BORIS TASLITZKY The Master of Saint-Sulpice

Louis Aragon, Regards - n°2, February 1945

Arrest and internment in the Vichy prisons

On the 13th of November 1941, in the morning, someone knocks on the door. This was the arrest. « One of us had not respected the safety instructions » explains Boris. The gendarmes, mandated by the police departments of the sub-prefecture of Aubusson, take Taslitzky to Guéret, the prefecture of the Creuse. « The prison of Guéret is spooky ! » Boris stayed there for about a week until he was transferred to the Clermont-Ferrand prison. Then he appeared before the military tribunal of that same city with fifteen comrades of the Creuse : Victor Beaulaygue, Pierre Berroyer, Lucien Bourdeau, Pierre Caillaud, Odette Dubost, Jacques et Claude Dugenit, Louis Huguet, Lucien Mauricout, Arduino Palmino, Eugène Parlebas and Marie, his wife, Émile Saintsorny, Edmond Tapissier et Serge Viget. On the 11th of December 1941, the President of the Military Court stated : « Two years in prison and 10 years ban on civil, civic and family rights. » The reason why ? « Made several drawings for Communist propaganda ». « That day, two years, he said. The following day: 15 years! Everything was done haphazardly.»

After their judgment, Boris Taslitzky and his communist comrades are transferred to the central house of Riom, in the Puy-de-Dôme. « This place is like hell! It is a former 12th century convent, made of black Volvic stone. Lices, bed bugs ... Discipline and obligatory silence ... We had to do chores but I was fortunate enough: I had to sweep the floor. I had to sweep of course, serving the soup, but also taking the dead bodies outside ... It was not obligatory silence, because you have to talk with the guards who give you orders. » A striking testimony of this time : the painting entitled « The weighing », made by the artist in 1945 and exhibited at the Museum of the National Resistance of Champigny-sur-Marne. On the administrative balance, disciplined skeletons, one after the other, awaiting their turn. « Every month, Boris explains, those bodies were getting skinnier and skinnier. Thus we weighed men of thirty-five kilos. » The Prison Administration of the Vichy regime understands that prisoners tried and sentenced by military courts were out of place in civilian prisons. Consequently, Boris Taslitzky and forty "politicians" were transferred to the Military Prison of Mauzac, in the Dordogne. Matricule 4186, he was imprisoned on the 23th of July 1943.

« In Mauzac, we were wearing the military uniform, we were starving just like in Riom, but we had the right to receive books and to have something to write on, that means drawing, to me. This is what I did with the passion of an artist that was deprived of its political right and freedom of expression for seventeen months. It was a kind of resurrection. »

Mauzac was more like a camp than a central prison. On October 12, 1943, the sub-prefect of Bergerac reported the presence of 413 prisoners interned in the Mauzac military prison. (2) The prisoners were divided and assigned, by category, to permanent barracks. The prison population was composed of political prisoners, Gaullists (like Jean Cassou, future director of the National Museum of Modern Art) and communists (Marius Patinaud, Under-Secretary of State for Resisters and secret agents of the SOE, arrested by the Vichy government (eleven of them escaped with Pierre Bloch, deputy of the Aisne, in July 1942), deserters and rebellious (like a Jehovah's Witness, Alphonse Fehlmann, conscientious objector) and detainees of common law (the best known being Pierre-Paul Leca, later involved in the Begum jewelery theft affair).

Two Perigordine prisoners kept a very precise memory of Boris, then interned in Mauzac: Robert Fleurence (from Perigord) and Max Moulinier (from Bergerac), for whom «Taslitzky was a painter of his time, a terrible guy, a great painter ! »(3)

The guarded residence of Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe

Finally, on November 11th, 1943, after leaving the military prison of Mauzac, Boris Taslitzky was taken to the camp of Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe, in the Tarn. He explained : « When I was released, two gendarmes were waiting for me. They destroyed all my drawings ... A hundred of them. I never found any trace of them. T makes me sad cause they had all our faces on them. I had managed to get the drawings out of Buchenwald!…but not of Saint Sulpice. »

The Saint-Sulpice-la-Pointe Camp was created on October 1939. It was originally created as a Spanish refugee camp. In May 1940, it sheltered 1500 Belgian refugees. In January 1941, it had became an internment camp for « undesirables » individuals. It was then called the Guarded Residence (Centre de Séjour surveillé or CSS). French political internees were sent there, but it also served as a sorting center to the different prisons and other internment camps. From 29th January 1941 to 23rd August 1944, 4,600 people were staying there.(4)

Boris Taslitzky, although serving the sentence of two years was placed under administrative detention under the prefect's order under the law of 15 October 1941 which stipulates : « Until the cessation of hostilities, the Secretary of State for the Interior or the Prefect, in accordance with the instructions of the Government, may intern administratively, in a designated Institution, individuals that are considered dangerous to national defense or public safety. » Communist prisoners were part of this category.

« When I arrived at Saint-Sulpice on November 12, 1943, an entire organization was in place. The party was organized, the National Front was organized, the library is considerable ... The prisoners of Saint-Sulpice had, within the past years, turned the camp into a true university, in which I taught a drawing class. »

The Aragon poems, published clandestinely and signed "François la Colère (François The Anger)", reach Saint-Sulpice. Boris Taslitzky explained : « One day I received in a package, hidden inside a small bag of flour, the poem "Ballad of the one who sang under torture" : Another french song / was on his lips / Finishing the marseillaise / For all mankind". I immediately said, "This is him" ». It was indeed a poem by Louis Aragon printed on india paper, dedicated to Gabriel Péri, who was shot on December 15, 1941 at Mont-Valérien. If one believes the poet, Peri would have sung the Marseillaise, then would be dead while singing « Another french song » : The Internationale.

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