ROSER: 14 June 1940.
M. DUBOST: You sought to escape?
ROSER: Yes, several times.
M. DUBOST: How many times?
ROSER: Five times.
M. DUBOST: Five times. You were transferred finally to a disciplinary camp?
ROSER: Yes.
M. DUBOST: Will you indicate the regime of such a camp? Will you indicate your rank, and the treatment which French people of your rank in those disciplinary camps had to submit to, and for what reasons?
ROSER: Very well, I was an “aspirant,” a rank which, in France, is between a first sergeant and a second lieutenant. I was in several disciplinary camps. The first was a small camp which the Germans called Strafkommando, in Linzburg in Hanover. It was in 1941. There were about thirty of us.
While I was in that camp during the summer of 1941, we attempted to escape. We were recaptured by our guards at the very moment when we were leaving the camp. We were naturally unarmed. The Germans, our guards, having recaptured one of us, attempted to make him reveal the others who also had sought to escape. The man remained silent. The guards hurled themselves upon him, beating him with the butts of their pistols in the face, with bayonets, with the butts of their rifles. At that moment, not wishing to let our comrade be killed, several of us stepped forward and revealed that we sought to escape. I then received a beating with bayonets applied to my head and fell into a swoon. When I recovered consciousness one of the Germans was kneeling on my leg and was continuing to strike me. Another one, raising his gun, was seeking to strike my head. I was saved on that occasion through the intervention of my comrades, who threw themselves between the Germans and myself. That night we were beaten for exactly 3 hours with rifle butts, with bayonet blows, and with pistol butts in the face. I lost consciousness three times.