My Dad’s narrative goes on:
“So now we made it to a new place, but there was another problem: there were no beds! We had to sleep on the floor, and my whole body was sore after a few days. So I decided to look for something that I could use as a mattress. There was a man who had a long coat and would be willing to sell it for 30 francs. I had the money and bought it from him. But when I looked better at him and had the impression that I had seen him before; coincidentally he had the same impression about me. So we finally found out that we both had been in the same camp in Le Vigan, the first camp I was sent to. He was one of those four people who the soldiers took every day out of their rooms and made them look at the sun. After a few weeks their eyes were very red and swollen. Later on the four men were taken around the country and shown to people as if they were German pilots whose planes had been shot down by the French army. They were taken by train on a “tour” and at each train station they were exposed to the public who always beat them up. Because of the daily exposure to the direct light of the sun during the camp days, his eye bulbs were greatly enlarged and almost falling off their place. They had been used by the army to show the citizens that the enemies were being captured, trying to impress the people with what the national army was capable of doing. In other words, for mere propaganda!.
During those days I also learned some interesting things about the Jewish determination to keep their religious habits and traditions. There were several of them in our camp, but they started a movement demanding “kosher foods”, otherwise they would refuse to eat. The French authorities denied them that kind of food, so they decided to stop eating completely until they were given what they wanted. After a few days of fasting, their requests were finally met. Then, according to their religious beliefs, they had another need: they demanded plates that were never used before. They had money to buy whatever they needed. I remember that on a certain occasion I went to the town along with some friends and we found many plates and silverware in a store. So we bought some and brought them to the camp to re-sell them to the Jews. We knew they had been used before, but we “certified” to the Jews that they were brand new, that nobody had eaten on them before... Thus, everyone was a winner. The Jews were happy eating on “brand new” plates... and we made a few bucks from that business! Sometimes we found some plates in the trash, so we would take them and after cleaning them thoroughly, we would sell them to the Jews again; just helping the poor guys with proper eating tools…
There were no physicians or dentists on that camp, and some people suffered a lot because of that. I remember one time when a person was having a toothache and the guards would not bring a dentist in to see him. There was a guy among us who had been a dentist and using a simple old nail he was able to help that person - but what a precarious way to work on a tooth.
There were some nurses that once in a while would bring some medications to those in extreme need, but for an unknown reason they would bring the medication only at 1:00 am - which was very inconvenient because many people would wake up disturbed by their noise.
Those were very difficult days; it's even difficult to describe them because nobody can imagine how bad it was. Being sick with typhus is a very serious condition, and one cannot eat any solid food. The only thing allowed is to drink milk, which we did but in a very restricted way because there was not enough milk for everyone every day. Later on we started receiving a small daily portion of pumpkin soup, but, for many weeks, that was all we had for the day. People usually survived the illness, and as far as I remember, only one person perished due to that infection.
We were living in very precarious accommodations; our housing was in old barracks. A few of us decided to fix our barrack, which we did using some old nails that we found around and a couple of hammers. When we finished, the French guards moved us to another place. We were very unhappy with that, but we decided to fix a few more, and actually at the end we had fixed probably a dozen of them.
There were some interesting things that I learned during that time, from other people’s experiences. Many of us used to get together in the evening and tell our stories or talk about our families, or even other subjects. When someone got a letter they would usually read it to us, too. There was a Jew among us who had not seen his wife for 5 years and one day when he received a letter from her he read it to us. She was encouraging him saying that every day at a certain time of the day she was praying for him, and urged him to do the same at the same time every day, so that through God they could be connected and nobody could separate them from each other and one day they would be back together.
I was friends with a man who lived close to our home in Belgium and was now working in the kitchen at the camp. Once in a while they had to go to Perpignan, a town 5 kilometers from the camp, to buy supplies for the kitchen, and very often they took me with them. On one occasion I got lost in town and they left me behind. It was already dark and I had to walk back those 5 kilometers. The problem was that there were no lights and there was a lot of quick sand in the area. It was very dangerous to walk at night. My only help to walk in the right direction was a lighthouse which was close to the camp. But I couldn’t see much of the road. Actually, for a couple of times I stepped into the quicksand but only with one foot since I was walking very carefully and could take it out quickly. Then when I finally returned to the camp, the guard would not let me in at that time of the night thinking that I didn’t belong there, so I had to wait until morning to get back in.
There were all sorts of people there. Some were teachers, so they started a few small groups teaching people something they use to teach. One of them was a Spanish teacher and I attended his group and learned a little bit of Spanish. But soon the French authorities told us that we could not keep doing that, that it was forbidden to meet that way on a regular basis. They were probably afraid that we could be making plans to escape from that place.”
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