16. Raymond Gurême: Escape Artist

This episode delves into the harrowing life of Raymond Gurême, a French traveler and escape artist who repeatedly escaped Nazi captivity during World War II, using his acrobatic skills to resist and undermine Nazi operations.

1. Raymond's Resourcefulness: His background in circus performance equipped him with unique skills that proved crucial for escaping Nazi internment camps.
2. Persecution of Travelers: The episode highlights the systematic persecution and marginalization of Romani and traveler communities under Nazi and Vichy French laws.
3. Resistance and Resilience: Raymond's repeated escapes and involvement with the French Resistance underscore a theme of relentless resistance against oppression.
4. Cultural Identity and Solidarity: Raymond's strong identification with the Romani and traveler communities played a significant role in his resistance efforts.
5. Legacy of Resistance: The episode also addresses the long-term impact of Raymond's actions, both for his family and for Romani activists who view him as a hero.

1. Early Life and Background

Raymond Gurême was born into a nomadic circus family, experiencing early life as a performer which later equipped him for his multiple escapes. Saimur Millet: "He enjoyed life, I think, as a clown who internally can suffer a lot, but who is there to spread joy to other people."

2. Capture and First Escape

Details Raymond's first dramatic escape from an internment camp at 16, using his acrobatic skills. Raymond Gurême: "Toujours resiste. Always resist."

3. Involvement with the French Resistance

After escaping, Raymond actively participated in the French Resistance, using his skills to steal supplies and aid fighters. Lise Foineau: "It was really to make sure the maquisards or the underground fighters would have some food."

4. Final Arrests and Escapes

Covers his capture by the Nazis, subsequent escapes, and the brutal conditions he faced in high-security camps. Saimur Millet: "The Nazis put a huge machinery in service of genocide at the origin."

5. Post-War Life and Legacy

Explores his life after WWII, his efforts to reconnect with his family, and his role in raising awareness about the persecution of travelers. Lise Foineau: "He was just giving this testimony, saying, well, now you have to take into account what we as Roma and travelers have to say."

1. Resilience in Adversity: Emulate Raymond's resilience; when faced with challenges, find innovative solutions and persevere.
2. Understanding History: Educate oneself about the lesser-known aspects of WWII history, particularly the experiences of marginalized communities.
3. Cultural Solidarity: Foster solidarity and understanding within and between different cultural groups, as seen in Raymond's connection with his community.
4. Support Marginalized Voices: Advocate for and support the recognition of marginalized groups' historical and current struggles.
5. Personal Legacy: Consider how personal actions and stories can inspire broader societal change.

A young circus performer from a traveling family in France breaks out of an internment camp and dedicates himself to bringing the Nazis down.

People

Raymond Gurême, Lise Foineau, Saimur Millet

Books

"Forbidden to Nomads" (Raymond Gurême's memoir)

Content Warnings:

None

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK.

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BBC sounds Music Radio podcasts the 5 October 1941 an internment camp about 30 km outside Paris. Locked inside a windowless wooden hut, a 16 year old boy held his breath. He listened for any sound of human movement. He was handcuffed with his hands behind his back. Hearing nothing, the boy slowly began to contort his body.

Saimur Millet
He could put his hands by the legs, by the bottom and pass them. In front of him, his arms now in front of him. The boy gritted his teeth and ripped his hands out of the handcuffs. His skin tore, joints cracked. Trembling with the pain, refusing to scream, he felt around in the pitch dark.

He took one nail from the cell, which was in wood, and with it he could open the cell. Using his handcuffs as a wedge, the boy forced a small gap between the two planks. He wedged it wider and wider, then began to squeeze himself through it as he landed on the cold, hard ground outside. The noise sent rats on the roof scattering. The boy looked around.

Now it was time for the hard part, escaping from a heavily fortified camp. Moving quickly between the huts, he made for the woods. On the edge of the camp, he. Climbed on a tree, and he was looking at the policeman with dogs looking for him down in the forest, motionless. The boy perched on a branch in the freezing cold, and he remained there.

Saimur Millet
For the whole night. Hours later, the dogs were called off. The boy climbed down and hurried over to the fence around the camp. With superhuman ease, he launched himself up and over as he sprinted off to freedom, he grinned. He had spent an agonizing month in solitary confinement, and now he was out.

