From the Gestapo prisons in Dijon to the hell of Buchenwald and Dora. France 1948

From the Gestapo prisons in Dijon to the hell of Buchenwald and Dora. France 1948

DES GEOLES DE LA GESTAPO DE DIJON A L 'ENFER DE BUCHENWALD ET DORA From the Gestapo prisons in Dijon to the hell of Buchenwald and Dora, by Henri Havet and F. Boissard - accompanied by difficult illustrations Scenes from Buchenwald in the style of woodcuts by Jean Francois. Published by IMPRIMERIE DARANTIERE, Dijon January, 1948.

Memoirs of a Buchenwald inmate Henri Havet. In the instructive introduction to the testimony before us, P. Boissard writes that the book came out relatively late after the camp was liberated, because the prisoner Henri Havet would have to spend months repairing his broken body following torture and forced labor he went through in Buchenwald. He lay on a bed for eight consecutive months with no ability to move, having lost 30 kg during the war years. It was not until April 1946 that his memory returned to him, and whenever he Remembered a scene he went through in the camp he put it on the paper. For a year and a half he put more and more of his difficult memoirs into writing, until the end of 1947 he had lot of pieces of paper that joined to an entire essay documenting his difficult years in the camps, And in January 1948 published the book.

Havet was arrested in Dijon about a year after the Nazi occupation of France with a forged identity card, and sent to a local jail. The reason for his imprisonment was the fact that he was a member of the French resistance movement. For a year he was involved in countless underground operations to smuggle people out of occupied France, in an activity that included an extensive underground network, which was connected with hospitals where many were hidden, as well as in the explosion of railways leading into the territory of Paris. After being captured by the Nazis, he managed to escape, but was recaptured and interrogated under severe torture by the Gestapo, and transferred to Buchenwald in December 1943. In a book extensive descriptions of his time in Buchenwald in which he tells how the Nazis did everything they could to lower prisoners into a subhuman situation. Havet describes well in great detail the camp and the day-to-day occurrence in it. The structure of the barracks, the meager food rations, forced labor, executions, the spread of disease in the camp, the torture, his good friends who lost their lives, and more. Havet tells how he was an active partner in the "International Underground Committee" that was established in the camp, and managed to unite underground cells that also included Jews. The underground sabotaged the ammunition factories near the camp, and prepared for an armed uprising by smuggling weapons into the camp. The members of the underground also managed to slow down and disrupt the evacuation of the camp. The departure of the SS from the camp was accompanied by the takeover of the camp by the underground, even before its liberation by the Allies. After the camp was liberated by the Allies, he founded in a very serious physical condition lying near one of the factories near the camp, and only a few months later his body slowly begin to return to itself. Havet describes how he found his wife after the war as well as his long rehabilitation. Whenever his memory returned to him he transcribed from his memoirs from the time of his imprisonment, until it was completed for the essay before us. His descriptions surrounding the day-to-day occurrence in the camp, with a description of the details of the occurrence, are considered to this day to be one of the important Evidence given at an early stage by a Buchenwald camp inmate. 

164 p. 18 cm. Half leather binding with gilt inscription on spine. Very good condition.