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Eugène Malzac, France, biography

from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

Dorothea Heiser
Affiliation:
Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg
Stuart Taberner
Affiliation:
Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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Summary

Eugène Malzac was born in 1920 in Clermont Ferrand, France. Malzac arrived at Dachau concentration camp on July 5, 1944, on the infamous Train-de-mort (death train), a transport of 2,521 deportees, 984 of whom died en route. Malzac was registered as prisoner number 77,881 and was later liberated from the external camp of Allach. Malzac still visits schools and colleges in France and around the world, talking to pupils about his experiences in the anti-Nazi resistance, his deportation, and his imprisonment in concentration camps.

Les squelettes vivants

Ils vont lentement, les yeux fixes hagards

Trébuchant, voûtés, la tête basse

S'arrêtant ici, là, au hasard

Ce sont les squelettes vivants qui passent

Ils ne ressentent rien, ni le vent, ni le froid

La maladie même semble marquer le pas

Leurs peaux qui collent à l'os, leurs peaux qui se craquèlent

Et font de ces enfants des vieux que démantèlent

Les coups, les privations, les brimades aussi

Des bourreaux implacables, les sinistres nazis

La mort est là qui rôde, redoutable hideuse

Elle prend tout son temps, l'implacable faucheuse

Personne ne fera le travail à sa place

Ce sont les squelettes vivants qui passent.

Living Skeletons

They move slowly, their wild eyes staring

They are stumbling, bent over, their heads lowered

stopping here, there, aimlessly.

They are living skeletons passing by

They feel nothing, not the wind not the cold

Even their illness marks time

Their torn skin clinging to their bones

So that children become old people

They are falling apart

Absorbing the blows, the hardship, the taunts also

Of pitiless executioners, the sinister Nazis

Death is prowling around them, fearsome, hideous,

Taking his time, an implacable reaper

No one else will do his work,

They are living skeletons passing by.

—Translated by David Cooke
Type
Chapter
Information
My Shadow in Dachau
Poems by Victims and Survivors of the Concentration Camp
, pp. 73 - 75
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2014

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