Les ombres du bagne – L’enfer carcéral – Guyane -Transportés, relégués, déportés – Documentaire – AT

L’horreur carcérale des grandes dictatures du 20e siècle avait un précurseur : les bagnes de Guyane, archipel pénitentiaire dont l’histoire a été pour tant d’hommes celle d’une longue tragédie.
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A partir d’images d’archives inédites, de dossiers confidentiels de l’Administration pénitentiaire, de documents personnels et de témoignages de première main, Les Ombres du bagne raconte les aventures extraordinaires de 4 bagnards anonymes qui furent les derniers survivants de l’enfer carcéral.

Les ombres du bagne
Réalisation : Patrick Barbéris et Tancrède Ramonet
Production : Temps noir
©ARTE – 2006

Charles HUT was a cyclist and safe-cracker. René Belbenoit, a chicken thief. Tran Khac Man, pirate in the seas of China. Jassek Baron, an assassin promised to the scaffold. Each of them took one day one of the thousand paths that France had traced to get

Rid of its delinquents and criminals by sending them to serve their sentences several thousand kilometers from the metropolis, in what was the first prison archipelago : the penal colony of Guyana. Charles, René, Tran Khac and Jassek managed to survive him. Today, the only traces that remain of them are the memories of the

Battles they waged from the depths of their cell and their disciplinary files, meticulously preserved by the justice system. In the penal colony, they experienced the arbitrariness of an all-powerful administration which was accountable to no one. They experienced promiscuity and the reign of bosses in collective dormitories.

They experienced hunger and solitary confinement cells transformed into a death hall. They experienced these trains that led nowhere and the hell of the forest camps where the convicts collapsed from fever and exhaustion, dreaming of escape. They experienced body searches and fights between detainees.

The prison marked them as formerly those condemned to the galleys were branded with a hot iron. They never admitted defeat. They never managed to completely escape it either, as the remains of the penal colony are today prisoners of the jungle. Living testimonies of its agony, their destinies reflect the

Long tragedy that the penal colony was for almost a century for more than 70,000 men. This film is their story. Charles Hut was for justice the very example of the gallows game that must be kept away from the metropolis at all costs to avoid contagion. Born on the Luxembourg border, child of

Slag heaps and rolling mills, at twenty years old, he was sentenced to 3 months in prison for theft. Barely released, he was again imprisoned three times for theft and assault. A year later, he plunged again. The judges are more

Severe this time: Charles is sentenced to three years in prison and five years of probation. Convicted five times in two years, he knows that the next time he is arrested it is the penal colony that awaits him. Charles then became absorbed in his other passion, cycling.

Winner of several regional races, he turned professional. For 4 years, Charles was only talked about in sports newspapers. In 1920, he was overtaken by his old demons and robbed a gendarmerie where the funds for the reconstruction of his region were deposited.

Given by an accomplice, he was sentenced by the Nancy Assize Court to 12 years of forced labor. Then begins for him the long road which leads to the prisons of Guyana. Charles is incarcerated in the fortress on the Île de Ré where all the condemned are gathered before their departure for the tropics.

Ré is the antechamber of the penal colony. December 27, 1921, 610 convicts leave for Guyana. Charles is ready. He made a blade to defend himself and put all his riches into his plan, a sort of cigar case that all convicts hide in their rectum.

To avoid any risk of escape, the “La Martinière” waited for the convicts offshore. The municipality has banned traffic, closed the platforms and the ground floors, but curious people are crowding in despite the cold. The body of ordinary guards is reinforced by the troops to avoid any overflow. Charles, his wrists tied,

Is embarrassed to hold the piece of bread which will serve as food when he arrives on board. He will soon disappear into the hold of this old freighter transformed into a floating prison. While climbing the accommodation ladders, Charles looks one last time at this country which no longer wants to hear from him.

Inside, without care, the condemned are crowded into groups of 80 in cages which run on either side of the belly of the boat. Morning and evening, for five minutes, Charles and the others are allowed in small groups to go to the bridge to get some fresh air.

