[MANUSCRIPT - FRESNES PRISON]. Autographs compiled by Alfred - Lot 194

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Lot n° 194
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[MANUSCRIPT - FRESNES PRISON]. Autographs compiled by Alfred - Lot 194
[MANUSCRIPT - FRESNES PRISON]. Autographs compiled by Alfred El Hassen, including, among other items, 9 poems by Charles Rivet. 1945–1946. An exceptional and striking prison journal containing original signatures, messages, poems, and drawings by the most prominent figures of the Collaboration who were incarcerated at Fresnes in the aftermath of the Liberation. Fresnes Prison, 1945–1946. In-8 (160 x 120 mm), red half-cloth with clasped corners, covers lined with handcrafted mottled wool, the title “Autographes” embroidered on the front cover. Approximately 50 handwritten pages on lined school notebook paper and one loose leaf (in-4), featuring 7 drawings and 3 portraits cut from newspapers. The clasp button is missing (a double note, dated and signed on the inside front cover, indicates that it may have belonged to General Dentz), a tear at the hinge (two makeshift repairs holding the first two and the last pages together), and a few small tears along the lower margins of the pages. A unique historical document compiled by a young prisoner of Moroccan origin (a Berber from the High Atlas), Alfred El Hassen, who was highly regarded by his cellmates. This collection of advice, poems, and words of affection was first created in the central infirmary of Fresnes Prison, the only space in the facility where men and women mingled freely. Young Alfred rubbed shoulders with the fallen “elite” of the Vichy regime, collaborationist intellectuals, and prisoners on death row with their sentences suspended. The collection includes numerous signed, handwritten testimonies, among them: - Those executed during the Purge: Fernand de Brinon (Vichy ambassador), General Fernand Dentz (High Commissioner for the Levant, who died in Fresnes in December 1945), Jean Luchaire (famous collaborationist press magnate)... - Political and intellectual figures: Jacques Benoist-Méchin (historian), Jules Brévié (Governor-General of the Colonies), Xavier Vallat (Commissioner General for Jewish Affairs), Amédée Bussière (Prefect of Police of Paris), Admiral Robert (Governor of Martinique), Bernard Faÿ (Administrator of the National Library), Jacques Chevalier (Minister of Public Instruction), and the scholar Georges Claude. As well as Jean de La Hire, Abel Hermant, Filippo Anfuso (Italian ambassador), André Grisoni, and the industrialist Bosch. The heart of the volume contains a major literary section titled “Feuilles de Fresnes,” comprising nine original poems transcribed and signed by the political journalist Charles Rivet (1881–1955), a guiding figure and “spiritual father ” to Alfred El Hassen, to whom he dedicated these pages. An exceptional document, preserved in a handcrafted binding, offering a behind-the-scenes look at Fresnes Prison during the major postwar trials.
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