The Required Work Service Law, or Service du Travail Obligatoire, was passed in 1943 by the Vichy government of France under German occupation. Passage of the law confirmed the French government’s willing collaboration in providing the Nazi regime with French manpower to replace German workers sent to fight in the war. The result was the deportation of 600,000 young Frenchmen to Germany, where they worked under the harshest conditions.
Elie Poulard was one of the Frenchmen forced into labor by the Vichy government. Translated by his brother Jean V. Poulard, Elie’s memoir vividly captures the lives of a largely unrecognized group of people who suffered under the Nazis. He describes in great detail his ordeal at different work sites in the Ruhr region, the horrors that he witnessed, and the few Germans who were good to him. Through this account of one eyewitness on the ground, we gain a vivid picture of Allied bombing in the western part of Germany and its contribution to the gradual collapse and capitulation of Germany at the end of the war. Throughout his ordeal, Elie's Catholic faith, good humor, and perseverance sustained him.
Little has been published in French or English about the use of foreign workers by the Nazi regime and their fate. The Poulards’ book makes an important contribution to the historiography of World War II, with its firsthand account of what foreign workers endured when they were sent to Nazi Germany. The memoir concludes with an explanation of the ongoing controversy in France over the opposition to the title Déporté du Travail, which those who experienced this forced deportation, like Elie, gave themselves after the war.
Elie Poulard lives in France. Jean V. Poulard, his brother and translator, is professor of political science at Indiana University Northwest.
Read an Excerpt
"What follows are the recollections of one of the 600,000 Frenchmen who were sent against their will to work for the German Nazi regime by the French government. Such was the fate of Elie Poulard, a very religious young man, twenty-two-years old in 1943, forced into hard labor by an ignominious 'law' of the French Vichy government called Service du Travail Obligatoire, or STO for short. After their liberation, these unfortunate young men were often treated in France with suspicion, not to say as collaborators." —from the editor's introduction, A French Slave in Nazi Germany: A Testimony by Elie Poulard, translated and edited by Jean V. Poulard
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Author's Preface xi
Acknowledgments xvii
Editor's Introduction xix
Chapter 1 Still Free: The Phony War 1
Chapter 2 The Real War and the Exodus 7
Chapter 3 Back Home under German Occupation 15
Chapter 4 In Bondage: Forced Labor in the Todt Organization 19
Chapter 5 Deported to Germany 27
Chapter 6 Work at the Möhnetal Dam 34
Chapter 7 Living Conditions at the Dam 43
Chapter 8 Hagen-in-Westfalen and Its Camps 49
Chapter 9 Work at the Telegraphenamt of Hagen 57
Chapter 10 Life at the Boeler Heide Camp 66
Chapter 11 Dortmund-South Work Site 72
Chapter 12 Dortmund Hauptbahnof after October 6, 1944 77
Chapter 13 The Ruhr under the Bombs 85
Chapter 14 On the Ruhr: Hengsteysee and Herdecke 90