After a month at sea, the “La Martinière” passed the Enfant Perdu lighthouse. The penal colony is no longer far away. The arrival of a convoy is an event that brings Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni out of its torpor: the new arrivals come to replace the dead and helpless from

Previous convoys. It is the promise of a new, fresh workforce, employable and ready to work at will, that keeps all of Guyana alive. The order is given to disembark the convicts. Charles in turn sets foot on dry land. The doctor on board found him in

Good health. It’s just a formality, no one is ever sent back to mainland France. Under the feverish surveillance of their new guards, the convicts are taken to the penitentiary, a hundred meters away. In the central courtyard facing him, Charles discovers 12 huts which can contain up to 200 convicts each.

Does he understand that for years to come they will be his home, his factory, his market and his prison? Placed in isolation in groups of 60, it is only after anthropometric formalities and a new medical examination that Charles and the others will know their definitive assignment.

Tomorrow, he will perhaps stay here or be sent to one of the other work camps of which the penitentiary commune of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni is the sorting center and administrative capital. Six o’clock in the morning, the drum rolls the alarm clock. The guards in charge

Receive the instructions for the day. The key rings unlock the hut doors. From the first day, from the moment of washing, it is his survival that we organize: we manage, we trade, we exchange our jacket for tobacco, a few notes for a favor.

Then, standing at attention, the convicts respond to the interminable call of the guards. Charles witnesses the departure of the elders on corvee duty. Saint-Laurent is the only commune in France which is not administered by a mayor but by the director of the prison administration. All the bricks that

Make it up were molded by the convicts. A veritable anthill built by and for the penal colony, Saint-Laurent lives in isolation. Its sawmill, its market gardening fields, its slaughterhouses, its forge are all run by convicts who support the entire colony. Recognized by a supervisor who is passionate about cycling races,

Charles miraculously succeeds in getting himself appointed to the kitchen, a place of choice where he can divert and resell food to both inmates and guards. After six months of observation, as a reward for his good behavior, Charles was elevated to the rank of 2nd class convict.

He was sent to the Salvation Islands as an administrative assistant. Royale, on the left, is reserved for the stars of the Assises. Au Diable, in the center, are placed the political deportees. In Saint-Joseph, on the right, the diehards are grouped together. The shark-infested sea, with its currents pulling out to sea,

Is worth all the surrounding walls. As it was not possible to dock there by boat, it was a whaleboat manned by convicts that took Charles to Royale. Royale is the showcase of the penal colony. The total autarchy of the penal colony, dreamed of by the prison administration,

Works so well that it is difficult to know who is monitoring who, of the 300 convicts and guards who populate it. The boredom and fear that reign there are such that the supervisors cannot bear their stay for more than 3 months.

Here as in Saint-Laurent, the convicts are entirely at the service of the penitentiary. They serve in the Director’s house. The most educated teach at school, assist the priest at the service in the chapel, or are employed as nurses in the hospital. They serve in the bachelors’ mess or are family boys in the

Houses of married guards which adjoin their cells. In this precarious calm, are these convicts who walk on these five slabs aware that these are the blocks on which, perhaps for them, the executioner will one day erect the guillotine?

And he who loses himself in reading a novel does he think that in Royale there is no cemetery for convicts and that his tattoos will be thrown to the sharks the day that illness or a bad stab wound got the better of him?

Charles says he spent the most peaceful years of his existence here in the penal colony. On the other side of the Atlantic, René Belbenoit has just obtained his passport for Guyana. René is a child from the penal colony. Born on April 4, 1899 in Paris into a family of uneventful workers,

After obtaining his elementary studies certificate, René was hired by his uncle in a cabaret in Pigalle. There he discovers easy money and easy living. Dismissed for gambling with money given to him by a client, René begins a life of marauding and pilfering. Arrested for petty theft and for

Traveling without a ticket, he was acquitted because of his age, 16, but placed by the courts in a reformatory, a veritable prison school. Here as in Guyana, the same grueling work, the same dungeon, the same violence, the same absurd project. France is at war. Rather than continuing to endure this hell,

René anticipates the call. After the armistice, he resumed his resourceful tour of France. His crimes are reported all over the country but René remains elusive until the day the police find him. The adventure stops in front of the doors of the Dijon court.

A former child convict who is a repeat offender, René guesses that prison awaits him. Through the game of dubbing, if he receives less than eight years of forced labor, he will be able to hope to see Paris again, but if he is sentenced to an equal or greater sentence, he

Will then be required to reside in Guyana for life . France, which wanted to get rid of him, sentenced him on May 29, 1922 to eight years of forced labor and therefore to relegation for life. Half of the convicts in a convoy die in the first year.

