THE BOOK OF THE 9,000 DEPORTEES FROM MITTELBAU-DORA

A book unique in the world. Close to Buchenwald, to which it was initially attached, Mittelbau-Dora was one of the most lethal concentration and extermination-through-labour camps of the Third Reich. From August 1943 to April 1945, nearly 9,000 deportees from France dug tunnels to build an industrial site and assemble the components of V2 rockets intended to destroy England from the Pas-de-Calais. More than half perished in the hell of the camp.

Who were they? Where did they come from? Why were they arrested? What became of the survivors? The stories recounted here bear witness to the commitment and courage shown by these deportees — most of them members of the Resistance — but also to the terrible suffering they endured. They all seem familiar to us, for until the war their lives seemed to merge with those of the men of their time: workers, civil servants, engineers, craftsmen, students or veterans of 1914–1918… As the pages turn, we meet Pierre Walter, a young soldier of 22, who was trying to reach the Free French Forces; Emile Fabre, aged 50, arrested for communist resistance activity in the Bouches-du-Rhône; Robert Bailly, aged 20, from the Jura, a draft evader of the STO; Isidore Haggai, aged 32, a tailor in Paris, arrested on the grounds that he was not wearing the yellow star.

From Roger Abada to Benjamin Zyman, by way of Stéphane Hessel and Simone Veil, these biographical entries — enriched with an index by département — retrace the history of an entire chapter of the deportation in all its dimensions and complexity.

The fruit of nearly two decades of research, the cross-referencing of thousands of archival documents, and the unprecedented mobilisation of historians, teachers, archivists and volunteers, The Book of the 9,000 Deportees from France to Mittelbau-Dora finally does justice to the commitment and struggle waged by the deportees against Nazism.

Biography of Laurent Thiery: Holding a doctorate in history and a historian at La Coupole since 2013, Laurent Thiery is a specialist in questions of repression and deportation. He is currently a member of the scientific committee of the Fondation de la Résistance and president of the scientific committee for the renovation project of the Mémorial de l'internement et de la déportation de Compiègne-Royallieu.

The author's royalties from this work will be donated to the Fondation pour la mémoire de la déportation.