© Janine Grassin
Aurélie Boisseau is the great-granddaughter of Raphaël Gicquel, a resistance fighter from France. When the Gestapo found the weapons he had been hiding on his farm, he was arrested and deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp. He died on the Cap Arcona on May 3, 1945.
How did you learn about your great-grandfather’s story?
When I learned about the Holocaust and gas chambers at school at the age of 8, I was struck with horror and talked about it with my father. This is when he told to me the story of his grand-father Raphaël. I had seen his portrait in the houses of my great-grandmother and my grandmother, who was his eldest daughter, but they didn’t really speak about him. I grew up near his farm, so I was familiar with the places where he had lived and carried out resistance activities. His story felt physically close to me and I wanted to know more about the past.
What influence does your family history have on the person you are today?
I feel close to every persecuted group such as black people for example. I can’t stand injustice and racism and it is probably my family history that makes me more sensitive to history, politics, and wars. I have studied history; I have become a history teacher and joined an association that fights for human rights.
What elements of your family history and values will you pass on to the next generation(s)?
I would like to explain resistance and Nazi camps to my children one day but I would also like to defend values such as liberty, tolerance, equality and solidarity. Resistance means that you have to get informed, to speak, to do what you can to stand up against persecution and marginalization today. You need to know history to be aware of the threat posed by right-wing nationalists whose goal is to rewrite history and seize power. That is why the work of historians and remembrance associations is indispensable.
How did you come to be involved in the French Amicale de Neuengamme? What does your involvement mean to you?
I went to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial with my students in 2013 and after that I was going to visit Neuengamme for the first time, but I wanted to go there with the French Amicale like my grandmother had done in 1995. Following this moving and interesting journey, I joined the French Amicale because I had learned a lot in the course of the few days. I got the chance to meet survivors and former prisoners’ families but also Germans who work in the field of culture of remembrance. I learned how to search for information about my great-grandfather and the Neuengamme concentration camp. You have to know other families’ stories to know more about your own family’s story and history. In the association, everyone is treated like family regardless of their age, their job, where you live, because you share the same humanist values, you can do projects together to pass on the knowledge about the past and defend tolerance. However, since my children were born, I have had less time for the association.
About Raphaël Gicquel
written by Aurélie Boisseau
My great-grandfather Raphaël Gicquel was arrested in 1943 as a resistance fighter in France. He was nearly 42 years old and had 5 children. He was a farmer and helped to hide English weapons for the French resistance. He belonged to the SOE (Special Operations Executive).
Then he was deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp and had to work in the Bremen-Osterort satellite camp (Riespott, the German Navy). He died in May 1945 in the Bay of Lübeck on the Cap Arcona.
