Jean Daligault

This small brass Stolperstein lies in the pavement at Jean Daligault’s last known address in Germany. Its surface marks a French priest, painter, sculptor, and Resistance supporter born in Caen in 1899. From this ordinary street, the marker leads you into a wartime path through Paris, Hinzert, Trier, and Dachau. The story remembered here follows a man who encouraged young people to draw, sculpt, and perform before Nazi occupation changed his life.

The story records a 1941 arrest after Daligault supported the French Resistance against German occupation. Secretly classified as a Nacht und Nebel prisoner, he was intended to disappear without news for his family. At Hinzert, hunger, cold, disease, and torture left him without teeth, while fellow prisoners helped him eat. Yet the prison camp did not stop his hands from drawing and carving in secret. Small sculptures recorded daily suffering, and some surviving works now stand in museums as rare testimony from inside the camps. Dachau became the final place of his journey, where he was murdered shortly before liberation. The brass plate leaves one stark image: creativity continuing after torture had taken away his teeth.