Weak in constitution, on board the “La Martinière” which is taking him to Guyana, René senses that he has little chance of escaping. When he sees from the bridge the banks of Dutch Guiana a stone’s throw from Saint-Laurent,

René has only one idea in mind: cross the Maroni and escape, escape as quickly as possible. But you still have to jump the surrounding walls, cross the gates, pick the heavy doors and tear your ankle from the shackle that anchors it to the side wall.

When, like the other convicts, he underwent anthropometry, he received the number 46635 which would soon be his signature. 1m62 and 50 kilos, in this world of brutes, René owes his weak constitution to being classified as “Light Work”. Assigned outside the transportation camp,

He joined the “powerless camp” from which it was easier to escape. Only one month after his arrival, René escapes the surveillance of the guards and shows off when returning from chores. As soon as he was recaptured, he was placed in the dungeon. René waits three months in the blockhouse for his

Appearance before the Special Maritime Tribunal which will decide his sentence. During the daily walk, going in circles, René never stops thinking about new escape plans. Next time it will be good. Like these prisoners responsible for maintaining the governor’s gardens, Charles Hut has just been transferred to Cayenne. Having become a first class prisoner,

He enjoys an individual cell which he can decorate as he wishes. During the day, in the company of other convicts, Charles traveled around the capital and laid telegraph lines. Authorized to move around town, behind his submissive facade, Charles also dreams of looking good. But for that you need money.

Charles the burglar knows where and how to get them quickly. On June 21, 1925, in the center of Cayenne, he robbed the Théobalde department store. Denounced once again by an accomplice, he went before the Special Maritime Court and received 20 months of imprisonment on Saint-Joseph Island. Nicknamed by the convicts the “

Man-eater”, Saint-Joseph is the island of absolute silence and confinement. Charles is locked up in one of these open-air cages monitored from the top of a footbridge by a guard who watches his every move and punishes the slightest word with an additional 30 days in the dungeon.

Once a day, his meager pittance is distributed to him through the narrow window at head height, the only contact that men will have with the outside world during their sentence. No walks here. Once a week, a doctor, without opening the door, comes to check on the progress of scurvy or madness.

Charles has heard about these convicts who spent several years there. The walls still bear the traces of their stay. If they resisted, he too will survive. But the worst is elsewhere: René Belbenoit, classified incorrigible by the Special Maritime Tribunal,

Is sent to the Charvein forestry camp. It is in Charvein that the sentence to forced labor takes on its full meaning. Charvein is the hell of the penal colony. Only 20 km from Saint-Laurent but already lost in the humidity of the jungle,

The convicts only have 80 grams of meat and 300 grams of bread per day to survive. The convicts are reduced to the rank of beasts of burden. René must cut down his quota of wood harder than stone every day, under the watchful eye of

Guards ready to shoot at any moment. Does he guess that rare essences will be extracted from these logs so that the ladies of the beautiful districts of Cayenne or Paris can perfume themselves? And do they know how many men have died for each drop they place on their necks?

Here too, visits from doctors are rare. And everything is good for calling in sick, like this inmate who refuses to take his quinine: it is better to suffer from malaria than to die on the job. We don’t survive more than six months in Charvein. After 4 months, bloodless, René managed to be

Interned at the Saint-Laurent hospital. The hospital is every convict’s dream . Here too, everything can be bought, including the right to stay sick. This is where René will have an encounter that will change his life. Since 1923, the scandal caused in France by the investigation in Albert London’s penal colony has intrigued

America. The biggest newspapers send their best reporters there. The prison administration, which claims to have nothing to hide, opens its doors wide to them. This is how René meets Blair Niles, special correspondent for the New York Times, he tells her about his life and guides her through the mysteries of the penal colony.

Back in the United States, Blair Niles published a long article in which only the number 46635, that of René Belbenoit, was discussed. And the American public is passionate about the adventures of this little Frenchie who resists the prison and has a great talent as a storyteller.

