Martyrs Memoires de 4 ans 1/2 K.L. Dachau - "Martyrs" Memoirs of 4 years and a half in Dachau Concentration Camp by camp inmate Marcel Naas - rare testimony written weeks after the camp's liberation. Mulhouse (France), 1945 - First Edition. French.
Marcel Naas was arrested on August 1, 1940 by the Gestapo in Nazi occupied Alsace, and accused of organizing anti-fascist meetings since returning from the Spanish Civil War. Ardent to fight the emerging evil, he held a command position for two years (1936-38) in the medical platoon of Brigade 14 "La Marseillaise". At the end of August 1940 he was transferred to Schirmeck camp and then to Dachau concentration camp on November 11 of that year. At Dachau he survived over 4 years as inmate 22176.
In the book's introduction, Naas writes: "This book aims to accurately recreate for truth the harsh experience of Dachau inmates, enabling understanding of the cruelty, barbarism and inhuman torture the poor victims faced. Thousands of political prisoners were tortured, thousands more became disabled and died successively from forced labor and malnutrition... Thousands of political detainees were hanged or shot for no reason. The Nazis hesitated not to commit these same crimes against women and children. Tears came to my eyes at the sight of children under 10 clinging to the fences surrounding the blocks, begging for a breadcrumb. These children were living skeletons, their clothes were torn apart by the intense cold, their small feet were half frozen and they only wore simple wooden sandals. In a transport that arrived from Auschwitz were 10-11 year old Jewish children who had been imprisoned there for already three years...The SS ordered them to undress, then they dragged them by their hair and threw them alive into the crematorium... For a nation capable of committing such crimes, and all those who participated in them, punishment is due - they must be judged mercilessly, because the blood of the innocent cries out: "Justice!"
Upon arrival, he and fellow Alsatians underwent special treatment. Marcel Naas insisted on presenting himself as French, thereby "winning" systematic mistreatment. As former resistance, he was deemed an "enemy of the state". In 28 degrees below freezing he was taken for stone carrying forced labor. In his book he describes the daily mistreatment endured by him and fellow inmates through forced labor, many murdered before his eyes. It was forbidden for inmates to lift the murdered from the snow-covered ground and those who dared faced immediate death. When he testifies: "Every day brought us new tortures we didn't have yesterday". Naas describes the camp's various mistreatment methods including hanging types used to torture inmates before murdering them (some techniques portrayed as drawings in the book). He recounts illnesses ravaging the camp, suicides from unbearable suffering, mass executions of disabled inmates and Jewish transports. He also extensively describes the gas chambers' murder process used by Nazis at Dachau, stating: "Of all tortures, the gas chamber was worst".
At some point Naas was transferred to camp infirmary work, effectively saving his life; as infirmary worker he even succeeded in hiding two Jews until liberation by Allied forces, describing liberation day details. Marcel Naas passed on March 9, 1970 in Pfastatt.
The booklet is accompanied by 12 drawings of harsh inmate forced labor and execution scenes at Dachau. The opening of the booklet contains Naas' photo.
Extremely rare. Does not appear in the world catalog of libraries world cat.
47 p. Very good condition.
