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Henri Gayot (1904–1981) was born in Panilleuse, France. His father was a veteran of World War I (1914-1918) and both parents were teachers. Henri obtained a degree as an art teacher in 1930. He taught at Fromentin Normal School in La Rochelle, where he lived with his wife and two sons.

On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and France declared war on Germany. Henri was mobilized into the French Army and became a lieutenant in the regiment of Senegalese riflemen. On May 10, 1940, France was invaded by Germany. France capitulated and signed an armistice on June 22. Henri was taken prisoner in Saint-Die on June 22. He was transported to Oflag XVIIA, a prisoner of war camp for officers in Moravia. While interned, he made sketches with chewed tobacco. He was released in April 1942, partly due to his asthma. He returned to La Rochelle.

Under the terms of the armistice, Germany annexed Alsace-Lorraine. The German Army occupied northern and western France, and placed the region under the leadership of a military commander. Henri joined the French resistance group Honneur et Patrie [Honor and Homeland], sometimes using the pseudonym Le Normand. He became head of the information division. On September 19, 1943, Henri was arrested and imprisoned in Lafond. He was transferred to Fort du Ha, and then put on trial with a group of suspected resistance members by a German military court in Bordeaux. Nearly all were convicted and over twenty were executed in January 1944. Henri was imprisoned in Fresnes until April 6, 1944, when he was transferred to Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. The camp had been constructed in May 1941, 35 miles southwest of Strasbourg, in Alsace, near the German border. Many of the prisoners in Natzweiler were members of resistance movements in German-occupied nations, and were sent there as part of the Nacht und Nebel [Night and Fog] operation launched by the Germans to quell growing anti-German resistance. People suspected of being in the resistance were arrested and then disappeared, with no notification to their families. Henri was assigned prisoner number 11784. Drawing was forbidden, but Henri created sketches depicting the atrocities of daily life in the camp. The inmates worked under dangerous conditions in quarries, disease was prevalent, food rations were meager, and the guards were often violent. The main camp at Natzweiler was evacuated in early September 1944, due to the advance of Allied Forces who had liberated Paris on August 25. The prisoners were deported by train to concentration camps in Germany. Henri was sent to Dachau concentration camp which was liberated by US troops on April 30, 1945. Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945. Henri was able to return to France in late May, 1945.

An edition of his works was published in France shortly after the war. Henri returned to teaching. He testified about the brutality of the camps at war crimes trials in the 1940s and 1950s. He wrote a history of the war, “Occupation, Resistance, Liberation in Charente-Maritime” published by the History Committee of the Second World War in 1973. Henri also designed the monument to the Resistance and Free French forces that was erected on the renamed Square Gayot in La Rochelle.