Lucien Truffy 1904 - 1945

Born 31.3.1904 in St-Savin-de-Blaye
Died 23.4.1945 in auf dem Todesmarsch bei Steyr

Biography

The two deportees Lucien Truffy and Georges Mazoyer were Communist activists whose deportation followed the same route and who always, as becomes clear in the testimony written by Georges Mazoyer in the Bulletin de l’Amicale de Mauthausen,^[1] remained together: French prisons and Compiègne were followed by the camps Neue Bremm, Mauthausen, Steyr, Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Vienna, and finally the forced evacuation as the Soviet Army advanced.

The following is a translation of part of Georges Mazoyer’s text, a hand-written manuscript of around 50 pages, written in memory of his comrade Lucien Truffy and given to his family in 1946:

 

To my comrade and friend

Madame Truffy

in memory of her husband

who died on 23 April 1945

murdered by the SS

this witness testimony by one

who will never forget him

 

Suddenly, on 1 April, on Easter Day, a great commotion in the camp: we were off, we were being evacuated on foot westwards. Quickly we were assembled in the camp at around 8am. They counted us, then had the weakest among us step forward. Lucien was among them. We had to march off in three convoys, one after another, carrying a few days’ rations and a blanket. The first convoy to set off contained the weakest, and I was distressed when I was separated from Lucien. The second set off some hours later, then the third.

The sick remained in the camp; we had some comrades who were in the ‘infirmary’ and we were never to see them again. Doubtless they were later murdered. We had thought of everything. We had seen this evacuation coming and had thought that we would find an opportunity to gain our freedom. We had formed units. Our section had a military emphasis. The camp elder, a prisoner who […] was a German Communist, managed to assign the Communists of all nationalities to the third group, which was the last to set off.

We left at around four in the afternoon. After crossing the entire city our route continued through the countryside, although we heard the battle for Vienna in the distance, which was just beginning. We marched through the whole afternoon and part of the night. En route we were given the watchword to mount a surprise attack on the SS guards at the next stop under cover of night. The opportunity seemed favourable; we were barely more than 20 kilometres from the front lines.

Around midnight we stopped and found we were almost on a field, where we would spend the night. We were exhausted and tired to death. Our blankets and supplies had rubbed our shoulders raw. The wounds I had on my feet caused me particular suffering. I fell, rather than lay down, on the grass. Anxiously I waited for the hour when my group would see action, then I fell into a deep sleep.

In the early morning, when I awoke, nearly all my comrades were still asleep around me and the SS was still guarding us. What had happened? Why this error? Later I found out the reason. At the last moment the leaders of the Communist parties could not agree on what to do. Our extreme tiredness caused some to hesitate in proceeding with the action, considering the scant chances of success and in full knowledge that failure would be catastrophic for us! The Russian leaders and others bitterly regretted his lack of unified viewpoint. They declared that they would gain their own freedom, would try their own luck, which in fact they did successfully a few days later.

We continued on our route, exhausted from the tiredness of the day before, but the orders yelled to us by the SS and the brutal truncheon blows served as a stimulus. A Polish man fell to the ground, ill, he couldn’t go on. He sat down in the ditch by the side of the road. The convoy passed him by, then an SS man came and killed him with a gunshot.

We perfectly comprehended the whole drama that was to unfold. We had to keep going whatever the cost. The smallest weakness meant death. We sensed the end approaching and we wanted to live. We had to march to the end or die. We were exhausted, at the end of our strength, but we marched, we kept marching. Those who could not keep up with the convoy were massacred without mercy. Sometimes we saw the roads littered with bodies in striped uniforms; we were identified immediately – a convoy like ours had been through here.

Every day the number of those marching in the convoy decreased. There were individual or group escape attempts, on the off chance. Only few met with success and nearly everyone was recaptured. They were shot on the spot, in view of the whole convoy. This didn’t seem to make much of an impression on us for the escape attempts continued.

