Dix‑huit mois au bagne de Buchenwald – Eighteen Months in Buchenwald, by former camp prisoner René G. Marnot. A personal and visual testimony of the period the author spent in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Published by La Nouvelle République – France, 1945 – First edition.
An early publication documenting what took place in the Buchenwald concentration and death camp in Germany. René was arrested by the Gestapo in Châteauroux (central France) in October 1943 together with several dozen resistance fighters, who were interrogated under torture in the Gestapo’s cellars, accused of acts of resistance. They were taken to a Gestapo prison for two and a half months, where he endured terrible suffering: “The prison echoed with screams and wails. Inhuman shrieks, howls like those of animals whose throats were being slit. Horrific screams of children, of very young girls who were tortured to make them denounce their parents. Screams of battered women. Sometimes, the screams would suddenly stop. Prisoners would call the night guards to take away a limp and lifeless body…”. In January 1943, he was transferred to Compiègne as a transit station, from where he was eventually deported by train to the Buchenwald camp. René gives a detailed account of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in the camp. “People died of everything in Buchenwald, ” he writes: “Death, the only possible outcome for the deportee who refused to live under Nazi tyranny, was dealt out daily, hourly, by the most varied means.” Many of the deportees were murdered upon arrival at the camp, during the “disinfection” process that took place in freezing rooms during the winter, with many already sick and weakened when they reached the camp (the journey was accompanied by constant beatings with whips). Prison uniforms bore sewn-on inmate numbers and markings indicating their origin and the “reason” for their arrest. René describes the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis in Block 61 of the camp — the infirmary ward reserved for those marked for rapid death, the lives of the prisoners in the “large camp” — where the Nazis carried out brutal tortures for amusement, the forced labor of the inmates in the camp quarry, the role of the Sonderkommando, the conduct of the roll calls, the acts of sadism by the SS commanders — especially toward the Jewish prisoners — the various forms of punishment, the daily executions by hanging and other methods, and more.
In the final chapters, René describes the liberation of the camp by the American forces: “We prayed for the arrival of the Americans, who were not far away. At noon on April 8, for the first time in the history of the German concentration camps, 48,000 prisoners refused to obey the orders of the SS commander of Buchenwald, who demanded that the prisoners assemble for evacuation… Still, there were skeletons, shadows of men who set out on the evacuation march. How far did they get? Probably not far — death spared them the unbearable suffering…”.
As the American forces approached the camp, the camp commanders executed by shooting many of the sick prisoners. René was liberated on April 11, 1945, by the U.S. Army’s armored unit along with 22,000 others who had survived, to bear witness to what had occurred shortly thereafter.
The book was published in June 1945, about two months after the liberation of the camp, and includes harsh photos from the camp taken shortly beforehand — some taken by Allied soldiers, depicting harrowing scenes from the camp as they entered to liberate it: the bodies of prisoners, gallows, and more; and others taken by the Nazis while the camp was still operating, including photos of executions by hanging and more. In addition, black-and-white illustration plates depicting disturbing scenes from the camp appear in the book, signed in the plate ‘daquemin’.
76 [4] pages. Minor tears to spine. Light stains to cover. Good condition.
