a plaque in homage to the deportees of Rawa Ruska
80 years after the Second World War, a tribute is paid to 20,000 French soldiers. This Wednesday, October 19 marked the unveiling of a memorial plaque in honor of the prisoners of war of the Rawa Ruska disciplinary camp in Departmental Museum of Resistance and Deportation of Toulouse.
“This POW ‘retaliation’ camp, located outside the Geneva Convention perimeter, was also called Stalag 325 or christened the ‘drip and slow death camp’ by Winston Chruchill. It was welcomed its first prisoners during the convoy of April 13, 1942, who became the first witnesses to the Holocaust perpetrated in this region of Ukraine”, explains the Departmental Council of Haute-Garonne.
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Extreme temperatures, malnutrition, forced labor
At the time, the camp town was under the supervision of the Polish government. In addition to French soldiers, Belgian, Serbian and Soviet prisoners also lost their lives there because of the conditions in which they were detained: extreme temperatures, malnutrition, forced labor… The nickname “camp of the drop of water and the slow death” given by Winston Churchill was linked to the only drinking water tap available to the deportees.
The memorial plaque was unveiled at 6:30 p.m. this Wednesday, in the presence of Jacques Brument, president of the national association “Those of Rawa Ruska and their descendants” and Alain Gimeno, president of the departmental branch of the association, but also Georges Méric, President of the Departmental Council.
An exhibition with preserved objects from Rawa Ruska
“To pay homage to the prisoners of Rawa Ruska is also to salute the memory of the millions exterminated by the deadly Nazi ideology, that of all fascisms. We all have the imperative duty to mobilize our forces so that this work of remembrance from generation to generation, in the service of truth, justice and solidarity,” says Georges Méric.
A conference was then organised. Led by Antoine Grande, director of the Museum of Resistance and Deportation, it had Alexandre Millet, author of a thesis at the University of Angers on the “Memory of the captivity of French prisoners of Stalag 325 of Rawa-Ruska, from 1945 to 2016”. Note that objects related to the history of the camp were also presented by Lionel Farrando, from the museum’s collections department. Finally, an exhibition on the Rawa Ruska camp completes this work of memory and transmission.
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