André Migdal

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André Migdal (born June 21, 1924 in Paris ; † February 19, 2007 there ) was a French resistance fighter , deportee, concentration camp prisoner and forced laborer as well as author and poet . After the Second World War he campaigned for Franco-German reconciliation , addressing mainly French and German youth.

Life

childhood

André Migdal grew up as the son of a Polish-Jewish father who fled into exile from anti-Semitic pogroms and a German-Jewish mother in Paris. The family had many children, André Migdal had ten siblings.

Time of the Second World War

In June 1940 Migdal, just 16 years old, who had previously started an apprenticeship as a carpenter, joined the communist resistance against the German occupation of France in World War II , together with his brothers Henri and Robert. He took part in sabotage actions, especially against runways under construction by the National Socialists . After his group had been betrayed, he and his two brothers were taken to Fresnes prison near Paris on June 24, 1941 .

Forced laborers on the construction site of the "Valentin" submarine bunker in Rekum (1944)

He was released at the age of 18, but a few months later on September 24, 1942, he was arrested again by the German occupiers and interned in the Pithiviers transit camp and in the Voves prison camp . In May 1944 he was transferred to a camp in Compiègne , from there he was first transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp and then to the Neuengamme concentration camp .

Finally, he was housed in the Farge concentration camp , a satellite camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp north of Bremen , where he had to do heavy forced labor under very poor and mostly inhuman living and working conditions during the construction of the Valentin submarine bunker in Rekum .

Shortly before the end of the war, he and his fellow prisoners were deported by the SS , which fled from the advancing Allied armies. In a " death march " from April 9, 1945, around 2500 to 3000 prisoners were brought to the Baltic Sea to Lübeck Bay via the Stalag XB in Sandbostel .

There the survivors and other concentration camp prisoners from other evacuation marches were loaded onto three Nazi cruise ships. The prisoners feared that the SS had the firm intention of sinking these ships with all prisoners on board in the Baltic Sea. Migdal came to the Cap Arcona on April 29, 1945 and spent several days inside the ship with hundreds of fellow prisoners without water or food. Then he came to the "Athens", where on May 3, 1945 he was one of only a few prisoners to survive the accidental bombing and bombardment of the ships by British bombers and the subsequent machine gun fire of the SS from the beach.

post war period

Migdal returned to Paris, where he learned that his mother Sophie-Berthe, his father Joseph and his two brothers Henri and Robert had been murdered in Auschwitz . However, he found his other brothers and sisters who had survived hidden in various homes and families.

On January 3, 1948, he married Jeannine Rodde, who had also lost family members in the war. Her father and her grandfather were among the hostages who were shot by the Nazis in August 1942 on Mont Valérien .

Reconciliation and peace work

After the war, Migdal actively campaigned for reconciliation between the French and German people and for peace work, mainly addressing young people. He recalled the Nazi crimes in several autobiographical books and also expressed his suffering in poetry . He also published collections of poetry in which he reproduced the inhumane treatment of concentration camp inmates and forced laborers.

Memorial destruction through work in front of the submarine bunker "Valentin" in Bremen-Rekum (2009)

Migdal later often returned to Germany, and especially to Bremen , where he took part in events commemorating the crimes of National Socialism, read his poems and, as a contemporary witness, reported on his fate. He often spoke to students and young adults.

Migdal also took part in several commemorative events in the area of ​​the former prisoner camp and at the Valentin submarine bunker in what is now the Bremer district of Rekum . Among other things, he was the guest of honor at the inauguration ceremony on September 16, 1983 for the memorial extermination through labor , which was erected to commemorate the suffering and death of the forced laborers used to build the bunker. The memorial is located in front of the submarine bunker, which was partially used as a marine depot until 2011, and consists of a stele made of raw concrete, the “main material of the bunker”, arranged on a paved natural stone base. It was designed by the Bremen artist Friedrich Stein.

In 1995 Migdal read at a concert for peace in Bremen Cathedral . He was an honorary member of the Association for Documentation and Memorial History Trail Lagerstraße / U-Boot-Bunker Valentin eV , which was founded in 1999 and which deals with the National Socialist past and promotes peace work through international encounters, and participated in several of the association's commemorative events.

On May 7, 2000, 55 years after the end of the war and the liberation from the prisoner camps, he spoke in the Valentin submarine bunker: His Cantate pour la vie premiered there. At the exhibition A concentration camp is evacuated. Prisoners between annihilation and liberation. The dissolution of the Neuengamme concentration camp and its satellite camps by the SS in spring 1945 , which was shown in the Bremen town hall in spring 2003, he participated as a contemporary witness. In April 2005 he took part in a history project of the Blumenthal school center near the submarine bunker.

André Migdal died in Paris at the age of 82.

honors and awards

Migdal received several honors and awards, especially in France , for his resistance against the Nazi regime and for his commitment to peace and reconciliation after the war:

Quote

"Et l'histoire
Celle écrite avec le gaz
Cette histoire est notre testament"

"And the story
The story of the gas chambers
This story is our legacy"

- André Migdal

Works (selection)

  • Poésies d'un autre monde. Fresnes 1941 – Neuengamme 1945. Seghers, Paris 1975, without ISBN. (French; with a foreword by Marcel Mérigonde )
  • Hydrangeas in Farge. Survival in the "Valentin" bunker. Ed .: Bärbel Gemmeke-Stenzel, Barbara Johr, Donat Verlag , Bremen 1995, ISBN 3-924444-88-9 . (With: Raymond Portefaix, Klaas Touber )
  • Les plages de sable rouge. La tragédie de Lübeck, May 3, 1945. NM7 éditions, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-913973-20-5 . (French)
  • J'ai vécu les camps de concentration. La Shoah. 4th edition. Bayard jeunesse, Paris 2004 (= series: J'ai vécu ), ISBN 2-7470-1441-X . (French; with: Véronique Guillaud and others)

literature

  • Helga Bories-Sawala et al. a .: La France occupée et la résistance . Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2008 (= series: EinFach Französisch ), ISBN 978-3-14-046262-4 , pp. 6–21, with handwriting. Version of the Cantate pour la vie by André Migdal. (French, partly German; media combination with CD ; with numerous images and original documents)
  • Rainer Christochowitz: The submarine bunker shipyard "Valentin". The submarine section construction, the concrete construction technology and the inhumane use from 1943 to 1945 . Donat Verlag, Bremen 2000, ISBN 3-934836-05-4 .

Movie

  • Lawrence Bond: The sinking of the Cap Arcona. Documentary. ARD-WDR 2004

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c The "Flowers for Farge" initiative . In: Silke Wenk (Ed.): Places of memory made of concrete. Bunkers in cities and landscapes . Ch. Links-Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-86153-254-9 , p. 174 u. a., ( google.de [accessed on November 26, 2009]).
  2. ^ Honorary members >> André Migdal. Documentation and memorial site history trail Lagerstraße / U-Boot-Bunker Valentin e. V., accessed November 26, 2009 .
  3. ^ Exhibition “A concentration camp is cleared” - in the lower town hall. Press office of the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, April 7, 2003, accessed on November 26, 2009 .
  4. ↑ Documentary film “The Bunker” and a contemporary witness visited the exhibition. Press office of the Senate of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, May 13, 2003, accessed on November 26, 2009 .
  5. ↑ History lessons at the Bunker Valentin. www.schule.bremen.de, April 28, 2005, accessed on November 26, 2009 .
personal data
SURNAME Migdal, André
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French resistance fighter, deportee, concentration camp prisoner, forced laborer, author and poet
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH February 19, 2007
Place of death Paris