Cuando pregunté a Harold Garston un compañero y profesor de inglés si me podía traducir la biografía de Enric a su idioma materno, no lo dudo ni un instante. Me pidió la versión en Euskera (vasco), idioma que con mucho sacrificio, dedicación y compromiso ha aprendido y logrado un muy buen nivel, y la de castellano, que domina perfectamente, para poder contrastar las dos versiones y no tener duda a la hora de traducirla al inglés. A penas unas semanas después me entregó la traducción terminada.
Eskerrik asko Harold.
Photograph colored by Antonio Medina
ENRIC MONER CASTELL
- Born 18 August 1900 in Figueres (Girona)
- 1921 and again 1938, fled to live in exile in France.
- November 1942, member of COMBAT, the French Resistance movement, helping to smuggle people across the border between France and Spain
- Arrested by the Gestapo on 2 April 1943 in Maureillas-Las-Illas, France - Imprisoned in Compiegne internment camp, 6 May 1943
- Deported to Buchenwald on 19 January 1944, as prisoner number 40075 - Deported to Flossenbürg on 23 February 1944, as prisoner number 6448
- Shot at Hradischko (Chzech Republic), a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp, 8 April 1945.
On 13 August the bailiff of Figueres contacted the consul of Perpignon (France) to ask if there was any information regarding the whereabouts of Enric. It is unclear whether or not a reply was received but from the census of 1921, it is known that by this time Enric was living in rue Gambetta in Le Boulou. In the census his date of birth was recorded as 1901 rather than 1900. This was possibly an attempt to put the authorities off the scent. Perhaps for the same reason he was registered as Henri, the French form of his name .
ENRIC MONER CASTELL
- Born 18 August 1900 in Figueres (Girona)- 1921 and again 1938, fled to live in exile in France.
- November 1942, member of COMBAT, the French Resistance movement, helping to smuggle people across the border between France and Spain
- Arrested by the Gestapo on 2 April 1943 in Maureillas-Las-Illas, France - Imprisoned in Compiegne internment camp, 6 May 1943
- Deported to Buchenwald on 19 January 1944, as prisoner number 40075 - Deported to Flossenbürg on 23 February 1944, as prisoner number 6448
- Shot at Hradischko (Chzech Republic), a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp, 8 April 1945.
HIS STORY ENRIC MONER CASTELL
Formative years in Figueres (1900-1921)
Enric Moner Castell was born into a family of farm labourers on 18 August 1900 at 88, Calle Sant Pau in Figueres. Being the youngest child he received no schooling, instead helping his father José Moner (Vilafant 1859), a carter, and his mother Mariana Castell (resident in Figueres but born in Saint-Marsal, France, 1862) .
At the age of twenty he was called up for military service. Being illiterate, his papers had to be signed by witnesses . Enric applied for deferral on the grounds that he was the only one of his siblings who could support his father, then in his sixties, as all the others were poor and had families of their own to maintain. With deferral being denied, following a medical and the
drawing of lots to decide his draft posting, Enric fled Figueres with his parents. They crossed the border into France and stayed at the home of relatives.
Family life (1921-1938)
On 7 August 1921, Enric married Teresa Barris Mundet (Agullana, Girona, 1900) in Le Boulou. Their firstborn child was Joseph (Le Boulou, 1922). Following Joseph four daughters were born; Henriette (Le Boulou, 1924) , Fernande (Le Boulou, 1926), Cécile (Le Boulou, 1928) and Dolores (Le Boulou, 1932) .
A civil register found in the archives of the Town Hall at Figueres , shows that on 4 October 1934, at the time of the Second Spanish Republic, Enric returned to his home town with his family to live in Mas Ferrer, a local farmhouse. Here, in 1936, his youngest son, also called Enric, was born.
