Compulsory Work Service

A Wartime Crime

Sixty years ago, more than fifty-six million people succumbed to the most devastating war this planet has ever known. What remains of it? We all have a few cinematographic memories, from Night and Fog to The Longest Day . A few city names come to mind quickly: Vichy, Bordeaux, Sainte-Mère-Eglise, Drancy… A few personalities, too, from Jaurès to Pétain, Jean Moulin to Papon. Barely a thought for those six hundred thousand Frenchmen marked for life by the Compulsory Work Service. This program forced French workers to labor in Nazi Germany, which would later be recognized as a war crime and a crime against humanity.

These Frenchmen, used as labor for the German war machine, were tossed around Germany in often difficult conditions. They lived under Allied bombing, torn between the anguish of the death falling from the sky and the hope of a coming deliverance, torn between the desire for revenge and the compassion for the German population when they saw the deluge of millions of tons of Allied bombs fall on Hamburg, Berlin or Dresden.

An unwitting witness

An unwitting witness to this murderous frenzy, one man felt the need to leave a testimony. He wrote down his impressions a few months after his deportation. For his future children. For the next generation. Out of a sense of duty. To remember. Shortly after, he married a young woman from Chalon-sur-Saône: my grandmother.

One of his grandsons, part of the generation of those who were twenty in the year two thousand, the generation that has not known a major conflict and that has lived in a largely pacified Europe, wanted to revive this memory and take it out of this notebook so that it could live again, in electronic form.

The year I was fifteen, then a high school student in the Parisian suburbs, the image of a certain Jacques Chirac appeared on the family television screen. I imposed silence and listened to the well-rehearsed speech of the Head of State. The sacrosanct conscription, which Jean-Baptiste Jourdan had submitted to a vote on the 19 Fructidor VI (September 5, 1798), is abolished.

“Every Frenchman is a soldier and must defend the homeland.”

On this twenty-eighth of May, nineteen hundred and ninety-six, I learned that I would be part of the first class for the Defense Preparation Day. A single day and not ten months anymore.

Fifty-six years earlier, King Leopold III signed the capitulation of Belgium. He would be quickly imitated by Marshal Pétain. From October nineteen hundred and forty to June nineteen hundred and forty-two, occupied France would provide one hundred and fifty-four thousand volunteers to work in Germany. However, Hitler needed a larger workforce to support the war effort. Very quickly, volunteering would give way to requisition. This would be governed by the law of September fourth, nineteen hundred and forty-two, which established a compulsory work service named Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO) in France.

Conscription

January 7, 1943

Jean, suffering at that time, avoided leaving for Germany. This young man from Bobigny, approaching his twentieth birthday, enjoyed one more month in the family home. But, of course, it was only a slight delay. The administration was not going to forget him so easily. He was, therefore, called back on February 2nd, when he was notified of his destination. It would be Hamburg.

February 9, 1943

Despite all his goodwill, he was unable to get on the train. It was full. Why do the same day what you could do the next day? The departure was postponed once again.

February 10, 1943

Here we go another time! His sister urged him to leave for fear that he would be considered a deserter. But it could not do much more and went back home.

February 11, 1943

Once again, with a heavy heart, Jean said goodbye to his family. He left Bobigny early in the morning and waited until four o’clock in the afternoon for the train to go from the Gare de l’Est. After about forty hours, the train dropped its load in Hamburg on February 13th. It was the beginning of an extended stay.

First Days

February 15, 1943

The first day at the factory started with a photo session. Then, with his stomach growling - Jean was only allowed one supper - he had to comply with the bureaucratic necessities. They quickly had to get used to working on an empty stomach since the ten to eleven-hour working days did not consider their primary physiological needs, meals being served only in the evening.

This was the trigger for the first conflict. The French workers demanded the right to two meals a day. After all, they were not officially prisoners. They were supposed to be treated the same as German workers. Finally, they obtained satisfaction after a week of conflict. Only halfway, though, since only one meal was distributed to them on weekends.

During this time, Jean worked as a mechanic after a quick training.

March 14, 1943

When you are seventeen, you aren’t really serious. You are a little more serious when you celebrate your twentieth birthday in the country of the occupier. It had been almost a month since Jean had been expatriated. Nearly three weeks since he had joined the electric welding building. The work rate, already grueling so far, would accelerate even more. Each day, the ordeal began at six o’clock sharp and ended at six o’clock in the morning. With, in all and for all, two half-hour breaks including that of supper. The pace was all the harder because there was little or no recovery, the week starting on Monday evening and ending on Sunday morning.

Prison and Act of Resistance

April 17, 1943

The day before, Jean, having no work to do, left the factory and lingered for a few minutes at the edge of the canal. He was brutally brought back to reality by a blow to his shoulder. “Ramonat!”, it was the boss who was calling him to order. On Saturday, April 17, he was summoned to the director’s office and expected to receive a warning. What was his surprise to see a policeman when he arrived! That day, Jean was taken to prison by the Gestapo. Reason: lack of production. After being called a lazybones and receiving a few blows punctuating the message, he was held captive. Forty per cell, sleeping on the floor. Hard to sleep between these four walls, on an overcoat recycled into a makeshift bed base. They came to get him forty-eight hours later.