Blair Niles even turned his life into a novel which quickly became a bestseller. Criticized in France, the penal colony then became, thanks to René’s testimony, a scandal in the United States as well. The administration is afraid. René negotiates his silence in exchange for a hideout: he

Becomes an archivist at the governor’s residence, a strategic place from where he can accumulate information which he carefully records like so many pieces of evidence. In 1930, having reached the end of his forced labor sentence, René was released. He then took advantage, despite his residence requirement in Guyana, of exceptional permission

To go to Panama from where he intended to resume his crusade against the penal colony. Attacked from the outside, the penal colony will soon also be attacked from the inside with the transfer of Indochinese detainees. Revolted by the French presence in Indochina,

A handful of young communist and nationalist activists rebel and massacre a French army garrison. Arrested and tortured, these young activists were sent to languish in the penal colony of Poulo Condor, built on the Guyanese model. By a curious coincidence, Tran Khac Man, a sailor from Halong Bay

, convicted of piracy, arrives in the cell of these politicians. Against the advice of the National Assembly, the governor of Indochina imagines getting rid of these activists who are transforming Poulo Condor into a gigantic communist cell. He sends them to serve their sentences thousands

Of kilometers from home. Perhaps in the Guyanese climate which is so similar to theirs, the Annamites will manage to realize the dream of colonization that the first 80 years of the penal colony turned into a fiasco? On December 3, 1930,

The “La Martinière” came specially from France and anchored in the port of Saigon. Tran Khac, along with 250 other detainees, is part of the trip. The Annamites were first incarcerated at the central depot in Cayenne. They are then transported by a detachment of Senegalese riflemen

In the heart of the equatorial forest, in the territory of Inini which the colonial administration has just decreed “priority no. 1 for the development of the territory of Guyana”. The camp they must establish is a forest camp, like Charvein, two days by canoe from Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni.

Cut off from everything, supervised by a handful of guards, Tran Khac and the other Annamese must build everything there, the guards’ houses as well as their own shelters. Very quickly, in this so-called Forestière camp, suicides and escapes increased. But what really worries the prison administration is that the prisoners

Continue to organize themselves into communist cells. To break their resistance, after 4 years of work, the administration closed the camp and abandoned it to the jungle. The Annamites are scattered in small groups. Tran Khac is sent 60 km from Cayenne, to the

Crique Anguille camp. Everything has to be done again. The same hard work begins again. Forgotten by everyone, placed under close surveillance, they continue to protest and, in defiance, to celebrate the Tet festival for the new year. From Panama where he found refuge, René supplied the French illustrated press

With his stories about the prison, and the latter delighted in these chronicles written for the first time by a convict. On October 19, 1931, decided to go all out, he embarked clandestinely aboard the Wyoming which was to reach France. Barely arriving in Le Havre, he was immediately arrested during a police check.

The courts decide to send him back to Guyana to be tried by the Special Maritime Court for breach of residence. But René is no longer a simple chicken thief. He writes articles for popular newspapers with very high circulations. René is now a star.

Banned by the censors in France, a film which enjoyed great success in the United States was even adapted from his life by Metro Goldwin Meyer. In order to obtain his pardon, the press and the general public mobilized. Wasted effort. At the end of September 1933, René returned to prison.

Once again he embarked on the Île de Ré aboard the “La Martinière” in the company of a certain Henri Charrière, known as “Papillon”. As soon as he arrived, he was immediately transferred to a cell on Île Royale, with the other stars of the Assize Courts.

There he found the forger Lagrange, who was responsible for decorating the chapel. He also finds Guillaume Seznec who is assigned to the semaphore thanks to which, in bad weather, the islands communicate with Grande Terre and signal escape attempts. Aware of the danger he represents, the prison administration places

René under close surveillance, increases the punishments and does everything to prevent him from writing. On November 3, 1934, René, who had finally served his sentence, was released again but remained subject to residence in Guyana for life. It takes him six months to perfect his new

Run. Along with other detainees, he escaped by sea. Headed for the United States, via Trinidad which does not have an extradition agreement with France. Deported by the Gulf Stream which takes him back to the continent, René lands in Colombia where he decides to go back up,

Through all of Central America without passing through the cities, to California. Jassek Baron has just arrived in prison. Born in 1905 in Warsaw, Jassek dreamed of living in France. After reaching Paris on foot and surviving as best he could in the Marais district,

One day a hairdresser, another a cook, in 1930, to obtain French nationality, he joined the legion. Wounded during the battles of the Riff War, he was assigned to the kitchen of a colonel and became the whipping boy. One day when he criticizes his jams as being too sweet, Jassek,

In a fit of fury, puts the colonel, his wife and their 13-year-old daughter to the point of his bayonet. Sentenced to death, Jassek benefits from extenuating circumstances and sees his sentence commuted to Forced Labor for life. On its way from Île de Ré to Guyana,

The “La Martinière” stopped in Algiers to take him on board with 80 other North African convicts. Jasseck climbs on board under the watchful eye of his former comrades-in-arms. He knows that in prison, child killers are not welcome.

