Dachau concentration camp
What was the place of detention for Albert Guérisse from Sep 1944 to Apr 1945?
Albert Guérisse Major General Comte Albert-Marie Edmond Guérisse GC , KBE , DSO ( 5 April 1911 – 26 March 1989 ) was a Belgian Resistance member who organized French and Belgium escape routes for downed Allied pilots during World War II under the alias of Patrick Albert Pat OLeary , the name of a Canadian friend . His escape line was dubbed the Pat OLeary Line . Biography . Guérisse was born in Brussels , and qualified in medicine at the Université Libre de Bruxelles before joining the Belgian Army . Guérisse was Médecin-Capitaine with a Belgian cavalry regiment during their eighteen-day campaign in May 1940 . He managed to escape to England through Dunkirk . At Gibraltar , he joined the crew of a former French merchant ship , Rhin , which had been renamed to serve in the Mediterranean on clandestine missions . He secured entry into the British Royal Navy and was commissioned as Lieutenant Commander Patrick Albert OLeary RNVR of French-Canadian origin . The Canadian identity attempted to explain his not-quite British accent in English , and his not-quite French accent in French , in order to protect his family in occupied Belgium if he was captured . He had a six-week undercover training session with Naval Intelligence . Until April 1941 , he was serving mainly as a conducting officer , escorting agents ashore in small boats through the surf , whilst the large vessel lay some distance offshore . This was skilled work , exposed to physical dangers from the sea-conditions and operational dangers from the Vichy security services . On 25 April 1941 , during a mission to place Special Operations Executive ( SOE ) agents in Collioure , on Roussillon coast in southern France , Guérisse and three crewmen from HMS Fidelity were arrested by the Vichy French coast guard and taken to a camp for British military prisoners at Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort near Nîmes . Helped by fellow British officers , OLeary escaped in early June 1941 . He went to Marseilles where everyone at the Fort knew there was an escape organisation run by a man named Ian Garrow and soon made contact . At this point his intention was make his way to Gibraltar and resume his original naval service . Events were to dictate otherwise because Garrow wanted OLeary to stay and help with the organisation since he was a military officer , he had undercover training and unlike Garrow , spoke French fluently . Consequently , a request was sent to London that he stay , which was approved and confirmed by a BBC radio message received on 2 July 1941 . Fidelity was lost with all hands when torpedoed in the South Atlantic on 31 December 1942 . OLeary immediately began his job : within a four-month period , he helped about fifty men escape from the prison of St Hippolyte du Fort , then moved them down the line back to England through the Pyrenees . When the Vichy France authorities captured Garrow in October 1941 , Guérisse took over as chief of the escape network . Along with others such as Nancy Wake , he smuggled a German uniform to Garrow in his cell in Mauzac concentration camp , which helped Garrows escape on 6 December 1941 . At this point the British decided it was time for Garrow to return to London , so OLeary continued in command and expanded the reach of the escape lines operations . The line carried over 600 escapees to Spain and back to Britain . In January 1943 , the escape line was infiltrated and betrayed by French turncoat Roger le Neveu , an associate of Harold Cole ; Guérisse was arrested in Toulouse in March . En route to prison he managed to get one of the younger members , Fabien de Cortes , to escape and warn the British . After his arrest the line was taken over by Marie Dissard . Guérisse told nothing to the Gestapo interrogators when he was tortured and then was sent to a series of concentration camps , including Mauthausen . No one , neither in the network , nor the French police nor the Gestapo , ever knew OLearys true identity . In the summer of 1944 , he was at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace with another SOE agent , Brian Stonehouse . At the camp he witnessed the arrival of four other female SOE agents , Andrée Borrel , Vera Leigh , Diana Rowden , and Sonya Olschanezky , who were all executed and disposed of in the crematorium in an attempt to make them disappear without a trace , under the programme of Night and Fog . After the war , Guérisse and Stonehouse were able to testify at the Nazi war crimes trials as to the womens fate . Finally , Guérisse was taken to the Dachau concentration camp , tortured again and then sentenced to death . However , when SS guards surrendered before the Allied advance , OLeary took command and refused to leave until the Allies agreed to take care of the inmates . On 30 April 1945 , he was chosen as the first president of the International Prisoners Committee that administered the camp after liberation . From its founding in 1956 until his death he served many terms as president of the Comité International de Dachau , and regularly gave the keynote speech at the May memorial ceremonies . In 1946 , he was appointed a member of the War Crime Commission at Nuremberg . In November 1946 he was demobilized from the Royal Navy and resumed his real name and rejoined the Belgian army , returning to his former regiment . In 1951 , he volunteered as a medical officer for the Belgian United Nations Corps in Korea during the Korean War where he was wounded while going to rescue a wounded soldier under enemy fire . He became the head of the medical service of the Belgian Army and retired in 1970 , in the rank of major general . Personal life . In his personal life , he married Sylvia Cooper-Smith in 1947 ; they had a son , Patrick . Sylvia Guérisse predeceased her husband . He was the subject of This Is Your Life in November 1963 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre . Awards and decorations . General Guérisse received 37 decorations , from a variety of nations . In 1946 , the British recognised his war service with the award of the George Cross . This was the highest possible award of the British Commonwealth nations for actions not in combat and only the Victoria Cross ( the equivalent award for bravery in actual combat ) takes precedence . In the UK it is the convention for the post-nominal letters for both these awards to be appended to the surname even for general usage , i.e . to refer to : Guérisse , GC . Recognising his military service as a whole , the British later also conferred on Albert-Marie Guérisse , GC , an honorary knighthood ( KBE ) . Similarly , the King of Belgium recognised the lifetime service of General Guérisse with the grant of a peerage in 1986 , in the rank of Count ( comte ) . His motto : Honores non-quaero , fidelis sum ( Honors I do not seek , faithful I am ) . Death . General Count Albert-Marie Guérisse died in Waterloo , Belgium on 26 March 1989 , aged 77 . Reading . - Vincent Brome , The Way Back , Cassell and Company ( London ) , 1957 ( ASIN : B000ZRBLPQ ) External links . - Major-Gen Albert-Marie Edmond Guérisse : Pat OLeary of the PAO Allied escape line - the Pat or OLeary Line , rafino.org.uk - Holocaust Sketches Donated To Imperial War Museum , culture24.org.uk - Profile , gc-database.co.uk - Albert Guerisses appearance on This Is Your Life , bigredbook.info