On Monday, at ten o’clock in the morning, after having signed the German papers on which his arrest was signified, Jean went to his factory, a letter from the Gestapo in hand. This time, it was a matter of not making any more mistakes. At the labor camp, the men were not unaware of the atrocious practices that took place in the concentration capms. Jean resumed his work the same evening at six o’clock, relieved in spite of everything.

April 20, 1943

A great day for Germany: fifty-four years earlier, Adolf Hitler was born. An event of such magnitude had to be celebrated properly. Houses ostentatiously displaying many swastika flags, great orators haranguing the German workers, the triumphant Germany had to redouble its efforts more than ever for the victory of the new Europe.

April 23, 1943

A few days of relaxation for the Easter holidays. The food was better and the workers had a day off. It was an opportunity to visit the Hamburg Zoo. This visit being pleasant, the men returned on June 20 and July 4.

Despite the first warning from the Gestapo, Jean had great difficulty being particularly productive while knowing that his work would be used to kill his loved ones, his family, his country, or the Allied countries. While keeping a normal work pace, he went every evening, for two months, to the edge of the canal with a Flemish comrade. His small, but courageous, act of resistance was to sink many of the gun barrels he made during the day. Every evening, the canal swallowed up part of the production. This resistance act stopped with the first bombardments.

Operation Gomorrah

July 24, 1943

Operation Gomorrah is a series of air raids carried out by the RAF on Hamburg. On July twenty-fourth at zero fifty-seven, the RAF bombers dropped their bombs for an hour. Then, at two forty, it was the United States Army Air Force that sent one hundred twenty-two B-17s.

Jean did not see the sun on the day of July twenty-fifth, nineteen hundred and forty-three. The damage was very extensive after this first raid and the opaque smoke rising from the ruins made the atmosphere of the city quite surreal. The compulsory workers were requisitioned to save the few pieces of furniture that remained.

How can I describe the night of July twenty-seventh to twenty-one, nineteen hundred and forty-three? It is not possible to imagine, for someone who, like me, has been fortunate enough to live in a corner of the world that is pacified, the violence of a bombing raid. The anguish of the whistling bombs, the deafening explosions, all this violence that explodes on contact with the homes of helpless civilians. Jean Ramonat experienced it. He was underneath, with the Germans, when the Allies decided to raze this city, for the sake of example, to break the morale of the population.

How would I have reacted, if, after having fled my building with my luggage in a shelter, I had seen it collapse under the impact of a bomb that fell on the next building? What ignominy to have to run, in the middle of bombs, in the burning street to the next shelter. Two hundred meters can seem particularly far under such conditions.

The factory had been spared, proof that the bombings were not specifically strategic. Fortunately for the workers who worked at night. The seven hundred and thirty-nine planes that dropped their cargo that night created a Feuerstrum, a tornado of fire of eight hundred degrees Celsius with winds reaching two hundred and forty kilometers per hour. The asphalt on the streets melted on the spot, and many cooked in the air-raid shelters along the twenty-one square kilometers of the city.

45,000 dead, 9,000 tons of bombs

Jean and his comrades lodged next to the prisoner camp and then were moved to the suburbs, the authorities fearing a final bombardment. As expected, there was another firestorm. Jean contemplated it from a ditch. Slightly sheltered by trees, he watched the deluge. A few bombs passed just over their heads, others fell on farms a few hundred meters away. But the worst was happening before their eyes. Operation Gomorrah left forty-five thousand dead, twenty times more homeless. In less than ten days, the nine thousand tons of bombs had almost razed the city.

July 30, 1943

On the way back to the city, many houses were still burning. Two barracks near the factory had been completely destroyed. Fortunately, they were empty at the time. As for the factory itself, it was almost entirely destroyed. The production of guns was therefore stopped. A good point for the Allied victory.

No question of standing around twiddling your thumbs. After two days of rest, the men were sent to Hanover by truck. Thirteen hours, packed like sardines to travel one hundred and fifty kilometers. Jean took a last look at the deserted city. All that was left were a few skeletons of smoking houses. Despite this, the city that Jean and his comrades left that day would be raided again that night.

Hanover

August 2, 1943

German propaganda promised good meals and good beds for workers coming to Germany. The message was not passed to the Empelde camp, on the outskirts of Hanover. The camp looked abandoned but a closer examination revealed in fact regiments of lice, fleas, bedbugs or other parasites, so that most of the men, including Jean, preferred to sleep in a nearby wood. However, the German were not ready to let them sleep under the starts and threatened to shoot the recalcitrants. After a night without any comfort and a quick medical examination, Jean was hired in a powder factory.

The next day, at six o’clock, he was introduced to two women and an eighteen-year-old girl, his new colleagues. After receiving several warnings following incessant chatter, Jean was transferred to another workshop. Several old German women would keep him company. Fortunately, the team also consisted of a young Russian and a young Frenchwoman.