As soon as he arrives, Jassek chooses to be forgotten. He fits into the mold of the penitentiary, docile, disciplined, noted for his good behavior. In twenty years, as evidenced by his disciplinary record, he was only punished twice: the first time for deliberately scalding himself in order to escape

A chore; a second time for throwing the bakery cat in the oven. For him the penal colony is a barracks like any other, where we kill time between two chores, by reading, playing cards, eating, improving our daily routine as best we can. Ironically, assigned to the bakery in the disciplinary district,

Jassek remembers witnessing one morning the sentence he should have suffered. 12 years after his arrival, Charles Hut has just finished his sentence. The prison administration gives him the balance of his savings: 132 Francs 10, that is to say less than a month

‘s salary for 12 years of forced labor. On arriving in Cayenne, he better understands this refrain heard one day from the lips of a former convict: “it is after forced labor that the real penal colony begins”. Charles comes across in the streets of what

We call “Tafiaville”, these old white people condemned to end their days in Guyana, toothless, haggard, suffering from rheumatism, sleeping on the sidewalks, sharing the scavengers’ meals and begging for pennies to buy their Tafia ration. He doesn’t want to end up like them. He decides to escape by sea, like René, towards Trinidad.

From there, he embarked clandestinely for France. He is arrested in Cherbourg. In his cell in the Ile de Ré fortress, Charles has learned that the President of the Republic, Albert Lebrun, has just signed a decree which will abolish the penalty of transportation.

However, on December 19, 1938, also convicted of breach of residence, with 665 other convicts, Charles left for Guyana. He had been on the first voyage of the “La Martinière”, he will be part of the last. Two years earlier, the Popular Front abolished imprisonment for political reasons. In

The camp where they have been held for five years, Tran Khac and the other Vietnamese deportees protest and organize. They print leaflets demanding their release. Nothing works. The governor of Guyana, who would like to get rid of them, does not have the means to bring them home. But

Even less does he want this communist cancer to spread unchecked in Guyana. For Tran Khac and his companions, liberation is still far away. René, for his part, continues his Odyssey towards the United States. On foot to avoid being spotted , he goes from Colombia to Panama. There, he is taken in by Indians,

And meets the journalist William LaVarre who publishes the story of his last escape. The American public is once again passionate about the adventures of Blair Niles’ hero. In March 1937, exhausted, René arrived in the United States after a journey of more than two years.

Expected in New York, he received a standing ovation in Manhattan. The publishers give him golden bridges. René writes Dry Guillotine, an indictment against the penal colony. His book enjoyed dazzling success in an America which had just entered the war against Nazism and which

Used it in its propaganda by assimilating the prisons to Nazi concentration camps. But with the end of the war and the discovery of the implementation of the Final Solution, the penal colony fades into the background. René’s books then sank into oblivion. He therefore retired to a small village in California and survived,

As others did in prison, by selling butterflies. In 1941, under the pretext of joining the Free French Forces, Charles benefited from an escape route. But it is in Cuba that we find it. He sells arms and trades in the sun. On the advice of Hemingway, after 5 years,

He returned to France with the idea of ​​writing his memoirs. But in Paris the penal colony is no longer popular either, except among a few readers of Saint Germain des Prés who awarded it the Tabou prize. The penal colony now belongs to History. Concerned about its new image, France has decided

To liquidate it and does not want to hear any more about it. It is with the greatest discretion that since 1945 the government has entrusted the repatriation of the last convicts to the Salvation Army. To survive, Charles therefore continues to do what he has always known how to do. He gets by.

In 1967, at the age of 73, he was arrested one last time for receiving stolen jewelry. When he comes out of prison, it is to note the global success of another convict, Henri Charrière, sentenced to forced labor for life for murder,

Who also returned from Guyana and wrote a novel recounting his adventures: Papillon. Charles, who sees it as a way to gain notoriety, accuses Papillon of being an impostor. What were you sentenced to? Twelve years of forced labor. And how long did you stay in prison? …Thirty-four years exactly.

