• Imperial War Museum - Departement of Documents - London - Great Britain. • Bundesarchiv - Militärarchiv - Freiburg im Breisgau - Deutschland. • Hôtel National des Invalides - Musée de l'Armée - Paris. • Conseil Général des Alpes Maritimes - Cabinet du Président. • Direction des Archives Départementales des Alpes Maritimes. • Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis - Centre de la Méditerranée Moderne et Contemporaine. • Ville de Nice - Bibliothèque Municipale. • Ville de Nice - Cabinet du Maire-Adjoint aux Anciens Combattants. • Musée de la Résistance Azuréenne. • Le Témoin.

We sometimes feel the impervious need to revive through a few notes the memories of some events which had an important influence on the unfolding of a life. Our path on earth is strewn with accidents, we bump into them with an unequal ability to overcome them, depending on the moral, intellectual, and physical forces that have at our disposal. One day the passing of time will have cast its dark veil on the past, a few learned persons will then find in those pages, some sincere reactions, because they will have been expressed freely, with the rough contact of life, and on the spur of the moment, without the slightest concern to please or to displease. Many a book have been published, relating adventures, in turn commonplace, and in turn heroic, they never failed to have some interest for those who went through them in similar circumstances. So, I would like to emphasise more particularly, the atmosphere of those almost ordinary anecdotes, and the ideas they brought about, sporadically first, and creating afterwards within the world of the prisoners a certain community of views. It seems that a few months after coming back, the motivations that prompted the actions of many of us faded away due to the contact with the new life. Isn't it strange to hear some people relating some events with a different view from what was then expressed: This explains the constant change of the French opinion deceived in the hopes for which it had shown so much enthusiasm. What a beautiful opportunity to meditate on humility when one sees those braggarts who claims afterwards that they had foreseen the course of events. We are dealing, here with feelings in the world of fighters and then prisoners. It is possible that the civilian population may have reacted differently. The mind is under the influence of the environment and the ordinary people are very sensitive to a well orchestrated propaganda.

We only give a documentary value to the following pages, too many of the problems taken up would deserve an in depth study, whereas we restricted ourselves to a few reflections.

The testimony of Quesnel Émile strikes the mind by the density of the events he tells about and that he went through during his five years as a prisoner in Germany. Some terrible years for a well established lad, sure of his convictions, and whose strong personality owed him to be practically expelled from farmhouse to farmhouse and from Kommando to Kommando. Then came the much awaited liberation...and that was another ordeal this one unexpected, that our companion went through from Prussia to Odessa, discovering the Soviet Russia and its harsh realities. The account is gripping, full of anecdotes, of details that perfectly describes the miserable life of a prisoner. What struck us most is the apparent submission of Quesnel who has to survive nonetheless, without any other arms again his jailers than the faith which is in him and which will help him to overcome decadence and death.

Émile Quesnel has wanted to tell with simple, precise but always moving words his five years as prisoner in Germany, but perhaps above all the story of his five years spent with his soviet liberators which seem to him as important as the whole time he spent as a prisoner, so astonished as he is by the world he discovers there. No doubt that the historian will find in this testimony some element which will help him to better understand the psychology of the prisoner.