18. A Calm Smile in the Face of Death
At some point between October 15th and 23rd, Georges Blind was placed before a German firing squad, and somebody took a photo that captured his feat of courage in the face of death. It immortalized him as an anti-fascist symbol of the Resistance. In it, Blind can be seen smiling in the face of his executioners, as German soldiers aim their rifles at him. Literally smiling in the face of death has to be one of the manliest ways to shuffle off the mortal coil. However, unbeknownst to Blind, he was not to die that day.
It was a mock execution, used as psychological torture in an attempt to scare him into snitching on his Resistance comrades. Blind refused to snitch, so on October 24th, 1944, he was sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he arrived on the 29th. From Dachau, he was sent to Auschwitz, where he arrived on November 24th. There, he was killed by lethal injection on November 30th, 1944. Georges Blind was posthumously promoted to sergeant in the French Forces of the Interior. He was also posthumously awarded a Croix de Guerre, a Medaille Militaire, a Resistance Medal, and an Honor Medal for Fighters for exceptional services.