Deported
The authorities suspected Faramus and Chapman of further involvement in acts of sabotage and they were re-arrested by the police late one night in November 1941. As a political prisoner, Faramus was deported with Chapman by boat from St. Helier, Jersey to the port of Granville, in mainland Normandy, then in Occupied France. They were then taken by rail to Fort de Romainville in Paris where many people were interned before being deported to Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, Buchenwald and Dachau.
After a year, Faramus along with other prisoners from Romainville, was taken in terrible conditions by train via Compiègne onto the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany.
In chapter 7 of Journey Into Darkness, Faramus describes the crime for which he was taken out of the Buchenwald camp and forced on a journey to Mauthausen via Leipzig, Dresden and Prague.
...a freezing cold morning, at my place of work — ‘Kommando das Grab' (communal graves) — I had momentarily set aside my shovel to blow into my hands and fingers. I had not seen the approach of the SS Warrant Officer. Failing to acknowledge the man’s presence and not coming to attention and removing my cap from my head until he had passed by was one crime, the interruption of my work without permission was another. I was punched and booted; worse, my number (E)42324 was noted in his book of reports.
The Nazi Party defined Mauthausen as "Grade III". Its purpose was to punish "Incorrigible Political Enemies of the Reich" with extermination through labour.
In Journey Into Darkness Faramus acknowledges Captain Maurice Pertschuck who was murdered in Buchenwald in 1944, Christopher Burney and Lt. Jack H. Taylor. In film footage gathered by the US Department of Defense after the 11th Armored Division of the 3rd US Army entered the camp on the 5th of May 1945, Lt. Jack H. Taylor spoke about his capture, imprisonment and the conditions at Mauthausen. Faramus also mentions Pierre Serge Choumoff, a mathematician and engineer, imprisoned in Romainville and Mauthausen who later investigated the Mauthausen-Gusen complex.
Read more about this topic: Anthony Faramus
Famous quotes containing the word deported:
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)