This Sunday, July 18, 2010, the city of Poitiers has given a street kid, the son of a gypsy and a Gypsy, who was interned in French concentration camps for nomads for World War II. Not exactly a road but a path of land, more intimate, softer soles of the wind People said that the Administration's travel, weird name that is neither singular nor feminine ... a driveway, then, but conveniently located opposite the modern and imposing building departmental archives where sleeps all memory of Vienna, where was asleep, presumably with the blessing of voluntary amnesia, that of one of these camps which was parked in this kid. One of two street signs is exactly where the old line of barbed wire.
Jean-Louis Bauer (1930-2007), said Poulouche, was 10 when he found himself for the first time behind barbed wire, those of Mérignac, Gironde where nomad then his family.
Poulouche and his mother in 1985.
was during the summer of 1940, I can not remember the exact date , he told me when I met him. We were on the road with horses, verdines, we traveled in the Vienne, Deux-Sevres, Gironde, everywhere, and a beautiful [sic] day, we were picked up, we did not even know why . We were put in a big field like that, with traffic ban. Still the French gendarmerie's side of the Gironde. And then we left our verdines, our horses and everything, and nothing more was ever heard of.
interned because the 3rd Republic was waning, April 6, 1940, decreed that nomads should be required to live under police supervision in a local department. The first internment that I discovered in the archives for the camp of Mérignac date of May 14, 1940: Those parents W. and their 10 children. Vichy and the Germans took advantage of the decree to get rid of people who do their gréait not, the Provisional Government of the Republic of de Gaulle left the camps after the liberation of France in late 1944, the last leaving the Gypsies do Angouleme on the first day of June 1946.
This means if the fate of his companions Poulouche and nomads was ordinary. Transfer to the camp of Poitiers early December 1940, then in Montreuil-Bellay 23 December 1943, the largest camp of the hexagon, with watchtowers and barbed wire electrified. On 18 January 1945, was Jargeau (Loiret), while the Germans and Vichy had been driven across the French territory! It was not until the December 23 for the teenager, who was then over 15 years, took the road on foot, Jargeau in Poitiers, in midwinter, the mother pulling the stroller in which her youngest child was crying. The family moved to La Neuville-en-Poitou, where she waited in vain for the return of the father deported to Germany in January 1943 as part of the Changing Forced established in September 1942.
Poulouche The path crossed mine in early 1984, following an article published Feb. 21 in The New Republic Central West , edition of the Vienna Convention, which referred to the publication of my first book on the camp-Montreuil Bellay *. He then sent a letter which I have never forgotten the first words: But I'm Gypsy, and I'm Poulouche, when I read the newspaper, I cried.
We did left since, until his death in November 2007. I helped him in his fight for the forfeiture was recognized obscured by the Administration as well as by historians. Gypsies were of interest to the media that stigmatize their misdeeds and consolidate our compatriots in the rejection they suffer from their arrival in France in the fifteenth century. Stelae were erected and Poitiers, Montreuil-Bellay and Jargeau.
Inauguration of the stele in Montreuil-Bellay January 18, 1988. Poulouche between the prefect of Maine-et-Loire and Mayor of the city. Jacques Sigot traces the history of the camp.
Each year, the last Saturday in April, Poulouche rekindled the flame of remembrance at Montreuil-Bellay. Here in 2005.
Jean-Louis Bauer was appointed President of the National Association of Victims and Families of Victims Gypsies during the Second World War. His city is therefore to report that official recognition would have imagined the boy who suffered in the camps, that could never hope to adults who spent the last years of his life to save that memory that haunted him. His son Tony, surrounded by his family, took great pains to repress his emotion when he thanked Alain Claeys, Deputy Mayor of Poitiers badge for this gesture, on behalf of the entire Gypsy community in France.
Jacques Sigot said Chop, named by the mother of Poulouche in 1985.
* A camp for Gypsies and others. Montreuil-Bellay 1940-1945, Wallada Editions, 1983. Reissued by the same editions in 2010 under the title: The barbed discovers that history. Montreuil-Bellay 1940-1946.
Poitiers July 18, 2010. Tony, a tribute to his father on his right, the deputy mayor of Poitiers, on his left, secretary general of the prefecture of Vienne.
The family of Jean-Louis Bauer. In the background, the departmental archives of Vienna.
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