He repeated his motto to himself. Toujours resiste. Always resist. This boy's name was Raymond Guureme. He had been brought up in a traveling community and had been trained as an acrobat and circus performer.

These unique skills would allow him to escape not just from this internment camp, but from many others across France and Germany during the Second World War. It seemed there were no bonds that could hold him, no level of security that could keep this professional scape artist captive for long. And whenever he slipped out of their clutches, Raymond Gureme would dedicate himself to bringing the Nazis down. I'm Helena Bonhamkarta, and for BBC Radio Four, this is history's secret heroes, true stories of deception, acts of resistance and courage from World War Two.

Raymond Guerme, escape artist. Raymond was born into a family of french traveler. Lise Foineau is an anthropologist who documents the resistance work of french travelers during the Second World War. Raymond liked to say he was a manouche, so that meant that he felt very strongly and related very strongly to the romani and french travelers communities. Raymond's father came from a family of circus performers and on his mother's side, itinerant merchants, basket weavers and musicians.

For generations, the traveling circus and the traveling cinema were central to the Goremes family life. As was usual in their community, Raymond and his eight siblings joined the family business from the start. He started as a circus child. When he was only two years old. He could barely walk.

Saimur Millet is a founder of the French Romany association, La Voie des Rome. Guerme often told him stories of his early performances in the circus. Toddling out into the ring as a tiny clown and acrobat, Guerme played up to the audience's applause. He enjoyed life, I think, as a clone who internally can suffer a lot, but who is there to spread joy to other people? The audience may have loved circus people.

The rest of France did not always show them the same appreciation. Gureme had been born in 1925, at a time of state sanctions against traveling people. At the beginning of the 20th century in France, the governments really wanted to control those people who were wandering and walking and selling goods and all over the french territory. Under the laws of the republic, the french government could not classify travelers as a racial group. The word was nomad, so they came up with the nomad category.

In 1912, a law was passed defining so called nomads as generally gypsy travelers. With no home, residence or homeland, most of them vagrants with the particular ethnic character of gypsies, bohemian tsigan and gytanos, who, under the appearance of a problematic profession, wander along the roads with no concern of hygiene or legal regulations. After this law had passed, whenever travelers like Guremes parents entered or left a town or village, they were obliged to show identity papers to the police. As the guerreme circus travelled across France, Belgium and Switzerland, young Raymond sometimes felt that every day brought a new battle with the authorities. Despite the restrictions, circus lives and circa shows went on.

Yet the world around them was changing fast. Guerreme was 15 in the spring of 1940, when nazi troops were preparing to invade France. As the french army readied itself for the coming german assault, the president of France, Albert le Brun, signed a decree to restrict the movements of the nomadic population. If you were a so called nomad, you had to stay in one place and were not allowed to go outside the village or the city perimeter. The government claimed that enemy agents could pose as nomads and move around spying on the french armed forces.

Lise Foineau
But what really happened is that the war was a perfect excuse to finally round up travelers and Romani person and make sure they would not travel anymore. When the german invasion began, Guureme and his family were in the village of Petit Couronne near Rouen in northern France. Once the Germans crossed the border into France, the speed of their advance was shocking. French defences collapsed. Within a month, France had surrendered.

Nazi forces took over the administration of the state. For the first few months of occupation, the Goremes continued to perform their circus shows. On the 4 October, at 06:00 a.m. Two french police officers roared up on motorbikes and stormed into the caravan. They ordered the family to come with.

Saimur Millet
Them and his father said, but wait, wait a bit. We haven't done anything wrong. What is happening? The police offered no explanation. Instead, they began to threaten Goremes father, a veteran who still bore scars from his service for France in the First World War.

He felt shocked because they had no criminal activities. They were not spies, they were not fighting with anyone. They were just living like other french people. Nothing which could justify their internment. The reason was sinister.

The french police now reported to the Nazis and as part of their racial theories, the Nazis considered Roma and other travelling people to be untermenschen, racially inferior. When the Nazis occupied France, they asked that all zigoiners or all so called gypsies would be put in camps. But in France, the word gypsy was not in use by the french administration, which used the nomad category, whatever the. Traveling communities were called, the Nazis intended to build on existing persecutions. But of course, I mean, the first step of genocide is to create a category and to make sure people you want to be out of society fit in this category.

