©KZ-Gedenkstätte Mittelbau-Dora
Roland Boisson was born on 20 May 1923 in Cézac near Bordeaux and grew up in a family of winemakers. Since early 1943, he had been involved in various groups of the Resistance and intended to join the Free French Forces.
In the summer of 1943, Roland Boisson was arrested for his activities in the Resistance. After passing through the transit camp in Compiègne, he was taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp on 18 September, where he was given the inmate number 21085. On 13 October 1943, he was transferred to the then Buchenwald subcamp Dora, which became the independent Mittelbau concentration camp a year later. There, Roland Boisson had to perform forced labour in the expansion of the tunnel system in the Kohnstein when the German armament industry was relocated to underground facilities. In the winter of 1944/45, he was admitted to the inmate infirmary with pleurisy as a result of the catastrophic working and living conditions in the concentration camp.
When the SS evacuated the Mittelbau concentration camp at the beginning of April 1945, Roland Boisson and thousands of fellow inmates were sent by train and on foot to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and then even further northeast. He was liberated by Soviet troops in Parchim on 3 May 1945 and was able to return to France at the end of the month. He recorded his experiences during the transport and the so-called death marches in a notebook, which he donated to the memorial in 2006.
After the war, Roland Boisson was involved in many ways in remembering the victims of the Nazi crimes. He was deputy chairperson of the Advisory Board of Former Inmates of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp memorial. Furthermore, he regularly took part in memorial services and held talks with young people in which he shared his experiences as an eyewitness. He described his memories of his own youth during the Second World War in the book “Sur Le Coeur: Avoir 16 Ans en Juin 1939”.
Our thoughts and sympathy are with his family and friends at this time.
