Jorge Semprún – A Spaniard in the French résistance

Under the pseudonym “Gérard”, the eighteen-year-old Jorge Semprún joined a group of Communist partisans in 1941. The philosophy student came from an upper-class left-wing-liberal family that had had to leave Spain after the outbreak of the civil war. He fought in the French underground for two years before being arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and tortured for weeks on end. He was later deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he joined the illegal camp resistance. After liberation he returned to Paris, worked as a writer and was active in the anti-Franco resistance; later he served Spain as the minister of culture. He revisited his experiences in a number of literary works.