De l'Université aux Camps De Concentration Témoignages Strasbourgeois - From University to Concentration Camps Testimonies from Strasbourg - A large compilation of testimonies from death camp survivors given immediately after the war. Paris, 1954 - First edition. With an important handwritten note and signature by the French politician Louis Jacqoinot [1898-1993], who served as Minister of Veterans and War Casualties in France.
Testimonies of prisoners from the death camps in Germany who studied at the University of Strasbourg and nearby faculties before the war. In May 1945, former prisoners began returning to the University of Strasbourg where they had studied before the outbreak of war. Prof. Alfric suggested that each prisoner recount the most salient facts of what happened to him during the war. The former prisoners eagerly agreed, and former prisoners from other universities in France who wished to give their account also began joining the project. The testimony collection project succeeded and a fairly broad picture emerged of the arduous path taken by the deportees during the war. All testimonies appear in the thick volume before us. All prisoners were asked to swear before giving testimony, as is customary in court: "To tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth", among them some said "To tell the whole truth is impossible", and the committee accepted the disclaimer due to the difficulty of recounting traumatic events. The testimonies were collected one by one and tell the story of former prisoners in Buchenwald, Compiègne, Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Struthof, Dachau, Ravensbrück and other camps. In the preface, after Prof. Alfric's introduction, Louis Jacqoinot, the French Minister of Veterans and War Victims after the war, added a handwritten note and signature (translated from French): "It is important to emphasize! All the prisoners whose testimonies are included here testified after psychiatric examination and were found mentally healthy."
Before us are testimonies of countless atrocities experienced by those prisoners, exposing the crimes of the Nazis as told by the prisoners themselves immediately after the war, in the language they were recounted, without editorial alteration. Most testimonies are usually short, documenting the key events from the prisoner's arrest, interrogation, deportation to the concentration camp, what he encountered in the camp, and how they finally survived.
Next to each prisoner's testimony, the editor briefly noted biographical details, their pre-war position in Strasbourg, when they were arrested by the Gestapo, and then the death camps. Victim memorial lists of those who studied at the University of Strasbourg and perished in the death camps, at the beginning and end of the book.
XI, 560 [1] p. 24 cm. Good Condition.
