for families, the rediscovery of their ancestors

On February 16, 1943, the French state established the Compulsory Labor Service based on the model of military service. Men born between 1920 and 1922 were required to serve the Nazi economy in Germany. They joined the 300,000 workers already sent to a first form of compulsory work from September 1942.

600,000 French people will be victims of these different forms of forced labor. A Church fabric is formed among the requirements (see box below). Their situation is not governed by the laws of war and they have no official chaplaincy comparable to that deployed in prison camps.

Assimilated to workers, they enjoy a certain autonomy. Church life is established around groups and celebrations, neither official nor forbidden. However, it worried the Nazi power to the extent that it escaped control and constituted places of ideological resistance. In December 1943, this Catholic activity among “civil workers” was banned.

Those who persist will be arrested after a few months; condemned, they enter the Nazi extermination machine. The fifty martyrs of the apostolate are among them. The testimonies of the survivors attest to their loyalty until the end to the choices which led them to deploy their commitment among the requirements of the STO and to persist despite the threat. Let’s follow the memory of four of them.

André Boucher, Franciscan tenderness

Born on August 3, 1920 in Cheniménil (Vosges), he was a Franciscan brother in training when he was required by the STO in July 1943. He worked as a handler at the Cologne station. With student brothers from his convent, he organized the spiritual activities of the camp where they were housed and visited the sick in the hospital. Arrested on July 13, 1944, deported, he died in the Buchenwald-Langenstein camp on March 15, 1945.

“Four months ago, I knew it was a part of the family, but no more,” says Christophe Meynard, whose wife is a descendant of André Boucher’s older sister. In 1988, Mgr Molette undertook an initial work of memory on the commitment of future beatifieds. At that time, for the generation of his brothers and sisters, “he did his duty.”

This sentence is anchored in family memory as a synthesis of André Boucher’s experience. His beatification occurs in a context where there are no longer any witnesses who knew him. A family project then came to light: reconstituting the memory of André Boucher for his descendants.

Christophe discovers a sensitive man with great delicacy of heart, behind the figure of the religious uncle who died in a camp in Germany. “He showed great courage in a difficult time.” “I am struck by his dedication to others,” he comments. He had two permissions to return home but each time he returned. »

A few weeks before his arrest, a letter reveals his concern but it concludes with his concern to continue visiting the sick and a request to his mother to send a package to a brother whose family he knows has few means.

Jean Lépicier, the missionary ardor of the JOC

Born on April 23, 1921 in Feneu (Maine-et-Loire), he was a pastry chef and an activist for the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne (JOC) when he was called to the STO on March 23, 1943. Sent to a factory in Cologne, he found other JOC activists there.

With them, in semi-clandestinity, he led Catholic Action activities with a view to material and spiritual mutual aid: times of sharing, meetings, service to those injured during the Allied bombings of Cologne, times of prayer.

Arrested on July 13, 1944, he died in Buchenwald-Langenstein on March 20, 1945. During a retreat from the JOC before his departure to the STO, he gave himself the motto: “Light, burn, consume in His service”.

“I always saw a photo of Uncle Jean in the family with blue, white and red stripes,” says Christian Lépicier. “As a child, during the ceremony at the Feneu war memorial, his name was the only one from the Second World War. They told us: He died for France. But we didn’t really know how.”

However, little was said about him. The beatification is the opportunity to discover this: “What impresses me the most is that faith made them survive. Mass was his survival. In letters, he recounts that he and his companions hid hosts to share.” Throughout his correspondence, Christian discovers “a light in the worst, which never disappears.”

Jean Batiffol, priest to the end

Born April 10, 1907 in Paris, he was ordained a priest in 1938. An officer, he was captured in June 1940 and sent to Austria. Chaplain of prisoners of war, he extends his activity to the requirements of forced labor in the region. Denounced, he was arrested in December 1944 and imprisoned in Graz.

In February 1945, he was sent to the Mauthausen camp, prohibited from practicing his priesthood and from leaving his block. In the sick barracks, he assists people and clandestinely provides service as a priest. He died on May 8, 1945, three days after the liberation of the camp.

“We lived in his memory,” says his niece, Laurence Pasteau. Family memory remains particularly marked by the attitude of Jean Batiffol’s mother when a survivor came to her to tell her that his informer had been identified: “Jean would have forgiven, I forgive.”

Looking back over the years, Laurence understands that the commitment to the end of Father Jean Batiffol forged his faith, “a faith in God and in Paradise which is a guiding thread of our life, a vigilance and a strength against Evil. On Earth, we are only passing through.”

René Boitier, the strength of the promise

Born March 8, 1917 in Faremoutiers (Seine-et-Marne), he worked in the family butcher’s shop in Paris when the war broke out. Enlisted, he married while on leave in May 1940. A month later, he was taken prisoner. In camp near Cologne, he worked in a shoe factory. Physical fatigue and moral distress promote psychological wear and tear and isolation.

René is keenly aware that he must maintain a life orientation, a fraternal culture to resist this context. Meeting a scout group provides him with the necessary support. He makes his promise there. “I deploy my activity within the Catholic framework,” he wrote.

The reason for his arrest, on August 8, 1944, with the scout group of his camp, paradoxically sheds light on this activity which had become suspicious and then illegal: “masses, study circles, theater, activities to uplift the spirit”. René Boitier was deported to Buchenwald then to Dachau where he died on April 29, 1945.

“The impression of an immense amount of suffering is the feeling that family stories leave me with,” says Father Bruno-Joseph Poirot, nephew of René Boitier. Reading his uncle’s letters and notebooks is “an immersion in their sorrows; we can’t escape it,” he explains.

“Little by little, we perceive them with precision: discouragement, despair, fear, distrust, betrayal, degradation… To this, René Boitier and his companions responded with courage, patience, endurance, tenacity, maintaining a spirit of service, of mutual support.”

Father Bruno-Joseph sees it as the fruit of a fundamental resolution noted in a notebook from 1942. While René has just pronounced his Scout promise, it seems that it refers him to the promise of his marriage: “A heart palpitates and awaits my return, but it hopes to see a young guy again to set off again in the race for happiness. This is the young person I want to bring back.”