According to the book “Empordanesos Als Camps Nazis” by Joan Vergés i Pineda , Enric 6 became the masover or tenant of Mas Ferrer, renting it from the landlord Sr. Josep Tutau i Estruch, the grandson of Joan Tutaui Vergés, the minister of finance during the First Republic. When Sr. Josep died his wife Sara Jordá i Gaunter took control of his business interests and owing to disputes over the rent, Enric was taken to court. In 1938, this, together with the sense of uncertainty caused by the civil war, prompted Enric to take the decision once again to live in exile in France with his family.
A year later, on 18 January 1939, the Moner family received official notification from the Armaments Sub Secretary of the Ministry of National Defence of the seizure of “Manso Ferrer”, located on the Barcelona road. The document is still in the possession of the family.
Exile in France (1939 – 1943)
Initially the family returned to Le Boulou, where two of the daughters, Cécile and Dolores, attended primary school (CM 1er). A school register kept by the girls’ teacher and dated March 1939 shows, however, that the school closed down in order to offer accommodation to some of the thousands of refugees who fled Spain in “La Retirada”, the mass exodus into France of more than half a million Spanish refugees at the end of the civil war. From another register we also know that in the winter of 1940 Dolores was absent from school due to a bout of influenza. It was a time of cold and war.
The birth certificate of Henriette meanwhile, shows that at the time of her birth, Enric was transporting goods for a living and that the family was living in the Mas de la Prada area of Maureillas-las-Illas.
Thanks to the Service Historique de la Défense (SHD) and to family archives , we know that in 1942 Enric joined the French Resistance. He formed part of the COMBAT movement of the interior resistance, officially known as the Résistance Intérieure Française (RIF) and, given his knowledge of the Catalan border region, he was responsible for acts of contraband and for smuggling Allied soldiers across the border. Grateful recognition of these actions was expressed in a letter from the British government sent to the family at the end of the war.
Arrest, imprisonment and deportation (1943-1944)
On one of these smuggling missions in 1943, near his home, whilst waiting on the road known as the route de Vivés for those he was to take across the border, he was arrested by the Gestapo. He was immediately taken to the citadel at Perpignan as a prisoner. The arrest came about as a result of a tip off from the interpretuer and Gestapo informant Edwige Schorer, the so-called “Tigress of Boulou”. Newspaper reports from 1947, the year in which she was brought for trial before a military court in Toulouse, reveal that she spread terror throughout the valley and was known to take part in Gestapo raids, in which, toting a pistol she would bark out the order: “German police, open up!” Enric’s daughter Henriette gave evidence at this trial. She told the court how on one occasion she had asked Schorer when her father would return and that Schorer had replied with a laugh, “your father is never coming back”.
Enric was then taken to the internment camp at Compiègne. He wrote to his family from the camp on a couple of occasions, asking them to send whatever they could, including a new pair of espadrilles, food and tobacco.
On 17 January 1944 a transit convoy set out from the camp at Compiègne to take 1,943 deportees, including 232 Spanish republicans, to the concentration camp at Buchenwald. On the memorial stone erected at Compiègne, Enric appears as “Henrique Mons”. While the accompanying personal details are correct, this was just one of the many occasions on which, through error or changes made by German officials, Enric’s name was written in a different form.
The men being deported in this convoy were transported in cattle trucks on a journey which took three days due to delays caused by various attempts at escape. As punishment for trying to break free, the German officials would unhitch a truck and distribute the occupants amongst the remaining wagons. Despite the gruelling conditions, the men only received one bowl of soup halfway through the journey, at the German city of Trier. They reached Buchenwald on 19 January 1944.
A month later on 22 February, Enric was transferred to Flossenbürg Concentration Camp. On arrival he was registered as Henri Mone, this time the “r” from the end of his surname being omitted. His few personal belongings (effektenkarte) were also recorded. These consisted solely of a hat, a coat, a frock coat, two pairs of trousers, a jumper, three shirts, a pair of underpants, a pair of shoes, a pair of socks and some leggings. He was assigned the prisoner number 6,448.
