Paul Rassinier - Wartime Years

Wartime Years

Many of the "Socialists of Munich" joined in collaboration, but not Rassinier. In June 1941, with the invasion of the Soviet Union, resistance in France came alive and Rassinier first joined up with The Volunteers Of Freedom, a Republican-Socialist coalition; and then with the Resistance group Liberation, organized in the north of France by Henri Ribière. Rassinier became the director of Libération Nord for the territories of Alsace and Belfort. Like others in various nations who were members of War Resisters' International, he practiced non-violent resistance to the Nazi German occupation, both because of his pacifism and his fear that reprisals would fall on innocent people. Rassinier, using an expression common at the time, did not feel comfortable "to play with the skin of others".

Using his publishing contacts, he printed false identity papers, and helped establish an underground railroad from Belfort to the Swiss town of Basel, smuggling resistance fighters, political refugees and persecuted Jews to safety. In 1986, testimony of resistance member Yves Allain revealed that Rassinier had also worked closely with BURGUNDY, an escape network set up by the Special Operations Executive to smuggle shot-down Allied pilots back home through Switzerland. He wrote articles for the Vichy-friendly newspaper Le Rouge et le Bleu (The Red and the Blue), then, along with J.L. Bruch, Pierre Cochery and Albert Tschann helped found The Fourth Republic, an underground paper that advocated resistance and tried to lay a post-war foundation for France, so "that all those who will survive the war together can and must rebuild peace together, and thus save the country from a civil war." The Fourth Republic demanded that Germany was to be held accountable for the crimes of Nazism, but the contribution of the Treaty of Versailles would not be ignored, nor would Germany and Italy be held unilaterally responsible for starting the war. BBC broadcasts from both London and Algiers congratulated the founding of the paper, and broadcast some excerpts, though by the time the only wartime edition came out Rassinier was already under arrest.

The local Communist resistance groups of the Front National (FN) were hostile to Rassinier's idea of non-violent resistance and were enraged when Rassinier published leaflets condemning Soviet Communism equally with the National Socialism of Hitler. After several warnings, the Communists condemned him to death. Rassinier's life was saved when in reaction to attacks on Germans at a local pharmacy and coffee house, both German and Vichy French police launched a series of raids that led to several arrests, one of them a person with a forged identity card. He broke under interrogation and revealed how he had obtained it, and on October 30, 1943, Rassinier was arrested in his classroom by agents of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), his arrest observed by a Liberation-North agent who was delivering forged identity and ration cards to him. His wife and two year old son were also arrested, but released a few days later. For eleven days, Rassinier was interrogated, the beatings involved leading to a broken jaw, crushed hand and ruptured kidney.

Rassinier was then deported to Germany, enduring a three-day rail transport that ended on January 30, 1944, at Buchenwald concentration camp. After three weeks in quarantine, he became prisoner number 44364 and was transported to Dora, where V1 and V2 rockets were built in underground tunnels. Work conditions were terrible. Hunger, disease, overwork, exhaustion and physical abuse by the S.S. and the corrupt mafia of the Häftlingsführung (camp lower administration made of prisoners themselves; see "Prisoner functionary") resulted in a catastrophic death rate.

In his first book Crossing the Line, he says several factors contributed to his survival. Beginning in April, 1944, his wife mailed him food parcels, though this stopped in November. His friendship with his Block Chief resulted in his parcel being delivered directly to him without first being plundered by the prisoner government. For a time, he landed a cushy job in "Schwung" (a position somewhere between orderly and manservant) to the S.S. Oberscharführer commanding the guard dog company, and got the opportunity to observe the S.S. at close range. Also, partly as a result of his interrogation, he came down with nephritis, and spent no less than two hundred and fifty days of his imprisonment in the Revier (infirmary).

On April 7, 1945, he was evacuated from Dora on what became a death train, endlessly traveling the German rail network from one bombed-out destination to another, with no food, water, or shelter. After several days, as the train rounded a bend and in spite of his terrible physical condition, he jumped off and thanks to the angle, escaped the S.S. gunfire. American soldiers rescued him the next day.

He returned to France in June 1945, and was awarded the Vermilion Medal of the French Recognition and the Rosette of Resistance. He was also classified as 95 percent an invalid (later to be revised to 105 percent). He returned to his teaching post, but because of his physical condition, was prematurely retired in 1950.