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The Tunnel
In 1942, 300 deportees from Mauthausen concentration camp were transported to Loibl Pass in the Karawanken Mountains between Austria and Yugoslavia. Their task was to carve out, virtually with their bare hands, a strategic tunnel that would give the German panzer divisions access to the Adriatic. They worked fourteen hours a day on minimum rations. They were flogged at random for any word or movement that hinted of sabotage. They had to submit to the sadistic pleasure of the guards, almost all of them homosexual criminals freed from German prisons. Anxious to gain favor with their SS masters, the guards had everything to gain by inventive cruelty.
Into all this horror walked Paulo Chastagnier. Not since Papillon has there been such an irrepressibly cocky crook-hero as Paulo, twenty-three years old and a black marketeer from Pigalle. He is hell-bent on getting out of Loibl alive. However, it was only his Gallic weakness for pretty girls that, in the end, gave him a lead...
After thirty-three years André Lacaze, one of those prisoners who excavated the tunnel, felt compelled to tell the world what happened at Loibl Pass. All the facts and scenes he describes are true, but out of deference to relatives still living, he has disguised all but one of the names of his compatriots: the man to whom the book is dedicated.
THE TUNNEL AT LOIBL PASS is a story of appalling degradation and heroic endurance, yet the drama is shot through with an irresistible comedy, right across its huge cast of Resistance heroes, communists serving officers, students and gunmen, racketeers and pimps, rounded up all over occupied Europe. It is a book that may shock but cannot be ignored.
Into all this horror walked Paulo Chastagnier. Not since Papillon has there been such an irrepressibly cocky crook-hero as Paulo, twenty-three years old and a black marketeer from Pigalle. He is hell-bent on getting out of Loibl alive. However, it was only his Gallic weakness for pretty girls that, in the end, gave him a lead...
After thirty-three years André Lacaze, one of those prisoners who excavated the tunnel, felt compelled to tell the world what happened at Loibl Pass. All the facts and scenes he describes are true, but out of deference to relatives still living, he has disguised all but one of the names of his compatriots: the man to whom the book is dedicated.
THE TUNNEL AT LOIBL PASS is a story of appalling degradation and heroic endurance, yet the drama is shot through with an irresistible comedy, right across its huge cast of Resistance heroes, communists serving officers, students and gunmen, racketeers and pimps, rounded up all over occupied Europe. It is a book that may shock but cannot be ignored.
- GenresHistory
640 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 27, 2012
best book iv ever clapped my eyes on........ really done it for me
February 21, 2020
Incredible story of some really hard times you can't put The book down once you start
Absolutely recommended
Absolutely recommended
November 10, 2020
It's super interesting book, must read for sure
November 28, 2020
I'm a bit miffed at this being labelled fiction, the names we're changed and the tunnel and it's history still exist.
A great look into human fortitude and social interaction under stress.
A great look into human fortitude and social interaction under stress.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews