André Rogerie

General André Rogerie
Born	(1921-12-25)25 December 1921 Villefagnan,Charente France
Died	1 May 2014(2014-05-01)(aged 92) Martigné-Briand,Maine-et-Loire France
Nationality	French
Alma mater	Saint-Cyr
Occupation	Soldier
Years active	1942–
Known for	witness tothe Holocaust
Notable work	Vivre c'est vaincre
Title	General
Awards	Commander of theLegion of Honour

André Rogerie(25 December 1921 – May 2014) was a member of theFrench ResistanceinWorld War IIand survivor of sevenNazi concentration campswho testified after the war about what he had seen in the camps.

Rogerie was born inVillefagnanin theCharentedepartment of south-western France.His trajectory was "typical of the complexity of the movement of deportees among the camps."His eyewitness account ofAuschwitz-Birkenauexemplifies the self-published eyewitness accounts published in the immediate aftermath of the war, but ignored until the 1980s. He is also notable for having produced the oldest contemporary sketch of a campcrematorium,also ignored by historians for decadesuntil the 1987 publication ofLe Monde juifbyGeorges Wellers.

Early years and entry into the French Resistance

André Rogeriewas born to Joseph and Jeanne Rogeriein Villefagnan, in thedepartmentofCharentein western France on 25 December 1921, the fifth child in a Catholic military family.His father was an officer who died in 1923 from wounds he received inWorld War I.

He was raised with a traditionallove of countryand God. His older brother, also an officer, was killed in 1940.The German invasion in May 1940 and defeat of France was deeply distressing to him; when he learned that MarshalPhilippe Pétainrequested anarmisticefrom the Germans in June, he collapsed. A few days later, a friend informed him that a youngGeneral De Gaullewas continuing the war in England, and Rogerie resolved to join him.

In 1941, he joined the lycée St. Louis in preparation for entering theFrench military academy at St. Cyr.He joined up with theCeux de la Libération(CDLL) movement, which was chiefly involved in the manufacture of false papers and which his cousin had joined, but as a young intern, he had limited involvement.

His goal was above all else to get to England and join the fight. He was not aware ofanti-Jewish discriminationuntil he sawJewsobliged to wear theyellow starin June 1942.As a mark of solidarity, he and a colleague went aroundAngoulemefor a few days wearing a blue star.He walked around in public throwing anti-German pamphlets he crudely printed himself. After theAllied landings in North Africain November 1942, he sought to join theFree French Forcesled byCharles de Gaullevia Spain and the southernMediterranean Sea.

Through a colleague, he found a source and obtained some counterfeit identity papers, but they were of poor quality, and on 3 July 1943, at age 21, he was arrested by theGestapoinDax,along with two other friends. He was imprisoned, and held by the Gestapo inBiarritz,Bayonne,BordeauxandCompiègnebefore being deported to the camps.

Deportation

Rogerie was deported toBuchenwaldat the end of October 1943, and spent time in a succession of camps, including Buchenwald,Dora,MajdanekandAuschwitz-Birkenau.During thedeath marchhe also passed through the camps ofGross-Rosen,Nordhausen, Dora again, andHarzungen.He ended up escaping from the column on 12 April 1945 near Magdebourg, and reentered France alone on 15 May.

On arrival in Buchenwald on 1 November 1943, his head was shaved, he was disinfected and sent to the barracks in rags. His initial assignment was carrying stones. From Buchenwald he was sent on toDorawhere conditions were appalling. The deportees had to work tirelessly in the cold, starving, sick, without water or sleep. In three months he was a wreck and was no longer able to work.

Having become "useless" Rogerie was sent in a convoy of ill prisoners toLublin.In her bookDeportation and Genocide. Between Memory and Oblivionpublished in 1992,Annette Wieviorkaasks if Rogerie meant theMajdanekcamp in the outskirts ofLublin.In fact, his report published in 1945 is not clear on this point; he speaks only briefly about the camp.

In the 1987Jewish WorldRogerie no longer speaks about the camp of Lublin but of Majdanek.Two more months passed waiting for death. When theSoviet Armyapproached Lublin, the camp was evacuated. On 18 April 1944, Rogerie arrived atAuschwitz-Birkenau.The name "Auschwitz" meant nothing to him. He was tattooed and transferred to the quarantine camp of Birkenau.Right away, a French doctor told him that they were gassing people to death. He didn't believe it. That evening, he learned that three hundred young Jewish women were gassed.It was at that moment that he learned about the extermination of the Jews. He made a promise to himself to bear witness if he were to get out alive.