Lise Foineau
So that's why before the Nazis came to power, several european countries already built different categories. So in France, it was the nomad category, but you had similar categories in different european countries. The Nazis ideology built on a pre existing anti gypsum that was in the european society, and it was not new. Across France, around 30 new camps were constructed to imprison travelers. The strict controls that had already been imposed by french authorities made it easy to round up nomadic people.

The goureme family were first forced to move their caravan, circus and cinema to a camp at Darnetal, just east of Rouen, along with around 200 other travelling people from Darnetal. Though worse was to come. They were to be transferred to another internment camp on the grounds of a famous motor racing track at Linas Montlerie, outside Paris. They couldn't even take their belongings. Their properties were taken by the state and never given back.

This new camp was a series of shacks without eating chairs or blankets. It was dirty and dangerous. Many inmates fell sick and even died. One day, Raymond Curham was queuing for soup when he looked out at the barbed wire fence punctuated with guard buildings. At the front of the queue, Goreme held out his bowl.

Saimur Millet
There were also worms in the soup. So in the beginning he took them out. And then we said, well, we can eat this. It is meat. As Kurem ate, he watched a young romany boy who was standing in the soup queue.

The boy was hungry and had gone back for more. When a guard noticed that the boy had already eaten. He beat the child. Boiling with rage, Guerme ran over, barely thinking, he hit the guard as hard as he could. Other guards quickly jumped into the fray.

They pummeled Guureme and broke his nose. He was hauled off to a solitary confinement in a tiny hut. This was when Raymond Gureme was able to draw from his circus experience to make his acrobatic escape from the camp. Once outside, Guureme moved fast and lightly, sleeping outdoors and avoiding patrols. He hiked 140 km back to the outskirts of Rouen.

At last, he arrived back at the camp at Darnetal. The family caravan was still there, abandoned. Guremes gathered a few belongings, covered his injured wrists with long sleeves, and set off again. Romanese and travelers in France knew the french territory very well. They knew where to go, where to hide, and so on.

Goureme kept moving around, working casually on farms. If people found out he was a traveler, he could be in grave danger. So he made up stories and gave himself a new identity. Once he felt back at full strength, he embarked on his next feat, to break back into the internment camp at Lina Monlery. He used to come from time to time in the camp by night to have some time with his family, during the night, bringing food, food for his family, for friends.

Saimur Millet
And in the morning he left the camp without being seen by the police. Gureme scaled the fence to break into the camp again to visit his family several times through the coldest winter of the 20th century, he carried on working in fields and traveling mile after mile on foot. Of course it was dangerous, but danger was his friend. Helping people was in his blood. After his fourth journey back into the camp, Duremes was spotted and seized by police guards.

He was taken to angers and interned in La Ville des Rose, a reform school for orphans, members of the resistance and delinquents within the camp, Guerme took a job in the hospital. One morning, a man approached him, checking to see if they were alone. He asked if Goureme was interested in a different kind of work. He needed someone quick and determined, with nerves of steel. Later that week, Guureme stood waiting in a corner of the hospital yard.

He was about to begin his first secret mission for the french resistance. His task was simple, but dangerous. The idea was that he would still one of the supply lorries arriving in the hospital courtyard and drive it to a crossroad where resistant fighters would pick it up. As Guerreme watched the vehicle approach, he thought about how dangerous this mission was. He was being asked to hijack a german army truck fully laden with supplies.

Lise Foineau
So it was really to make sure the maquisards or the underground fighters would have some food. The driver climbed down from the truck. Once he was out of the way, Gurme took his chance. He leapt into the cab and drove the truck out of the camp. He continued to drive down the streets of angers, adrenaline pumping through his veins.

Near the crossroads, Gureme parked the truck. As he climbed out, he saw german soldiers approaching. For a moment, he panicked, but then he saw they were resistance fighters disguised in nazi uniforms. So it was at this precise moment that Raymond's resistance stopped being just about what happened to the Romanies and travellers and turned into resistance against the Germans. Later, in angers prison, Gureme waited in his cell.