September 22, 1943

The Allied victory was approaching. Hanover began to suffer the consequences. Jean was reassigned to the Hamburg factory. He left for the second time a factory and a city in flames.

Back to Hambourg

October 3, 1943

The French delegation sometimes brought gifts to the French people held in Germany. Jean received a suit, a pair of socks, and shoes from the French delegation. All of this was less than three weeks old when a thief stole it, along with his personal suitcase. Jean was left with nothing. With the vouchers he had won at the factory, the vouchers were his salary in Germany, he bought a new suit. Unfortunately, the room was searched again a few days later. These small setbacks, combined with the pain of deportation, greatly demoralized the workers.

February 11, 1944

One year. Twelve long months in Germany, away from family and friends, and still no leave in sight. Those who had been able to benefit from it in October had not returned and many of them then joined the resistance, so the others were deprived of it. Jean was approaching his twenty-first birthday and the war was dragging on.

April 20, 1944

Adolf Hitler’s birthday and a simple observation: there are fewer swastika flags than the previous year, in the city invaded by ruins.

The bombings continue

June 18, 1944

The year nineteen hundred and forty-four had been rather quiet for Jean so far. His life was punctuated by long hours at the factory, interspersed with performances in the rooms where he did not hesitate to sing, and outings in the city: football matches, variety shows, and evenings at the French center. But the war was not yet over: the Allies dropped their stocks of bombs on Hamburg, just to stir up the ruins of the previous year.

July 20, 1944

Following the failed assassination attempt on Hitler, the British launched new raids on the city. The tension was rising. At the factory, the workers were gathered for a speech on the need to produce ever more for victory. A message that did not go down well with the foreign workers. The extremely frequent bombings generated many casualties in the last months of nineteen hundred and forty-four and everyone forgot about the end-of-year festivities.

February 11, 1945

Beginning of the third and last year. As early as March, Jean was requisitioned to set up barricades in the streets near the factory. There were many air raid alerts every day. Only the first of April escaped the rule. Once the barricades were completed, everyone had to evacuate the city. On April 14, at five o’clock in the morning, Jean left the camp. The deportees marched in a column to the train station. After three hours by train, they were disembarked eighty kilometers from the city. Jean, parked in a meadow near the station, watched with apprehension as fighter planes continually strafed the surroundings of the railway line. They were finally moved in the early evening to a nearby village.

April 15, 1945

After spending the night in a wood, near a potato silo (this would be their only food), they continued on their way. Three days of walking. The convoy, exhausted by the long stages and the heat, was requisitioned by the German army towards the Elbe to dig trenches.

April 26, 1945

After having dug trenches, they were asked to unload ammunition. After midnight, an English fighter plane fired a flare over them. Two bombs fall a few hundred meters away. The danger was particularly great that night.

The Allies were only a few kilometers away, on the other side of the Elbe. The Germans kept the prisoners in the hangars during the day, at used them as labour at night. The official status of workers was totally forgotten.

The war drags on

April 28, 1945

Benito Mussolini was shot and then hanged in a square in Milan by the Italian resistance. Hitler committed suicide two days later. But the war was not over yet.

The Allied artillery was shelling the area, and the prisoners had to work anyway. Jean was taken to a small village. As close to the front line as possible. The shells were falling fifty meters away from him. Faced with the impossibility of crossing the zone, the Germans sent the men back to their camp.

Jean learned the next day that the village had been completely razed. The Germans, in a panic, ordered the prisoners to withdraw, the Allies being only three kilometers away. But they decided to stay and wait for their liberators.

May 1, 1945

Fighting took place in the village. The Allies were there and the Germans, after a few shots, raised the white flag. They were free at last!

The return to France was near. They did not actually arrive there until twenty days later.

They spent two days watching German prisoners parade. They then stayed for a week to celebrate the end of the war. Germany officially capitulated on May 8th.

For the return trip, it was marches on foot, long journeys by truck on congested roads, sometimes only fifty kilometers in a day, and train journeys on precarious bridge reconstructions.

May 20, 1945

After a passage through Belgium, where the could hear the cheers of the crowd, some administrative formalities and a medical examination, Jean arrived in Paris at two o’clock in the morning. The French authorities gathered the returnees at the Vélodrome d’Hiver for a meal and some formalities before they were dispersed. Jean found his family on May 21, 1945 at around 9:30 a.m. Since the liberation of Paris, he had not received any news. Only his letters were sent to France by the Red Cross.

Once back, my grandfather met a young woman from Chalon, my grandmother. But that is another story…

Author’s note

I wanted to write this story after reading the notebook containing my grandfather’s testimony. I had often heard my grandfather talk about this period, but this is what we wrote down in the notebook a few months after his return that made me realize what he had endured during this deportation.

My grandfather was very happy to see that I wanted to make a short story out of it and answered my many questions.

Olivier Ramonat