Ils étaient lycéens, étudiants, fils de paysans, ouvriers. Parmi eux il y avait des communistes, des juifs, parfois les deux ensemble. Ils étaient nés en France, en Hongrie, en Roumanie, en Italie, en Espagne ou au Brésil. En 1939, ils ne se connaissaient pas. En 1943, ils prennent ensemble les armes pour combattre l'occupant nazi et le régime de Vichy. Ils forment à Toulouse la 35ème brigade FTP-MOI et risquent leur vie pour libérer le sol de la France, leur terre d'asile. Beaucoup d'entre eux sont morts -déportés, fusillés, guillotinés- certains par miracle, ont survécu et racontent.

 

No work, no family, no homeland - Diary of a partisan brigade - Audio : French / Subtitles : English

 

They were High school students, son of peasants, workers. Some of them were Jews, most were foreigners and communists . Some were born in France, others in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Spain and Brazil. They didn’t knew each other in 1939. In 1943, in Toulouse (south of France) they took up arms to fight the Nazis and the Vichy régime. Some of them because they participated in the Spanish civil war and had a score to settle with the fascists. The others because they were persecuted and hunted. They formed the 35th Brigade of the FTP-MOI : Francs-Tireurs Partisans ot the Main-d’œuvre Immigrée (foreign workers organization of Resistance). They risked their lives to liberate France, their land of asylum. 18 out of them were arrested by Vichy’s Police and delivered to the Nazis. 2 died in the déportation train. 4 were shot. Marcel (Mendel) Langer, the founder of the brigade, was guillotined. The others, miraculously, survived. And remember…