Conxita Grangé i Beleta, “Conxita Ramos” (1925-2019)

Conxita Grangé i Beleta was born on 6 August 6 1925 in Espui (Lleida). The daughter of Maria Beleta and Josep Grangé, she was the seventh of eight siblings. Due to her mother’s illness, her parents took her to France when she was only two years old. Once there, her maternal uncles, Jaume Beleta and Elvira Ibarz, who had emigrated with their daughter Maria Castelló due to economic problems in 1925, took care of her.

Upon the outbreak of the civil war, when she was barely 11 years old, her uncle and her aunt returned to Catalonia. Her cousin Maria stayed with them for a year before returning to France. Back in Catalonia, Conxita’s uncle, who had gained experience as a builder, started working mainly in maintenance tasks in the military airfields of the Republic, particularly fortifying the airfields of Tortellà and Balaguer. After the defeat and fearing repression, they set out on the road to exile. Conxita and her aunt Elvira were separated from her uncle and taken to the refugee camp of Pas de Calais. They were then allowed to return to the south, to Gudàs, and finally to Varilhas, where Maria was living with her husband Joseph Ferrer and their three children. There, the family was finally reunited. Conxita was 14 years old.

In April 1943, when her uncle was exposed and had to flee to Andorra, pursued by the Gestapo, the women of the family became even more involved in the resistance and in the 3rd Brigade. “For a while everything was disorganised and then, after some time, they came to ask us if we could continue the fight that my uncle had led. We helped all the comrades who got there […] and we became part of the 3rd Brigade of guerrillas. My aunt Elvira, my sister Maria [this is how she refers to her sister, with whom she grew up from the age of 2] and me. We were called the Beleta family”.

They continued with the logging business, acting as liaison to the Col du Py guerrillas. From their home in Peny they took care of the allied soldiers, helping them escape across the Pyrenees, carrying parcels and making contacts between the different guerrilla groups. Conxita mentions it in her testimony: “Maria and I joined the Maquis as liaison, especially in Col du Py; me and my cousin, we were always at the Beleta’s farm; there, we received reports and information, occasionally also letters, and also mission orders, which we relayed to the Maquis leaders”.

The so-called “ghost train” was one of the last transports to take its occupants to the Nazi concentration camps. And there began a journey that, according to Nazi plans, was intended to reach the Dachau concentration camp in three days. The train began its journey by transporting the prisoners in trucks from the Vernet d’Ariège camp to Toulouse. Once there, they were joined by prisoners from the Saint Michel prison and by approximately twenty women from nearby camps, among whom there were also other Spanish women. The train left Toulouse on 3 July 1944 with 750 deportees, 221 of whom were Spanish, and finally reached Dachau on 28 August 1944, 54 days after its departure. The relentless bombardments by the Allies, combined with the attempts of sabotage by the Maquis to free the prisoners, slowed down the journey, hindered by a constant back and forth in deplorable conditions. The prisoners were besieged by hunger and thirst, the conditions in the train were inhuman and got even worse when the train stopped for days as the summer heat hit hard. The wagons had no air vents and were overcrowded with people who had no place to relieve themselves or to sit, and had almost nothing to eat or drink. In addition to that, due to constant attacks which managed to block the train in some sections, the prisoners had to endure long walks and continuous train changes under the harsh repressive conditions already imposed on them.

Shortly after, the Beleta women were again sent to a kommando in Oberschöneweide, a suburb in Berlin, where they were forced to work day and night with other women.  They shared the kommando with Generosa Cortina. They were in charge of manufacturing and inspecting aviation material at the Henkel factory, but they took advantage of any opportunity to sabotage it: “I was supposed to control the parts, but we sabotaged them. We all did it. I was caned a lot and they shaved my head. Out of 650 women, at the end there were only 115 of us left”.

Conxita ended up having to separate from her sister, who fell ill and was sent back to Ravensbrück. When the factory was bombed, 80% of the kommando was killed and they took the opportunity to escape. They enjoyed a brief moment of freedom, and Conxita experienced the unspeakable pleasure of tasting again what she thought was a great delicacy: a piece of bread with margarine and cold meat. But the SS got hold of them again, and as the barracks were destroyed, they were locked up for three days. All the survivors were kept in a filthy cellar, without light or ventilation and with water dripping from the walls, from where they could only get out for a few minutes a day. Afterwards, on April 14, date that she recalled in her testimony, they were transferred to the Köpernick command, where they worked digging trenches in Sachsenhausen, a mixed camp where the former president of the Spanish Council of Ministers, Francisco Largo Caballero, was imprisoned.

As the allied troops approached, the SS began one of the so-called death marches, in which any prisoner who could not keep up the pace was killed on the spot. One night, before escaping, the SS shot on sight all the deportees they found. Conxita, Elvira and a group of friends that had taken refuge under a tree saved their lives. “Out of the 85 women who left the camp, only 22 of us were left”. They wandered until first the Soviets, and then the Americans helped them. “We realised that we were alone and that our executioners had escaped”. Both the Soviets and then the Americans returned them, not without difficulties, to France, after passing through Holland, Brussels and Lille.

There Conxita was to be reunited with her cousin Maria’s family and her uncle Jaume, who had returned from Andorra. Finally, thanks to a telegram, they were able to locate Maria in Paris, shortly before her death. Conxita would recall that moment with extreme harshness: “She was completely unrecognisable […] she was a living skeleton […] she had been poisoned by the waters of the Bergen-Belsen camp. Because of all the piles of corpses lying around, typhus broke out. In the last days, the water of the camp became poisonous. In spite of her condition, she retained all her clarity”.

On Christmas 1946 Conxita married Josep Ramos, whom she knew from her time as a guerrilla fighter. This is the reason why she was also known as Conxita Ramos, her married name. Conxita Grangé has received several distinctions from the French Republic, such as the Legion of Honor and the Medal of the Resistance. Conxita devoted the last years of her life to the priceless task of sharing her experience with young people, as well as guiding groups around the Musée Départemental de la Résistance et de la Déportation (Museum of the Resistance and Deportation) of Toulouse. In 2019, after Neus Català’s death, she became the last Catalan survivor of the Nazi extermination camps. On 26 July 2019 she was honoured for the first time in Catalonia. The tribute was organised by the City Council of Torre de Capdella, her hometown, together with Memorial Democràtic and with the participation of the Amicale of Ravensbrück. She died in Toulouse on 27 August 2019, at the age of 94.