Floréal Barrier – “Because I worked in the printing trade, I produced leaflets.”

When the Wehrmacht occupied France in the summer of 1940, the eighteen-year-old Floréal Barrier had a job in a printing shop. He came from a working-class family and was active in the trade union and the Communist party. He and his friends protested against the bans imposed by the German occupiers: they printed and distributed leaflets. When he was to be sent to Germany to work, he refused and attempted to flee. The Gestapo captured him and deported him to the Buchenwald concentration camp in the autumn of 1943. There he was involved in the illegal camp resistance until the liberation. After his return he worked in his old profession, started a family and was active in various former inmates’ associations until his death.