Dora-la-mort. De la Résistance à la Libération par Buchenwald et Dora - Death in Dora, from resistance to liberation in Buchenwald - Dora, by Andres Pontoizeau, Tours 1947 - copy with author's dedication to Dr. Marchan. French. An early and important testimony from Buchenwald camp prisoner Andres Pontoizeau who is among 7 prisoners only who survived the inferno out of about 1000 prisoners who came with them to the camp and were murdered by the Nazis.
Early testimony from Buchenwald camp prisoner Andres Pontoizeau, who, along with only six of his friends, survived out of about 1000 prisoners with whom they arrived at the camp. The book is accompanied by photographs of harsh scenes from the camp, a portrait photograph of the author, photographs of his friends in the resistance movement, and more. The author Andres Pontoizeau [1903-1981] was born in the French commune of Les Sables d'Olonne. Until the World War he served as a supervisor of elementary education in several places in France. During the Second World War he rowed under the Petan government and was a member of secret organizations opposing the regime, and was a prominent resistance activist. He was responsible for collecting classified information concerning the occupation forces, as part of his role he had weekly contacts with agents who had arrived from Paris. After the Gestapo succeeded in implanting a secret agent in its organization, he was caught at the Bourges station. From there he was transferred to Compiègne Camp where the conditions were relatively favorable, and then he was taken to Buchenwald in September 1943 where he stayed for almost two years - the most hardest time in his life, until liberation. In the book he describes in detail the torture journey he went through from the moment of his capture, and the period of his harsh imprisonment in Buchenwald. In Buchenwald he worked in forced labor at a site near the camp drilling tunnels and transporting heavy timber. In one of the chapters of the book entitled "A Day in the Tunnel", the author describes in detail the terrible suffering he and his fellow prisoners went through, when he details the torture journey they went through for one day, which there were many like. In all those months he was fed from one bowl of soup once every 24 hours, when the work itself was done for 18 hours constantly. Prisoners who bled in various places during work were not allowed to stop the bleeding. Prisoners caught resting during work were shot on the spot. It was forbidden to stop working. There were prisoners who worked all day long inside the tunnel that was locked with a wooden door, and only came out at night, so that for nearly half a year they did not see the light of the sun at all, when the mortality increased from month to month. In another chapter entitled "Physical Suffering", the author describes the sadistic forms of abuse the Kapo guards used on prisoners.
These documentation are among the most important reports ever written of the horrors of the camps, because they encompass the horrors the Nazis inflicted on a relatively small group of prisoners in places further from the center of the camp. At the end of the book, Pontoizeau describes in detail the terrible situation at the time of liberation, when many prisoners who were between life and death sought the help of the Americans, but there was not enough medicine, and there was even a shortage of doctors to diagnose each and every one of them, and thus many of them died after the camp had actually been liberated. The author and another small group of prisoners arrived in a small village in France on their own where they met soldiers from the French commando who took care of their health and treated them. At the end of the book, the author concludes: "We reached about 1000 people to Dora... Today I look around me, only 7 of us left...", and asks for France's revenge on the Germans.
145 [1] p. 19 cm. Very good condition.
