History Weekend. Angel Alvarez, the escapee from the ghost train

Ange Alvarez was the first to escape from this train to hell. There will be 160 who succeed like him in escaping during the 57 days of travel. D.R.

This Gardois was the first prisoner to succeed in escaping from this death convoy that left Toulouse in the summer of 1944 and that led nearly 800 Jews and resistance fighters to Dachau.

You have to be in the grip of despair to attempt the impossible. That's what Ange Alvarez did. Driven by courage or shaken by unconsciousness, he was the first prisoner to escape from the “ghost train”, one of the last convoys of death, the ghost train. It was so named because it had constantly appeared and disappeared due to Allied bombings and sabotage by the resistance, before arriving, after 57 terrible days, at the Dachau concentration camp.

Ange was imprisoned in the Saint-Michel prison in Toulouse for acts of resistance. At 18, he operated in the FTPF, the communist obedience of the Resistance, and was arrested in Montpellier. At the end of June 1944, his fate seemed sealed when the French authorities handed the detainees over to the surveillance of the Germans who, immediately, handcuffed the prisoners, chained them, took them out with rifle butts and crammed them into vans. They were then brought to a marshalling platform and herded next to a long freight train before being forced into the wagons. “Immediately, I said: “we have to form a commando to escape”. There, they told me, “if you move, we'll call the Germans.” So we decided to escape as a threesome. We believed in it. Nuncio Titonel, an Italian resistance fighter, told me: “The Garonne is always to the left of the railway line.” A second resistance fighter, Walter Gezzy, was with us. We finally decided to wait. The train started,” Ange (now deceased) told Midi Libre 10 years ago. The three men managed to position themselves under the skylight covered with wire and wooden planks. The train headed for Bordeaux rather than the Rhone Valley, which the Germans considered “safer.” With his two companions, they decide to escape through the skylight and draw straws to see who among them will escape first. It will be Ange. They agree that he will go back up the track towards Bordeaux, while Nuncio will wait for the others there and Walter will join Toulouse.

The 57 days of a convoy towards hell

For 57 endless days, this train from hell will transport more than 700 Jews, Spanish resistance fighters, and Italian anti-fascists to the Dachau concentration camp. A journey to death slowed down by acts of sabotage by the resistance and the Allied bombings, but which Nazi Germany unfortunately brought to its destination with terrible determination.
The train left the Raynal freight station in Toulouse on July 3.
Lieutenant Baumagartner, in charge of the convoy, preferred to go through Bordeaux, which he considered safer than the South. But while the train was supposed to head towards Angoulême to reach Paris and then Germany, it was blocked and had to turn back to Bordeaux, where it stopped from July 12 to August 9. The men are crammed into the synagogue and the women into the Boudet barracks while waiting. The convoy finally leaves.
During these weeks, Allied bombings and acts of sabotage by the resistance tried to slow down the convoy. The train sometimes turned around or had to wait for the track to be repaired. There were escapes or escape attempts at each stop. But nothing stopped Lieutenant Baumagartner, sadly stubborn in his terrible plan to lead the deportees to Dachau.
On August 11 and 12, the convoy stopped in the Gard, at Nîmes-Saint-Césaire – on these days, to punish a new escape attempt, the wagon remained closed in full sun – then at Remoulins from August 13 to 17 and at Roquemaure, on August 18. In the August heat, exhausted and thirsty, the prisoners were disembarked from the train and had to walk to Sorgues for a transfer because the bridges over the Rhône were impassable after bombings.
On August 19, the train leaves again and is machine-gunned. A few days later in Loriol, the prisoners must walk again and cross a river to be crammed into another train. On August 28, after almost two months, the ghost train arrives at Dachau.
There are 536 deportees left. 160 escaped and the others died during this tragic journey. Some are sent to Mathausen and the women to Ravensbruck. Half of them will die there.

On the night of July 3, 1944, the train stops at the small Sainte-Bazeille station in Lot-et-Garonne. As it leaves again, Nuncio and Walter give Ange a leg up. It should be easy for him to get through the skylight with his slim figure and young age. But first, he has to tear off the wooden boards and barbed wire that block the skylight.

With his hands covered in blood, he first puts one leg through, then the other, before clinging to the edge of the skylight and letting himself fall. He rolls and injures his head. There is no time to dwell on his injury. The Germans have spotted him and are shooting at him. The train is stopped. The SS are in pursuit. “I ran for 3 km without stopping. I could hear the bullets whistling.” 

During the night, Ange goes into the undergrowth until he sees the Garonne. The Germans give up. Angel throws himself into the river. He is wounded and exhausted but when on the other side of the bank, he sees a small light and the silhouettes of a man and a woman, he knows that he is saved.

“It was a man and his daughter-in-law who had heard the shots. Their name was Vidal and they were farmers. They comforted me, looked after me, gave me food and water. The next day, he gave me a snack, a map from the Post Office almanac, to reach the Sainte-Bazeille station and contact the head road worker Gabriel Bereza. There, he gave me a pair of overalls and an SNCF cap so that I could go unnoticed. He put me up for a few days and took me to the Saint-Vivien maquis, near La Réole, in Gironde. This is how, from an escape planned for three, I was the only one to escape that day." Nuncio will manage to escape to Pierrelatte and Walter to Montauban. Ange will continue in the resistance until the end of the war.

In total, 160 of them managed to escape from this train to hell. The others, 536 men, women and children, were Jews, Spanish Republicans who had joined the resistance and Italian anti-fascists. However, half of these deportees did not return. In a terrible irony, the convoy arrived at Dachau on 28 August 1944 at the time of the Liberation of France.

In Sorgues, humanity

Throughout the journey, the deportees were treated inhumanely. Only Sorgues (in the Vaucluse) showed solidarity by bringing food and allowing escapes. On August 18, 1944, more than 700 deportees arrived at the Sorgues train station, exhausted after a forced march of 17 km from Roquemaure to Sorgues. At the time of the transhipment, many locals brought them water and food, and railway workers and resistance fighters helped them escape. Around thirty deportees were thus saved. They were housed and hidden by the locals for several weeks.

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