We were exhausted and weak. Only a miracle of willpower kept us going, marching like automatons. After a few days our rations ran out and a terrible hunger raged among us. The hellish horde continued its journey. At breaks on the march we ate dandelions, grasses, snails and even slugs, ultimately anything we could collect and which appeared to us as edible. We were literally being eaten by the lice: I killed about a hundred of them on my body every day. Many no longer had their wooden clogs and marched barefoot.

On the eighth day of this macabre exodus I couldn’t go on. I felt I was completely at the end of my strength; my head buzzed, my eyes blazed with fever. With every step I swayed and thought I would fall. My comrades took me under my arms. Our march that day was particularly long and arduous. By what miracle I arrived at the end of that day’s march as night fell, I do not know.

At the field on which we had settled down, huddled close together and where we were to spend the night, I fell to the ground exhausted. My comrade Labbé lay down next to me and wrapped me in his blanket. I was completely at an end. I sensed that my courage was leaving me.

I lay thinking for a long time: ‘Tomorrow I’ll no longer be able to get up and the SS men will kill me before we set off’, and my confused thoughts turned to my beloved Simone, to my much-loved Jeannot, to my little Huguette, who I still hardly knew. I would no longer get to know the sweetness of her kisses. I would never again see the flame of love in their looks. The thoughts went round and round in my head, then like a wild animal I fell asleep.

In the early morning, when I woke up, a white sheet of ice covered the ground. The cold was like a whip to my face. Labbé helped me to stand up and to my great surprise I took some steps. I took courage; the convoy set off, with me at its centre.

By now we had been marching for fourteen days. We had covered 300 kilometres over mountains and plains. We were a few kilometres away from Steyr. There we stopped for two days, which we spent in pouring rain. As we set off again the first convoy, which we had left behind us, reached us. I saw Lucien again. He was walking past us at a distance of around 50 metres. I waved to him; he recognised me. He walked with difficulty, taking small steps. A dirty beard covered his whole face. He was in a very bad way. I called to him as he went past: ‘Alright?’ He shook his head. […]

On 23 April, around three in the afternoon, we continued on our way to the Steyr camp, which was about eight kilometres away. That was to be our last stage for a few days later a bus was to collect all the Frenchmen and take them to Mauthausen, where we would be liberated by the Americans on 5 May 1945. From the high ground the path took us down through ravines to a tarred road alongside the Steyr. We walked past a group of prisoners who were digging up earth to bury their fellow prisoners, who had died on the farms.

Lucien was in the convoy ahead of us. During these few days of respite he had not regained his strength. He could hardly stay on his feet. The few Frenchmen in his convoy were with him, supporting him, encouraging him as far as was possible. He somehow managed to get down the ravine path. So his journey continued, and should have got easier, and soon we would have arrived. But Lucien couldn’t go on. He was truly at the end; he collapsed. His comrades took him under his arms and literally carried him. Lucien protested: ‘Leave me’, he begged, ‘I can’t go on, lay me at the side of the road… This is the end.’

An SS man noticed Lucien. He saw that here was another chance to commit a crime. His urge for sadism would be satisfied once again. He gave the kapo the order to lay him by the side of the road. Lucien lay down and stretched out his body. The SS man shot a bullet through his head. Then he pushed him with the barrel of his gun into the ravine that led down to the Steyr.

My convoy went past at precisely that moment. I thought I recognised Lucien but I didn’t want to believe it. Having arrived at the Steyr camp, my comrades confirmed the tragic news. We looked at each other in silence.

On the final day’s march, in the final hours of this horrifying exodus, I had lost my best and truest friend in misery. Him, with whom I had shared the same fate, the same tortures, the same terrible pains and also the same hopes, the same joys. Him, who was for me a confidant, a model and a leader.

Adieu my dear Lucien. Your memory will always live on in me. It will give me the courage and the necessary strength to continue our fight for liberation to the end and until the final victory.

Written in Lugny, on 15 May 1946

Georges Mazoyer

Translation into English: Joanna White

 

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