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The Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO), or the Compulsory Work Service, program remains one of the most unsettling features of France’s history in World War II. Established by the Vichy government in 1943, this initiative saw young men provide forced labor, primarily within France or Germany, in support of the Third Reich’s war effort. In this illuminating translation of the journal of Jean Louis Mary Pasquiers, a former teacher and forced laborer from Paris, Passing Misery documents Pasquiers’ life within war-torn Europe, in unwilling service to the Nazi regime. By exploring Pasquiers' personal story, this book offers an unrivalled insight into the complexities of war-time collaboration, resistance, and moral culpability, shedding light on one of the darkest chapters in European history.
Jean Louis Mary Pasquiers was born in 1920 and grew up in northeastern France. He was just beginning his career as a secondary school teacher when World War II broke out. In 1943, Pasquiers was requisitioned to go work in Germany with the Service du Travail Obligatoire. After evading capture for several months, Pasquiers turned himself in at a labor office and was deported to Berlin, where he worked a clerical job for the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG). Pasquiers was repatriated to France in the summer of 1945, where he took up teaching again, dedicating his educational career to facilitating French-German student exchanges. Pasquiers died in 2013 in southwestern France.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Thomas Pavel
Introduction: The Compulsory Work Service
Part I: Reims, Pouillon, and Paris, 1920-1943
Chapter 1. Wooden Crosses
Chapter 2. Meissen
Chapter 3. Destiny
Chapter 4. 1940
Chapter 5. Paris in Feldgrau
Chapter 6. Hitler and I
Part II: Berlin, 1943-1944
Chapter 7. The Journey
Chapter 8. Wohnlager Seestrasse
Chapter 9. Bombshells
Chapter 10. Ich bin ein Berliner
Chapter 11. A Brandenburg Summer
Part III: Bensen, 1944-1945
Chapter 12. The Land of Women
Chapter 13. Another Winter
Chapter 14. Living History
Chapter 15. Gigi
Chapter 16. Collapse
Part IV: Homecoming, 1945
Chapter 17. Libération
Chapter 18. Prague
Chapter 19. A Slow Return
Conclusion: After 1945
Index