Robert Gaston Viry 1924 - 1943

Born 23.7.1924 in Plainfaing
Died 13.12.1943 in Wiener Neudorf

Biography

After completing primary schooling, Robert Viry decided to work as a weaver. The apprentice had never left Plainfaing, where he lived in the rue Noiregoutte.

On 11 May 1943, after a tipoff had reached the police the previous evening, Marcel Simon, leader of the Francs-tireurs et Partisans (FTP for short) in Nancy, and his comrades were observed several times near to the post office in Velaine en Haye. This allowed the police to narrow their search area and assume that the FTP had set up a camp in the woods. Mr. Liennemann and his inspectors entered the woods of La Haye, between Toul and Nancy.

After comprehensive investigations, the regional security police now set in motion a manhunt on the grounds of ‘Communist conspiracy, hoarding explosives and munitions, attempted murders of police officers, acts of sabotage to railway lines and goods transports of the SNCF [state railways], attacks using explosives, thefts: in the night, during meetings, robberies, breaking and entering occupied houses’. At around 5pm the police found the camp, which consisted of a single tent, arrested the only person present, René Joannès, and confiscated the weapons. After having called for reinforcements in order to surround the place, at around 6.30pm they saw two people approaching by bicycle, Marcel Simon and Robert Viry. When hailed by the police they stopped. Robert Viry was carrying a loaded pistol and was disarmed. Marcel Simon, who resisted arrest by an inspector, was shot. The arrest of another member of the group, Louis Chauneval, took place that same evening in Jarville. The next day Prosper Cuny, Léon Latteman and Joseph Luron were arrested in the Vosges mountains and Maurice Flachat in Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle).

At first interned in the Charles II prison in Nancy, Robert Viry and his comrades were transferred to the Fort de Romainville on 7 October 1942, where Robert was given prisoner number 3458. After a few days, on 11 October 1943, he was deported with around 40 other men to the Neue Bremm camp in Saarbrücken, which functioned from August 1943 to April 1944 as a transit camp for Nacht-und-Nebel (‘Night and Fog’) prisoners. A few days later Robert Viry and his comrades were sent on to Mauthausen, where they arrived on 16 October 1943. Robert Viry was registered under prisoner number 37812. Eight days later he was one of 26 Frenchmen put on another transport to the Wiener Neudorf subcamp. The concentration camp prisoners were forced to work in the Flugmotorenwerke Ostmark producing aeroplane motors. Robert Viry died in this camp on 13 December 1943. Of those deported with Robert Viry, Louis Caunavel, Maruice Flachat and René Joannès returned to France in 1945, while Joseph Luron and Léon Levier died on 18 and 19 January 1944, and Léon Latteman on 3 January 1945, in the infirmary camp at Mauthausen. Prosper Cuny died around the liberation of the camp, also in Mauthausen.

On 3 August 1961 Robert Viry was posthumously awarded the distinction Mort pour la France (Died for France) and the title déporté résistant (deported resistance fighter).

Adeline Lee

 

Sources:

Service historique de la Défense, files MED 21 P 548269, MA 7/15 (List of arrivals from 16/10/1943, Register from 10/01/1945), MA 41/4, MA 61/3, MA 26/9, MA 11/3 (Romainville card index, prisoner index card; Register of the Fort de Romainville).

 

References:

Thomas Fontaine: Les oubliés de Romainville, un camp allemand en France (1940-1944) [The forgotten of Romainville, a German camp in France (1940–1944)] (Paris 2005).

 

Parti communiste français Nancy: Ils ont fait le PCF [They made the PCF]. In: http://pcf-nancy.blogspot.fr/p/ils-ont-fait-le-pcf.html, accessed on 24.2.2015.

Translation into English: Joanna White

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