After the liberation

On 13 April 1945, the Americansliberatedthe sector. Rogerie remained one month in a German school, regaining 18 kg (40 lb). He began writing his memoir in a school notebook. After a month, he was evacuated to France by truck, arriving in Angouleme on 17 May 1945. He continued writing, with his sister helping with the typing, and completed his manuscript on 21 October. He self-published it in 1945 under the title "You Win By Living" (Vivre c'est vaincre) with a print run of 1,000 copies using monies he received as back salary.

He illustrated his book with a map of Birkenau and a sketch of a crematorium both drawn from memory. This graphic was credited byGeorges Wellersas being the oldest of its kind and highly accurate.The fact of having drawn it immediately after liberation became a source of relief to Rogerie, because what he lived through later seemed so incredible, that he sometimes wondered if it was possible. He believed that what he lived through was so beyond normal experience that words fail. "The deportees try to recount it—actual historical facts, but unimaginable—but how to convey the cold, the hunger, the beatings, the suffering, the cries, the howling, the shrieks, the fear, the fatigue, the filth, the stink, the promiscuity, the endlessness, the poverty, the disease, the torture, the horror, the hangings, the gas chambers, the deaths?"

Rogerie matriculated as an officer candidate inSaint-Cyr,the FrenchWest PointorSandhurst,in 1946. He chose a specialty inengineeringand was posted to Germany before going on toFrench Indochina.He ended his career with the rank ofGénéraland was decorated as aCommander of the Legion of Honour.He died in May 2014 inMartigné-Briand.

Struggle against Holocaust denial

After the publication in 1945 of his bookVivre c'est vaincre,he didn't speak publicly about deportation and the Jewishgenocide.He knew nothing about the existence of theCenter of Contemporary Jewish Documentationnor were they in possession of his book. The rise ofHolocaust denialled him to speak out once again. In 1986 he published an article inLe Déporté,the organ of theUnion Nationale des Associations de Déportés, Internés et Familles de disparusand then inLe Monde juif(edition of Jan/Mar 1987).

He wrote about the fate of Jews andGypsiesat Auschwitz.He knew that, as aCatholic,no one could accuse him of embellishing the facts.Even so, he was often attacked by Holocaust deniers, whom he, in turn, viewed as obviousanti-Semites.He drew a clear distinction between deportation and persecution (of Jews and Gypsies) on the one hand, and that of repression (of Resistance members) on the other.He gave testimony about life in concentration camps in speeches to academic establishments, and on CD and on DVD. In 1994 he received the "Mémoire de la Shoah" prize of the Buchmann Foundation. On 16 January 2005, he testified about his experiences along withSimone Veilat theParis city hall,on the occasion of the commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Works

• Vivre c'est vaincre(the English title isYou Win By Living:literally the French title translates as "To live is to conquer [vanquish]" )
  • First ed., self-published, Paris, 1946.
  • — (1988),Vivre c'est vaincre[You Win By Living] (in French), Paris:André-Hubert Hérault,p. 106,ISBN2-903851-50-6,OCLC462001287
  • Reissued by the author, Paris, 1994.
• Preface, Suzanne Birnbaum,Une Française juive est revenue: Auschwitz, Belsen, Raguhn(A Jewish Frenchwoman Returns: Auschwitz, Belsen, Raguhn), Hérault, 1989, 146pp.
• La République panurgienne(The Panurgian Republic), 1991, 53pp.FRBnF:354681544.La République panurgienneatGoogle Books
• 1943–1945 Déporté: Témoin des crimes nazis contre l'humanité(Deported: Eyewitness to Nazi Crimes Against Humanity), Mouans Sartoux: PEMF, 1994: book based on his 1945 storyVivre c'est vaincreand on a series of interviews carried out in 1991 with primary and secondary school students in the city ofAngers.
• Auschwitz-Birkenau. Leçons de ténèbres(Auschwitz-Birkenau. Lessons from the Gloom),Plon,1995.
• Calembredaines et billevesées(Claptrap and Balderdash), 1995ISBN2-9509134-0-7;FRBnF:35827440w.

Sources

• Wellers, Georges[in French](1987), "André Rogerie, Un témoignage hors pair: les chambres à gaz au camp d'Auschwitz-Birkenau" [André Rogerie, An Unparalleled Testimony: the Gas Chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau],Le Monde juif(in French) (125), Paris:CDJC:3–16
• Wieviorka, Annette[in French](1992),Déportation et génocide. Entre la mémoire et l'oubli[Deportation and Genocide. Between Memory and Oblivion] (in French), Paris:Plon,pp. 249–252

See also

• Criticism of Holocaust denial
• Filip Müller
• French Resistance

External links

• INA, Major Interviews, General André Rogerie