From Normandy to Auschwitz

Paul le Goupil

apr 2018 · Grub Street Publishers

Over dit e-boek

The unforgettable memoir of a WWII French Resistance fighter who survived the Nazi concentration camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
 
Paul le Goupil was about to take his first job as a teacher when Germany invaded France in May of 1940. Soon after, he joined the Front National and found his life irreversibly shaped by the horrors of the Second World War. Organizing the Front Patriotique de la Jeunesse in Normandy in 1943, le Goupil was militant in his defiance of the Nazi occupation of his homeland, but nevertheless was captured by the Gestapo. What followed was a catalog of brutality and despair, first in solitary confinement in French prisons, later in several labor camps, leading finally to Auschwitz and Buchenwald. He was subjected to beatings, starvation, and a torturous SS march before his miraculous liberation at the hands of the Russian army. His experiences are captured here in a memoir rich with detail, emotion, and the spirit of a true survivor.

Over de auteur

Paul Le Goupil was born in 1922. After qualifying as a teacher in 1942 he became a militant in the resistance movement of the FN (Front National for the Struggle of French Liberation). In 1943 he organised the FPJ (Front Patriotic de Jeunesse) in Normandy. His experiences both before and after his betrayal are the subject of this book. He was one of the few to survive Auschwitz, Buchenwald and the brutal SS organised march.He returned to Normandy after being in Soviet and American hands to his life as a teacher in north West France. He retired in 1978 and lives in Valcanville, Normandy. He was awarded the Legion d’Honneur in 1964.