Internment in concentration camp (1943-1945)
On 3 March of the same year he was transferred once more, this time to Hradischko - Beneschau , a subcamp of Flossenbürg, some 40km from Prague on the banks of the Moldova River, in a valley which had been evacuated by the German army to create a training area for the SS. This transfer to Hradiscko on 3 March is the last official record of Enric in the camp.
According to Yves Tanné (1924-2011) , a deportee and fellow internee in the camp, on the day on which they were transferred, the train they were being transported in pulled up 8km from the camp. From here they were made to walk the remaining distance through the snow, their injured, sore feet clad only in tattered, flimsy footwear, patched up with paper and rags.
In April, in a climate of fear and terror the kapos (prisoners chosen to do administrative tasks in the camp) were replaced by young SS soldiers, who continuously and indiscriminately murdered and mistreated prisoners. The inmates were made to work all day, from six in the morning until seven o’clock in the evening, unloading trucks or digging and constructing anti tank defences intended to slow up the advance of Soviet troops. This work was carried out in all weathers; in the often stifling heat of the summer months and in temperatures of minus twenty degrees Celsius or lower in winter, the only protection from the cold being the empty paper cement bags, which the deportees would hide under the striped jackets of their uniforms.
Death (1945)
Thanks to the testimonies of two of Enric’s fellow prisoners, Jose Casanovas (Barcelona, 1893) and Louis Monet (Nevers, France, 1909), both of whom survived the camp, we know that Enric was shot dead on the road to Zàvist on 8 April 1945, shortly after setting out from the camp for the day’s work. These testimonies were given in the French embassy in Prague a few days after the camp was liberated . Later, in 1950, in order to help them in their application for a subsidy from the French and German states , Louis Monet wrote to the Moner family relating again the tragic circumstances of Enric’s death.
The memory of Enric will live on thanks to his granddaughter, Reneé and to his relatives who have kept the dossier that Henriette compiled; a dossier that includes the only remaining photograph of Enric, which appears at the beginning of this article.
Postscript and reasons behind this research project
This initiative was undertaken with the intention of honouring the life of Enric Moner Castell and at the same time, to restore the memory of him; a memory which some wanted to wipe out and others tried to usurp.
Enric now has a historical body of information and documents which record his life and which will be passed on to his family. It is to be hoped that his life and his dignity will live on in the memory and that the atrocities that he witnessed firsthand and ultimately fell victim to, will never happen again.
Enric was shot at Hradischko, a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp, for his commitment and for his refusal to buckle.
A joint initiative, coordinated by the Triangle Blau Association in conjunction with the Alt Empodà Educational Service’s Exile, Deportation and Holocaust Working Group, to install eleven commemorative concrete blocks in pavements around Figueres was unanimously approved by the city council. They form part of the Stolpersteine project initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig and are due to be installed in 2020, outside the birthplace or last place of residence of deportees who originated from the city. One of the eleven blocks will commemorate the life of Enric Moner.
I would like to extend heartfelt thanks all those who have helped in my research. (+ read the list)
Unai E.
For more information about Enric Moner Castell, please go to the following research website: https://sites.google.com/view/enric-moner-castell-in-memoria/inicio
Translated by Harold Garston
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Sources:
Figueres municipal archives
Figueres regional archives
Service Historique de la Défence, France
Arolsen archives, Germany
The archive of Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial
Association de Déportés et Familles de Disparus du Camp de Concentration de Flossenbürg et Kommandos, Paris
Association Française Buchenwald Dora et Kommandos, Paris
Pyrenees Orientles regional archives – https://www.ledepartement66.fr
Archives at Le Boulou Town Hall
"Empordanesos als camps nazis", Vergés i Pineda, Joan - edit. Oscar Vergés Moreno 15-02-2019 Mémorial-Compie`gne: la liste des convois y Le Mur des Noms .
Testimony of Yves Tanné: http://www.danielleropars.com/la_rafle.html
Research suggestions JewishGen and Nolan Altman.Documents and photographs in the possession of the Moner family
Photographs
