my brother's idea, we wanted to pull off a coup. My brother thought about blowing up the Rive Gauche bookshop. I don't know if you remember it, but this bookshop was on the Saint-Michel boulevard and it was a collaborationist shop - French-German - good literature: Drieu La Rochelle, Morand,… In short, it was a collaborationist bookshop. So my brother had that strange idea to hollow out a book and to hide a bomb inside. The strangest thing is that he used Marx's Capital. He took my father's copy and slashed it. It was a kind of symbolic revenge. I went ahead several times: to see what this bloody bookshop looked like, to draw a map, to see if it was under surveillance if it wasn't too complicated to put the book without being seen.

One day we went there. I was there, keeping watch one way or another. And it worked: the bookshop burnt down and we pulled it off. My brother stood motionless on the pavement, struck with admiration, I told him: "Beat it!" The police was coming, the militia was at the Louis Legrand secondary school opposite, 20m from us… and it was stupid to stay. I urged my brother to leave and he told me: "I want a full report of everything". I was 12 you see: a brat! So, that was the first time.

Another detail, without being a detail: at the time, my brother managed to get contacts, what's more with communists. He'd better do something else… but well… it wasn't the FTP yet, it was the Mouvement Ouvrier Immigré [the Immigrant Worker Movement] which was a universal movement, and which obeyed the French Communist Party… the guy who lead the Hungarian section gathered his friends to say my brother should be executed for a Communist couldn't act individually, you have to know that at least! And so he wanted to eliminate my brother because he was too dangerous. Well, all that things are Stalinist mishaps… there were thousands others… but, it got on my nerves all the same.

After that, my brother joined the Manouchianqui group, a very important group, the only military group in Paris. They didn't accept me because I was too young. They told me: "Get lost! You know, this is not a nursery school, fuck off!"

Nevertheless, I managed to join the Communist Youth Movement and I did a lot of things there: I was a go-between. I took parcels to prisoners, I kept watch while some spoke publicly in the street… nothing military, only things like that… I did it for a pretty long time, until my brother was arrested.

At that stage, we were obliged to take a decision because we had the police hot on our heels. I was sent to Mayenne in a peasant family, pretended I was an orphan and my name was Jean Morin. Not Edgar, but Jean, which proves we weren't very imaginative! I was an Orthodox; an orthodox Christian, not an orthodox Jew - because meanwhile I had converted. So there was a problem! Communist, Jewish, orthodox: It was a bit too much… I arrived at their place in March or April 1944, if I remember well.

Then I left with the French army who agreed to my joining them. We went back to Paris. It was dreadful then, because our company was in charge of cleaning the rear. You see, the guys were moving forward, some had stayed in holes and as soon as they raised their hands, everybody fired off… and well, I was very distressed, because I was a brat. I was 14. Seeing guys with their hands raised being shot dead isn't the merriest thing in the world.

So, roughly, the outline could be described like this…

My mother was in the Resistance too, in a thing called "French Women". We went through this war under permanent pressure. These are the important events, the rest is daily routine: my mother often went to the countryside to buy things for prisoners, for people who needed something, and I often went with her.

I say it a bit at a time: we had to do with extraordinary people. Before being sent to the countryside by an organisation, we found someone to look after me. I was in a lady's care, upper middle class, catholic, etc: an antic dealer on the Raspail boulevard. I arrived at her place, I was very well received. She called me Jean, since my new name was Jean Morin. But at the same time I was a rascal. Her fiancé was in the Zouave infantry. I found it fantastically comical to be in the Zouave. When I saw the photo of the Zouave I asked: "Who is it?" She said: "It's my fiancé". I don't know if you've ever heard the expression, but we called these 'trousers to shit in'. She wasn't happy at all, I can easily understand why, and she said something I still remember: "Jean, you'll have to learn to be humble".

This sentence was on my mind for years, and a few years ago, I said to myself: "Shit, I must see her and thank her." I went to see her. It was strange: we saw each other, we looked at each other and we didn't recognise each other straight away, and the two of us burst out sobbing. I'm still moved today.

Oh, yes, I can tell you another beautiful story. My chief in the Resistance was Simone Bagnac (?). I'm not sure whether you know Bagnac who was a distinguished Germanist, and even a more distinguished Stalinist… Well, his wife was my chief.

We had a depot in Cardinal Lemoine Street, in a very beautiful courtyard of a splendid house. One day Simone told me "I'm off, be careful about everything" and she locked up the door and I had no key. And I had someone to see in the morning. The store was on the ground floor. When I went out into the courtyard, 2 members of the Gestapo were there. They carried out a raid on the house, well in the houses. I saw these guys and their uniform with red things on it… at the time I was a cute fair-haired boy. The guys broke into a grin smile, and I beat it. Only afterwards did I start to shake for two hours … It happened as I've just told you.

