Former Journalist Who Survived Nazi Concentration Camp Dies At 102

Jacques Moalic, a former Agence France-Presse journalist who survived deportation to the Buchenwald concentration camp in World War II, has died aged 102, his family said.

Moalic died Thursday at his Paris home, his daughter told AFP.

Moalic was deported on December 18, 1943 to Buchenwald for acts of resistance against France's German Nazi occupiers and witnessed the camp's liberation by American soldiers on April 11, 1945.

After his release, Moalic resumed his law studies. He then joined Agence France-Presse (AFP), becoming a senior reporter and covering top stories from Algeria to Vietnam as well as the French presidency.

In an interview with AFP this year, marking the 80th anniversary of Buchenwald's liberation, he spoke of his last months in captivity.

Around 56,000 Jews, Roma and Soviet prisoners lost their lives at the camp outside the German town of Weimar between 1937 and 1945.

"On April 11, there was a lot of excitement in the camp," Moalic recalled.

The prisoners did not know whether they would be liberated or massacred.

"The SS began to empty the camp, block by block, and each group was sent to Weimar station, where filthy wagons were awaiting."

The remaining prisoners were preparing for a possible fight.

"Then all of a sudden, an American unit arrived," he said.

"The SS did not engage in combat. They preferred to get the hell out of there," he said. "A few minutes later, we were outside."

In an account published by AFP in 1985, he also recalled after release "the speed with which we shed our prisoner skin, our concentration camp reflexes, as if all we wanted was to escape our nightmare very quickly. I was a number and but now I was taking back my name."

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)