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Gurême and his family were interned at a camp in the grounds of a famous motor racing track at Linas-Montlhéry. When a small boy was beaten by a guard for asking for extra soup, Gurême punched the guard. He was placed in solitary confinement in a windowless wooden hut with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Gur锚me broke back into and out of the camp several times to see his family, coming in at nightfall and leaving before dawn.

Gurême contorted himself to pass his legs through his cuffed arms so his arms were in front, then forced the handcuffs off his hands, causing injuries. He found a nail embedded in the wood of the hut and then used that with the handcuffs as a wedge to force a gap between two planks until he could squeeze through it. He climbed a tree and stayed there all night, then the next morning scaled a barbed-wire fence to escape from the camp.

Gurême then hiked 140 kilometres back to his family’s caravan to reclaim some possessions.

After that, he set himself the task of breaking back into the camp so he could bring food and supplies to his family and friends. Gurême broke back into and out of the camp several times to see his family, coming in at nightfall and leaving before dawn.

Why were the Gurême family targeted?

Romani people, defined as “nomads” under French law, had been placed under restrictions by successive French governments before Nazi occupation, limiting their movements. When the Nazis occupied France, they extended this persecution. Under Nazi racial theories, Romani and Sinti people were considered “Untermenschen” – inferior people.

The Gurême family were among many who were rounded up and interned in camps.

After breaking into and out of the camp at Linas-Montlhéry several times, Gurême was captured. He was interned in a reform school, and worked in a local hospital. There, he took on a secret mission for the French Resistance. He stole a supply lorry from the hospital courtyard and drove out to crossroads where resistance fighters were waiting to pick it up. He was later arrested and sent to a labour camp outside Frankfurt in Germany.

"Free France" symbol at the French Resistance monument

He used the cover of an Allied air raid to escape from that camp, taking two other inmates with him. When he was recaptured, he was transferred to a high security discipline camp alongside Soviet prisoners of war.

While he was interned there, he was forced to unload railway wagons. He made friends with a French train driver and, using his contortionist skills, was able to hide in a pile of coal inside the locomotive and escape back to France. Once there, he formally joined the French Resistance and fought with them for the rest of the war.

What happened after the end of the war?

Freedom came slowly for Romani people. Some continued to be interned in camps in France in June 1946, more than a year after the liberation of France. Gurême had been completely separated from his family and had no way of finding them.

That is, until 1950, when he met a Belgian fairground worker in Paris who told him his family were living in a town in Belgium. Gurême got on his bicycle and immediately rode 400 kilometres to find them. Five years after the war had ended, they were finally and joyously reunited.

Gurême worked for the rest of his life as a scrap metal dealer and market trader. He married and had 15 children. In 2012, he received a medal from the French Ministry of Culture after writing a memoir about his wartime feats. He bought a plot of land near the Linas-Montlhéry camp where he and his family had been imprisoned and lived there until the age of 94. Surviving was his ultimate victory.

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