Desnos, was a French poet
and an active member of the French Résistance network Réseau AGIR during World
War II. Under the direction of Michel Hollard he would often publish under
pseudonyms. For Réseau Agir, Desnos provided information collected during his job
at the journal Aujourd'hui and made false identity papers. The Gestapo arrested
him on 22 February 1944.
He was first deported to
the Nazi German concentration camps of Auschwitz in occupied Poland, then
Buchenwald, Flossenburg in Germany and finally to Terezín (Theresienstadt) in
occupied Czechoslovakia in 1945.
One day Desnos and others
were taken away from their barracks. The prisoners rode on the back of a flatbed
truck; they knew the truck was going to the gas chamber; no one spoke. Soon
they arrived and the guards ordered them off the truck.
When they began to move
toward the gas chamber, suddenly Desnos jumped out of line and grabbed the hand
of the woman in front of him. He was animated and he began to read her palm.
The forecast was good: a long life, many grandchildren, and abundant joy.
A person nearby offered
his palm to Desnos. Here, too, Desnos foresaw a long life filled with happiness
and success. The other prisoners came to life, eagerly thrusting their palms
toward Desnos and, in each case, he foresaw long and joyous lives.
The guards became visibly
disoriented. Minutes before they were on a routine mission the outcome of which
seemed inevitable, but now they became tentative in their movements. Desnos was
so effective in creating a new reality that the guards were unable to go
through with the executions. They ordered the prisoners back onto the truck and
took them back to the barracks.
Desnos never was
executed. Through the power of imagination, he saved his own life and the lives
of others.
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