Lise Foineau
Angers was a very harsh prison. Each cell was guarded by a german soldier. Gureme's career in the french resistance had been brief. The hospital director had quickly noticed the truck had been stolen and had reported Goreme for the crime. Gureme had escaped from the youth detention camp easily enough when he had a german truck.

Now, though, he was locked in a prison and the Nazis would decide his fate. As a traveler and now a member of the resistance, Gureme was in a doubly precarious position. In german occupied areas like France, the nazi authorities usually interned travelers or sent them to Germany for forced labour and re education. Some 23,000 Roma and Sinti people were deported to the death camp at Auschwitz Birkenau. Around three and a half thousand more were sent to other concentration camps.

Many travelers were subjected to forced sterilization by the Nazis and some were used by Joseph Mengele in his grotesque experiments. Few survived Auschwitz across Europe, though thousands more travelers were never taken to the campsite. The Nazis and their allies simply rounded them up and shot them. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that at least 250,000 travelers were murdered by the Nazis and their allies. The true total may be as high as half a million.

Saimur Millet
The Nazis put a huge machinery in service of genocide at the origin. The gypsy as an image has been created as the negative of what a citizen should be. Gurhaim was sent by train to a labor camp outside Frankfurt. Inside the camp he was guarded by a nazi intelligence agency. Raymond said that it was probably one of the hardest moments in his life.

Lise Foineau
He suffered with cold, hunger, mistreatment and bombing raids were never far away. The skies above Germany were filled with allied planes bombing targets. The air raids were terrifying, yet they gave Gurame an opportunity. Using the chaos and noise of the bombing as cover, he managed to pull off another escape, this time taking two other inmates with him. For days they hid in the vast darkness of the Black Forest.

Gurime went without food, eating damp leaves to quell his hunger and thirst. It wasn't long, though till the guards noticed prisoner 3619 was missing. The Hitler youth were dispatched to find and seize Gureme. Now that he had forged a reputation for repeated escapes, Gureme was considered a serious risk. When he was recaptured he was transferred to a high security discipline camp alongside captured russian and ukrainian soldiers who were being held as prisoners of war.

His work included the grim job of pulling bodies from the rubble of buildings after allied bombing attacks. During his time in camps Gurme saw three Russians hanged at the entrance for stealing bread. He saw guards watch and laugh as an inmate was killed and eaten by dogs. Amid the horrors of the campsite, Gureme worked hard to maintain his promise to himself, always to resist. When they were ordering prisoners who were working to go faster, they were yelling, Schnell.

Saimur Millet
Schnell. And he was always answering Tagel, which in french means, shut up your mouth. Eventually, a soldier demanded that another prisoner translate what Guremes had said. Reluctantly, that prisoner obliged, and the soldier. Hit Raymond with the back of his gun on the head.

So he had a hole on his head. Joram was out cold. Two friends carried him back to his hut, where he only regained consciousness the following morning. He was sure he would soon be sent to a death camp. After ten months in Germany, though, on the 15 June 1944, his fortunes took another dramatic turn.

Lise Foineau
So, by chance, he ended up working in a train station, unloading the vegans. And it was there that he met a french train driver who offered him a way back to France. Hidden in a pile of coal in. The locomotive, the driver hollowed out a small space in the coal, surrounded it with wood, and stashed Goreme inside. Again, Gorham's small, wiry frame and contortionist skills came into play.

Once he was covered with coal, he was completely hidden. The train pulled away, and finally he was on his way back to France. Folded up in the dark, Dureme felt a sense of french patriotism he had never experienced before. Liberte, egalite, fraternite. After what he'd seen of Germany, he longed for an allied victory in the war.

June 1944. As Guerme crossed the city of Paris, he heard the extraordinary news that allied forces had landed in great numbers on the beaches of Normandy. If they were able to break through german lines, Paris would soon be in their sights. Raymond had only one thing on his mind. To fight the Nazis through a contact, he arranged a meeting with a resistance brigade.

The french forces of the interior, or FFI, were a renowned secret army working under the orders of the french government in exile. Their instructions came via London and were carried out by a large network inside Paris. As he approached the meeting point, Gurin wondered whether they would accept a traveler into their ranks. He need not have worried. When he joined the french resistance, he met quite a lot of travelers and other Romanes.

