Mauthausen - A Rare and Early Testimony of a Released Prisoner [France, 1945]

Mauthausen - A Rare and Early Testimony of a Released Prisoner [France, 1945]

"I confirm that I saw the patients, numbering 1,300, dressed only in poor blankets, standing in line to enter the gas chamber..." - Mauthausen by Marcel Nulle - An early testimony of a Mauthausen camp prisoner about his capture by the Nazis as a resistance fighter, his deportation to Mauthausen, the daily horrors in the camp, and the emotional days of liberation. [France, 1945]. Extremely rare.

A resistance fighter who managed a youth hostel was arrested by the Gestapo in March 1944 during a gathering of friends at Rue des Saussaies, taken for interrogation, and placed in solitary confinement. On March 17, he was taken to Compiègne along with 400 detainees, escorted by Italian soldiers who were themselves under the supervision of German soldiers. After a short stay in Compiègne, he was taken to Mauthausen in wagons together with about 100 prisoners, with the Germans threatening that anyone who tried to escape would be killed on the spot. During the journey, a prisoner who attempted to escape was caught, severely beaten by the Germans, and suffered until he died upon the train's arrival at Mauthausen. Marcel describes the severe abuse that the prisoners endured during this journey, realizing that Mauthausen would be hell on earth. Many died of thirst along the way. In that transport, 1,800 deportees were taken to Mauthausen, of whom 300 died within the first week of arrival. Upon their arrival at the camp, their clothes were removed, and they were given prisoner uniforms. They were placed in barracks intended for new prisoners, where 500 people were crowded into a space designed for 100. "The block leader and his assistants taught us with fists, kicks, and sticks to lie down like sardines... During the day, they drove us out of the barracks. We remained outside in all weather, wearing the only clothes we had, which were shirts, pants, and clogs." In the camp, he worked as an electrician, assisting in assembling German aircraft cells, enduring daily torture and beatings alongside his comrades. "Gusen was pure hell. The mortality rate was frightening. Anyone who entered the clinic was finished. The food was minimal, and all the strength I had left was dedicated solely to this goal - to survive..., " he testifies. Among other things, Marcel provides horrifying statistics on the number of murders in the camp starting from 1941, with more and more people being killed each year. Marcel describes the cruelty of the block leaders, "The block leader had, in fact, the power of life or death over the prisoners, " he writes. He describes the meager food rations in the camp, the daily physical and mental humiliations experienced by prisoners, and the process of extermination in the gas chambers: "I live in the block close to the gas chamber and the crematorium ovens. Only a street crossing separates me from it. I confirm that on an ordinary day, twenty, thirty, or fifty bodies were thrown near the ovens. Bodies of people who died in the clinic. The sound of their heads hitting the curb still resonates within me every moment. I confirm that on the days of April 21 and 22, 1945, when the Buchenwald affair became known, the Germans, in order to erase the evidence, released gas and burned all the sick and underweight detainees. I confirm that I saw the patients, numbering 1,300, dressed only in poor blankets, standing in line to enter the gas chamber..." Finally, he describes the confusion among the prisoners during the camp's liberation, as no one understood that the Germans had actually lost control of the camp. The prisoners saw the Red Cross trucks, but no one realized that this signaled the camp's liberation. The prisoners thought it was another Nazi trick that would end in their execution. Only when they noticed French banknotes did they realize for the first time that something real had managed to penetrate the camp from the outside, and they began to internalize the moment of liberation. After 14 months in Mauthausen, Marcel finally returned to France. Large crowds greeted the returnees at every crossroads in Switzerland first, and then in the cities of France, until he arrived at his home in Lyon. His wife, mother, and sister also survived, and they reunited after the war.

Extremely rare. It does not appear in the WorldCat global library catalog.

19 pages. Very good condition.