RESCAPE DE L’ENFER NAZI – Escape from the Nazi Hell by a Dachau Prisoner – Georges Briquet, a journalist who refused to collaborate or broadcast on French radio under Nazi control, reveals his extraordinary and moving story of the months he was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. Published by La France au combat, Paris [1945] – First Edition – A copy dedicated and signed by the author (including his Dachau prisoner number, 74.311).
The radio broadcaster and journalist Georges Briquet was born on February 5, 1898, in Limoges. A highly regarded sports journalist and a French radio star, he earned the nickname “The King of Radio Reporters” for his captivating coverage of the Tour de France. However, his true heroism was revealed in June 1944, when he refused to broadcast on Radio Paris under Nazi control. This act of defiance led to his arrest by the Gestapo and his transfer to the Dachau concentration camp, from which emerged one of the most harrowing testimonies of Holocaust atrocities. Briquet was initially detained at the Compiègne camp before being transported with 2,100 other prisoners in freight cars to Dachau, Germany. Along the way, he recounts, approximately 980 prisoners died from hunger, suffocation, and lack of air. Upon arrival at Dachau, the crematorium was among the first sights they saw. Fellow prisoners warned them, “In this room, you enter through the door and leave through the chimney.”
He describes in detail the process every prisoner underwent upon arrival at Dachau: being stripped of clothing, heads shaved, ordered to run without stopping, and suffering brutal beatings if they halted. Briquet recalls how young prisoners seemed to age thirty years in just half an hour of torture. He himself lost a leg due to the torture inflicted upon him in the camp. He vividly describes how he and other prisoners were taken to Block 19, where they stood in rows of ten and endured a humiliating initiation. The overcrowding was unbearable—350 men were crammed into a room designed for 50.
During his months of imprisonment, Briquet was forced to work in a nearby quarry, digging under inhumane conditions. Many of his closest companions perished beside him, some from exhaustion, others from gunshots or other brutal executions, all described in vivid detail in his book.
The book also features illustrations depicting the horrific scenes he witnessed in Dachau.
His detailed account spans from his capture by the Gestapo to the moment the Americans liberated the camp on April 8. He describes the profound emotion that swept through the camp when American forces arrived and how twelve flags, representing the nationalities of the surviving prisoners, were raised in their honor. These flags, secretly hidden in a pit covered with soil during German rule, symbolized the resilience of the prisoners.
At the end of the book, Briquet makes a heartfelt plea to the surviving French population never to host German war refugees or offer them bread, no matter their physical condition.
After surviving deportation, Briquet resumed his profession in 1945, becoming head of the sports division at the national radio (RDF, later RTF from 1949). He transcribed several films and authored important books on sports. He passed away on February 8, 1968, in Paris.
51 [1] pages. 21 cm. Good condition.