Lise Foineau
The resistance fighters were looking for people used to resist, and so french resistance members would go where so called nomads were under compulsory residence, and they would try to recruit men and women to help them. Goreme was not just fighting for the resistance. Alongside other travelers, he was officially fighting under french orders. Raymond was used to fighting against the french state, and he ended up working for the french state. By the middle of August 1944, Paris was in chaos.

Trenches had been dug in the streets. Barricades went up. The FFI attacked vehicles, commandeered them and repainted them with their livery. There, in the middle of it all. Was Raymond Goreme, fighting with his bare hands and with guns and doing sabotage and fighting directly nazi soldiers.

As Kureme and his fellow french soldiers fought hand to hand on the city streets, american Sherman tanks rumbled through the countryside. The Allies were coming. When the second armored division entered Paris, Adolf Hitler gave the order to destroy the city, but it was too late. By the 25 August, Paris was liberated. Gurame's war was over.

As he made his way back towards Rouen, the victory speech of President Charles de Gaulle echoed in his ears. Paris Trager parai briset. Paris Marty Risee mais parai libere. For travelers, though, liberation would take much longer. The last nomads were liberated only in June 46, which is more than one year after the total liberation of France.

When Gurame reached the Darnetal camp near Rouen again, there was nothing there. His family's circus tent, the cinema equipment, the caravan, all were gone. The gouremes had nothing left. And Raymond had no way of finding his parents or siblings, or even of confirming they were still alive. Yet he kept looking.

In 1955, years after the end of the war, Guerin was in Paris when he met a belgian fairground worker. The Belgian told him his family were living near Wielsam in Belgium. Goreeme got on his bicycle and rode 400 Belgium. When the cycle's inner tube failed, he abandoned it and continued on foot. A couple of kilometers outside felsome, he spotted a girl carrying a basket by the side of the road.

Immediately, he cried out, doll. His nickname for his sister, Mary Rose. She dropped the basket and gasped. Raymond. The reunion with his family was joyous.

The Goremes celebrated four days in peacetime. Goreme worked as a scrap metal dealer and market trader. He rented out horses and made baskets. He married and had 15 children. Yet he preferred not to talk about his wartime experiences.

As the decades passed, though, Goreme saw prejudice against travellers worsens. Even in his eighties, Goreeme was at one point assaulted by french police. Remembering one of his old wartime mottos, always resist, he decided it was time to share his story. His memoir, entitled forbidden to Nomads, was published in 2011. It was the first time that the persecution of nomads during the war was put out there in front of a french society.

Lise Foineau
He was just giving this testimony, saying, well, now you have to take into account what we as Roma and travelers have to say. As a result, in his final years, a new generation of Romani activists across Europe hailed Gureme as a hero. He was invited to speak after a screening of a film about the Roma genocide. He came on stage performing a flip, even though he was already 86 years old. In 2012, he received a medal from the french minister of culture for his book.

But it would be another four years before french president Francois Hollande apologized for the interment of Romani people and acknowledged frances national responsibility. Goureme bought a plot of land in Saint Germain les Herbagents and at last settled down in one place. He chose the site because it was close to the Lina Montleraie autodrome where he and his family had been imprisoned nearly eight decades before. It was one of his final acts of resistance before he died at the age of 94. He established his family there with his numerous children, ten children, and hundreds of grandchildren and grand grandchildren and so on.

Saimur Millet
And it was like he was punching the persecutors, saying, you wanted to exterminate us. Look at us now. I was alone. And now there are hundreds. Next time on history's secret heroes.

Charles Drew, an american doctor, led the creation and use of blood banks, saving countless lives both in war and in peacetime. But while he worked around the clock to save lives, he would be dragged into a battle on a different front, the battle for civil rights and racial equality in the United States. He was doing pioneering work to figure out how to save lives. He was not doing pioneering work to save only the lives, people who could be distinguished by race. Charles Drew and the blood bank.

John Ronson
I'm John Ronson, and I'm back with season two of things fell apart. My show for BBC Radio Four that unearths the origin story of the culture wars. This time around, the stories are all about the battlefronts that engulfed us during lockdown. The stories twist and turn until each one ends with the explosion of a new, far reaching culture war. If you tell me that my nephew had superhuman strength, if you tell me that he didn't feel any pain, well, he's dead now.

As things fell apart, season two. Listen on BBC sounds.

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