@ Drawings made during the deportation by four artists: France Audoul-Martinon (Ravensbrück), Louis Bissinger (Buchenwald), Gino Gregori (Mauthausen) and Jeanne Letourneau (Ravensbrück). Site du musée de l'Armée, www.musee-armee.fr/actualites/ concours-national-de-la-resistance-and--de-la-deportation-2021-2022/

the Death March, it’s not us who gave that name. And then, in these open wagons, I remember perfectly because I was the last to be counted, I was the 161st in this open wagon, there wasn’t enough space for everyone. After a while, the train once left, well as we were on top of each other, I remember, me, having planked on a human sea, truly. To resist. And the train was going, going, going. We didn’t know where we were going. It was then that we learned that the SS, not knowing where to dump our bodies, were looking for camps likely to receive us. I knew that they had stopped in front of the Buchenwald camp, that they had stopped in front of the Mau- thausen camp. Then, we stopped at a certain point in Prague. We continued like that and one day, we arrived at Dora, where we left. And I started working in this camp. But very quickly, the Allies drew closer and there was a new emigration. We were evacuated to the north and we arrived at Bergen-Belsen, not the Bergen-Belsen of Anne Frank, but the military barracks. And it is there that we were liberated by the English, on April 15, 1945. I especially want to emphasize the fact that January 27, 1945, the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz camp, was not the liberation of the camps. It is the beginning only since on January 27 we were, already, we who were in Auschwitz and in the surrounding camps, well we were on the snowy roads since January 18. Haïm Vidal Sephiha, specialist in Spanish Judeo, 'Deportation and the death march, a testimony,' Tsafon, No. 73, 2017

final" occurs while simultaneously, on June 22, 1944, the Red Army triggers an offensive plan, Operation Bagration. This marks the beginning of an ineluctable step forward. In a few days, the Soviets complete the liberation of Belarus and Ukraine and enter Polish territory, then approaching the eastern fron- ties of the Reich. At the same time, in the West, the Allies gain a foothold on the continent with the Normandy landing. Then began a series of prisoner transfers from Auschwitz to the KL inland: between early July and late November 1944, 97,000 detainees were transferred by dozens of convoys. The month of October constitutes a real turning point in the history of the camp: while 39,000 people were still transported from all over Europe to Auschwitz in September 1944, this figure dropped to 6,000 the following month, revealing the redirection towards other camps of deportees- tations that continue despite everything. When, on January 12, 1945, the Red Army resumed its march forward through Polish territory, triggering a new offensive, about 67,000 prisoners remained in the three main camps of Auschwitz. And, on 17 January, 58,000 detainees were thrown onto the roads, in turn beginning the "death marches" towards the camps set up within the Reich.

TESTIMONY OF HAÏM VIDAL SEPHIHA (1923-2019) DEPORTED TO AUSCHWITZ IN MARCH 1943 "On 18 January we went out on the roads and we did not know that at that moment the great massacre was going to begin because, in reality, all the camps of Silesia had been emptied of their survivors, since we were survivors, we must not forget it. And we were sent into the snow, knee-deep in the snow, walking for whole days. The first part of this evacuation, is what we called later

Hélène Persitz (1912-2006)

Hélène Vestermans was born on August 4, 1912 in Latvia. On November 4, 1941, she married Alexandre Persitz in France. In Nice, the couple was arrested on March 22, 1944, upon denunciation, then transferred to Drancy, and deported by convoy No. 71 to Auschwitz on April 13, 1944. During the season, Hélène is selected for work. She is designated as an interpreter, thanks to her knowledge of Russian and German. Auschwitz was evacuated on January 18, 1945, to the vicinity of the Soviet troops. A few days later, in Upper Silesia, she is loaded into goods wagons without roof, without refueling and without water. Arrived at the Ravensbrück camp on February 11, 1945, it was transferred to the Malchow camp. The camp was evacuated as the Allied armies approached. She is released on May 2 in the village of Luebz by the Americans. Repatriated via Belgium and Lille, she arrives in Paris on May 16, 1945. She finds her husband, who returned to his side a week earlier.

Jorge Semprun (1923-2011)

Son of a family of Spanish republicans who took refuge in France in 1939, Jorge Semprun is at the Henri-IV high school in Paris during the occupation. Communist activist, he joined the ranks of the resistance movement of the FTP-MOI and became a member of an intelligence network. Arrested by the Germans in 1943, he is sent to Compiègne from where he is deported on January 27, 1944 to Buchenwald. He takes part in the organization of the clan-destined resistance set up by the communists and is assigned to one of the administrative services: he is responsible, among other things, for organizing the cultural activities of the inmates at Buchenwald, notably Spanish. Among the many personalities deported to Buchenwald with whom he rubbed shoulders were Maurice Halbimmersion and Henri Maspero, both professors at the Collège de France, who succumbed to the camp. Jorge Semprun survives and will devote several stories to his concentrational experience. “I was indeed going to visit Maurice Immersion and try, once again, to find my young French Muslim in the collective latrine shack. [ ] But that day Maurice Immersion was not able to react to my questions, to participate in a conversation. We were at the end of December 1944, he would not die until weeks later, in mid-March 1945, but he had already fallen into a drowsy immobility, ataractic. Jorge Semprun, The Death That Must, Paris, Gallimard, Folio Collection, 2001.

▲ Léon Delarbre, The transport from Dora to Bergen, April 1945. This journey through Germany lasted five days and four nights in the rain and the cold. © Museum of Resistance and Deportation, Besançon

© Shoah Memorial.