RESCAPE DE L’ENFER NAZI – Escape from the Nazi Hell by Georges Briquet, La France au combat, Paris [1945] – Early and rare evidence of the months he was imprisoned in the Dachau camp – a copy with the author’s dedication and signature. Extremely rare.
Georges Briquet was arrested by the Gestapo in June 1944, he was transferred to the Compiegne camp for a short time, and from there was transported along with another 2,100 inmates in travel trailers to Dachau in Germany. On the way in the trailers, tells Briquet, about 980 prisoners died of starvation and overcrowding and inability to breathe. As soon as they arrived at the camp they saw the crematorium. The other prisoners made sure to let them know that “Enter this room through the door and exit through the chimney”. He describes in great detail all the steps the prisoners went through as soon as they arrived in Dachau: The stripping of the clothes, the shaving of the heads, the order to run in the camp and not to stop, and the severe blows inflicted on the heads of these who stopped and stood. Briquet describes how young inmates have aged thirty years for half an hour of torture. He describes how he and several other prisoners were taken to Block No. 19 where they were lined up next to the block, in rows of 10 and underwent a horrific humiliation ceremony. The overcrowding in the block was terrible – 350 people were crammed into a room designed for only 50. During the months he was imprisoned in Dachau, he worked in a quarry near the camp in digging, while his closest friends found them dead near him, some from exhaustion, and some shot, and in other strange deaths, which he describes in great detail in the most shocking and difficult to read way. The book is also accompanied by drawings of harsh scenes he witnessed himself.
The detailed testimony deals with the period from when he was captured by the Gestapo until the Americans arrived at the camp on April 8 to release it. Among other things he describes the great excitement that gripped the camp as American forces entered to release, and how twelve flags were flown in their hands of inmates who were in a state of between death and life, The twelve different nationalities of the prisoners who remained in the camp at that time – flags that the prisoners hid ahead of time in a pit that was covered in dirt while the Germans ruled the camp. At the end of the book, Briquet asking from the remnants of the refugees in France, with a special request, never to host German war refugees in France, and not to give them a portion of bread, whatever their physical condition may be.
51 p. 21 cm. Good condition.