You know well that the truth is often improbable, in any case there is a criminal court which sentenced me to forced labor for life, there was an escape which took place in Colombia since officially they came to get me up to Barentille,

There is another escape which goes through the Venezuelan penal colony, all this was controlled… For me there is absolutely nothing true, maybe he was in the penal colony, I can’t tell . dispute but in his entire book – I read it three times – I only find one thing,

He made the book through stories and undoubtedly copied from my book and from the book of other friends. I wrote him a letter. I said: “My old Charrière, I don’t know you, don’t think above all that I’m coming to ask you for alms,

Nor that I wish you harm, but before doing anything against you, I see that There is plagiarism with me, and now everything you say is a lie. » The last sentences he says in his letter: “I am a crook, and I remain a crook. »

If Papillon did indeed go to prison, the adventures he attributes to himself are in reality largely those of René Belbenoit. Papillon never escaped from Devil’s Island on a coconut raft. Like Tran Khac, he took advantage of the disorganization of the penal colony during the war to make himself look good.

While Tran Khac finds refuge on the other side of the Maroni, in the shelter of the prison bakery, Jassek survives. He thus escaped death from undernutrition which struck convicts en masse between 1940 and 1945. Released in 1950, Jassek decided to stay in

Guyana. Where would he go anyway? He chose to go and work in a leper colony a few km from Saint-Laurent. He spent fifteen years there. In the mid-70s, Jassek found Saint-Laurent and his former chain companions who had remained there. He retired with them in the hospital,

Became a hairdresser, opened a library. In 1988, he was contacted by an American who was convinced he would make his fortune by publishing his memoirs. But Jassek delivers the story of his life in dribs and drabs, obtaining extensions and negotiating every detail. After having obtained more than 10,000 dollars, he finally advised his

Patron to take inspiration from a source that had already proven itself in bookstores: Papillon. Withdrawn from the world for over 40 years, Jassek chooses with the money that the penal colony has earned him to see Warsaw one last time. The inhabitants of Saint-Laurent mobilized,

And the sub-prefect issued him a French passport. What was he going to look for in his native Poland? Did he want to confront the disaster he had escaped by fleeing famine and pogroms to Paris, or simply see the banks of the Vistula again?

Briefly filmed by a television crew on the way home, Jassek never gave himself up. You have to look around you, see what you recognize, if you see things again… But I tell you, it’s like in Warsaw where I

Lived for twenty-three years, I don’t recognize anything at all. Sometimes he would show passing tourists around the penal colony. The shadows of the penal colony disappeared one by one. René Belbenoît died discreetly at the age of 60 in a small village in California. He only survived the penal colony for 6 years. Despite

A final tribute from Paris Match, he died too early to experience the glory of Papillon. Forgotten also, Charles Hut, the cyclist burglar, who died in the anonymity of a trailer in the middle of a wasteland in the early 1970s.

Tran Khac Man, at 104 years old, was the last living convict. He died in 2004. When I dressed, I had gold sewn all over my clothes, gold, gold, gold, more gold. When I played cards, people around the table said to each other: “But…

Who is this young man? » So they no longer looked at the cards and I cheated. When I brought a prostitute up to the hotel, first she saw my beautiful clothes, my gold watches, and everything else. Only then

Did I show him what has been my best card all my life: my penis. When I was stark naked in front of her, you can’t imagine how impressed she was. The stories of his exploits that he told his daughters remind us that the old man,

From the Gulf of Tonkin to both banks of the Maroni, had remained a pirate. The Indochinese survivors of the 1931 convoy were less fortunate than him. In 1945, France was at war with Indochina and sending these activists home was out of the question. In 1954, when

Vietnam gained independence, the Ho Chi Minh government did not have the means to repatriate them. They settled in the Cayenne port district. Their descendants today are mostly unaware of the battles that led their parents to Guyana. Jassek, a convict without a cause and without a story, was struck down in the

Street from a stroke while returning from a poker game in Cayenne. In his will, he asked to be buried in “Bambous”, this part of the Saint-Laurent cemetery reserved for convicts. Today he rests alongside his companions in misery for whom the penal colony was for more

Than a century a land of atonement. It remains their final resting place.