Memories of Alexandre Tichy Sr.:
“We were kept in Le Vigan for a while. Soon I noticed that every day the soldiers would take four people to an open field. They had to kneel down and keep their eyes focused directly on the Sun. If they looked in another direction, they were beaten up. After 15 minutes or so the men were taken back to a dark room for the rest of the day. They had to do it every day. I noticed that the man who was yelling at night asking for his dog, as I described prior, was one of those people. Those men were brutally punished for whatever they had done.
Most people in that group were Jews who had fled Germany because of the persecution they were suffering in their country. But now they were taken as prisoners because they were Germans. After a few weeks in that place we were taken to another location. They put us on a train and shipped us to another part of France. The main railroads were used by the army to transport the troops, and we had to use some secondary railroads. It took us more than 4 days to reach the South of France, at the beach. The accommodations we were put in had been used before by another group. In Spain the communists had fought with General Franco’s troops, and when Franco won, all communists fled to South France. There they were captured by the French authorities and kept in those accommodations. Little by little they had been released and now we were coming to use that place.
I became a different person after my experience in the concentration camp. I saw disgrace at its worst and how people could be mean and nasty to one another. I also learned that we need much less than we think in order to survive and to live. One problem we faced at the prior camp was shortage of food since the daily portions were becoming smaller every day. We were told by the camp administrators that they didn’t have enough money to buy more food, but if we could pay for it they could get us more food. Some of us had some money left so we started paying for some extra food.
But soon the situation became chaotic again. Besides that, in our sector there were many Jews, and it was not easy to be among them. They were very selfish, which made it difficult to relate to them. Every morning we received a small loaf of bread for every eight of us in our tent. But there was not a single knife available, which made it difficult to slice the bread. The only option was to grab a piece with our own hands, which of course produced portions of different size and each one of us wanted the biggest. So we arranged it in a way that we rotated every day in the order or being served, thus at least making the distribution fairer But there was too little food there. I am still amazed that we survived with just a small portion of food every day. Though, yes, we did it!
I didn’t know anybody in France, but one day I received a money order for 500.00 francs. I still don’t know who sent me that money. It was someone in France, but there was no way to find out who it was. I really enjoyed that money because for a while I could buy some extra food every day. Once in a while I could even buy some grape juice, which was a great help for my stomach.
Another interesting fact is that I had been a Catholic for many years, but after my contacts with Just in Belgium I absorbed some Protestant viewpoints and, because they made sense to me and were historically true and correct, I had changed my mind and was now thinking more as a Protestant than as a Catholic. But coincidentally, one of my best friends at that time when we were at the concentration camp was a German Catholic! A very faithful Catholic. It was an interesting friendship because we had much free time and talked a lot about the differences between the two systems. I certainly learned from him and he learned from me as well. He was a good man; actually, he left the camp before I did and before leaving he gave me his passport just in case that I needed it in any circumstance. After Germany invaded France, the Germans took control of the camp and those who had filled out forms declaring that they were Germans were taken back to Germany first. I could have done that, but I still had my concerns because I didn’t want the Germans finding who I was. Considering the facts that happened just before Germany invaded our country that could be too dangerous still. So I decided to leave only later on. Unfortunately, though, suddenly there was a typhus outbreak in the camp. Over 300 people got contaminated and sick, many died.
Since there was no physician available at that time either, the camp administration took those who were sick and transferred us to Perpignan and put us in an old building, a former factory. The building was not too solid and would not resist heavy rain or flooding. And sure enough, one day we had a heavy storm and the place was flooded. The building would certainly collapse, so they took us all outside. Those who were too sick were taken on their own beds and removed from the building. We were then sent back to the old camp, which was also flooded. There was water and mud everywhere and we actually had no place where to stay. It was then that we were told that the management decided that we had to be sent to a different place; but there was no transportation and we had to walk to that place, where we finally arrived after a few hours walking under really bad weather conditions.
Due to how they treated others, I had not liked the Jews in the past; but I must confess that my heart was broken seeing the suffering they went through in those days. It was sad to hear their stories of how they suffered in Germany during the Hitler’s days.
When we got to the new camp we had to stop and wait at a certain point while some trucks transporting people passed. At a certain moment the trucks had to stop for some reason. There was a young man among us who suddenly left our group and rushed toward one of those trucks, trying to reach one woman who was on the truck. The soldiers in charge of course beat him until he returned to our group. The lady he had seen happened to be his mother, whom he had not seen for six years. Soon the trucks kept running, and the poor guy could not even talk to his mother.
When we finally arrived to our final destination in that new camp, we talked to the other people who had already been there for a while. There was a little Jewish girl who told us about their experience in Germany during the War. We asked her if they had good finances before the War, and she said that yes they did, because they had a big 18-room home. But they were removed from that place and sent out to nowhere.
There was an interesting incident that happened at that time. Actually, in the very first camp that I was sent to in the beginning, there had not been enough food for us in those days, but the guards would buy us something if we had money. In the group I was with we used to buy some rice and cook it in the most difficult circumstances. Hygiene was not very good. Because of the illnesses, people often had diarrhea, and there were only four restrooms for 1,500 people. There was no toilet paper (or any paper!) available. It was total chaos. One day an old Jew came to our tent and saw us cooking the rice. He asked what we were cooking and we told him that it was something to help with the diarrhea. He begged us for a portion of it, because he was having a hard time with that problem. So we told him to come the next day and when he came we gave him the water in which we had cooked the rice. Now, at this last camp that I was in I suddenly saw the same man, and when he saw me he rushed in my direction. I thought he would be mad because the rice water had probably not been a great help to him in the old camp. But what a surprise when he started thanking me for the help he got, telling me that the rice water had worked so well for him at that time.
Those were extremely difficult days. I had no contact with my family. I didn’t know where they were or if they were still alive. The same about me, they didn’t have a clue about my whereabouts, or if I was even alive. But the time was coming for some changes to happen.”
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