Well, one way or another, we permanently experienced things like that … I wonder how nothing ever happened to anybody, my father, my mother, and my sister. As for my brother, it was different.

We only did stupid things… For instance, when we were obliged to wear the star, my mother said: "I'll never wear the star. And neither will you". Mine is still in a small box, the one that was given to us… In the area where we lived, my mother owned a restaurant and everybody knew we were Jewish. Well, nearly everybody. So, it was a kind of provocation…

In the house where we lived, there was the restaurant, and a cop lived there too. One day he told me: "Hey, you, little Jewish boy, if you go on like this (because I met him at the Deligny swimming-pool, at the cinema, all these places where I wasn't allowed to go) well, it'll turn out badly." I retorted, because it was my temper: "Well, listen: the little Jewish boy tells you to piss off". If he'd been a bastard, there were enough of them in the police, well, it would have been the end for me! He said: "Really" and walked away…

It was like that day after day. Things which are nearly laughable… My father was away with the fairies: He'd got his own identity card and a false one in the same wallet. One day, there was a raid in the underground. My father was stopped and he was told: "Identity card". So, my father showed him the false one, then he said: "Oh, it's not this one" and he showed the original one with "Jewish" stamped on it. Well, My father was really lucky the cop didn't arrest him straight away. He said: "What's happening? Are you Jewish or not? Is your name Elek or Desanti?" my father was dribbling, he was red in the face, sweaty, dripping with anxiety… the Guy said: "Be off, you're fucking stupid". Things like that happened… It was daily routine.

It's unbelievable that nothing more disastrous ever happened to us, but I think it was a kind of …unconscious imperturbability, so that nothing happened to us because what we did was so eccentric that people couldn't believe it. I don't know, it's only a hypothesis.

There are things I remember now… We, the children, we had friends. And we learnt there would be a rounding up on the following day, the famous rounding up of Jews in the Paris Vélodrome d'Hiver. We warned the parents to leave the flats and be off with their children. They said: "We're not going anywhere and we're not leaving our children". As a result they were arrested on the next day, and it was extraordinary because - that's just like my mother - there were two girls there waiting for people who were packing, so my mother told me: "Look, my boy! The French police is attacking innocent people!" and the guys didn't turn a hair: nothing, nothing at all. When they left they were visibly devastated. The persons were taken to the Panthéon police station: and there, firstly, the main door was open; secondly, when people said: "I'm leaving, I have to buy sugar" they answered: "Ok! Ok! Ok!" … You see, they let people go. Nobody left. So my mother begged the guy to leave his children with us, he refused and naturally he was the only asshole to come back.

Here's another awful story… we lived in his flat which had been attributed to us by the town council - we didn't fiddle to get it… and one day he was back. It was my sister's birthday, so we were a lot. While we were feasting, eating, etc, he started to clean his toenails with a knife. Well…

My thing's a bit rambling, but never mind. It's a series of events… that's how I lived this war.

And at the end of wartime, if I may say so, I joined the Youth Battalions, a para-communist organisation. You could join it when you were 16 if your parents agreed, or when you were of age. So I fiddled papers, because I already had an experience in the field, well, I had them fiddled. Since I was rather tall, I pretended to be 17 and I left. When I left, the battle in the Ardennes was going on: it was hell to pay, I was scared to death, like everybody else besides, no more no less.

And thank God, if I may say so, my mother came and took me by the scruff of the neck giving everybody an earful: "You should be ashamed of taking brats!!!" That's the way war ended as far as I was concerned.

But indeed it was far from being over, because I think about it all the time… not all the time… I think about it very often. It's mainly my brother's death that affected me most: it was out of proportion. I named my son Thomas, like his uncle. And there's another Thomas: the nephew's nephew. There's a kind of fetishism around his character. Moreover, there's the legend: the Red Poster, the songs, etc.

These things left traces… even if I had… I don't really want to talk about mourning process because I don't really know what it means, but even if we can talk about it, mourning is never over.

Look, you're the last one to ask me questions - without reproaching you - and so it's always superactivated. What's more, my mother wrote her memoirs, which were pretty much a success. So it perpetuates itself.

But the war itself, wartime, wasn't a very dramatic experience for me, because I was too young: I played, that's all! I played. You know, the bookshop thing, I found it fantastic, funny. And everything I did: to carry weapons in a violin case and so on, I found it very funny.

And since we escaped the camp… Unfortunately, my brother met his end there… But I can tell you our unconscious saved us, as well as the refusal of being humiliated, and I don't know…