At 108 years old, Jean Turco, the oldest Frenchman, walks almost without help and still lives at home in Paris. On the occasion of May 8, 2026, the anniversary of the Allied Victory in 1945, the centenarian immerses himself in detail in his memories of a former soldier, prisoner of the Germans for five years.
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/2026/05/07/69fca3bcd2c5b283200882.jpg "Testimony. \"War, there is nothing worse\" : at 108 years old, Jean Turco dives back into his memories of being a soldier prisoner during the Second World War")
Now 108 years old and the oldest Frenchman, Jean Turco was born in 1917 in Villejuif to Italian parents. He was naturalized French at the age of 15 after agreeing to do his two years of military service. “I found myself in the army a year before war was declared”he remembers. He then spent the fall and winter of 1939 in Alsace, in a town located on the German border. “But as you know, nothing happened. It’s what we called the phoney war. We were going to do our patrols. The Germans and we tried to avoid each other until May.”
In 1940 came the short battle of France. He was injured in Épinal by a shell burst while he was transporting ammunition, an event which left him with a significant scar on his arm.
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Due to the lack of a doctor available, it was an intern still in training who treated him and extracted the shrapnel. “It was like a razor blade. I kept it for a long time, as a trophy. Afterwards, when I returned to France, the doctors saw my arm and said: ‘Which pig was the one who sewed that up?'”
Faced with the advance of Nazi troops, like hundreds of thousands of other French soldiers, Jean Turco received the order from Marshal Philippe Pétain to lay down his arms. “Since the armistice was signed we were told ‘go home'”he testifies. But the joy was short-lived, “The Germans told us: ‘Ah no, the agreement with Pétain is that you are given prisoners.'” Direction Stuttgart in Germany for Jean Turco: the start of five years of captivity, which he will spend in a German precision mechanics factory, he who is a young qualified technician.
“Working, at least, made you forget for a while that you were a prisoner.”
Jean Turco, dean of the Frenchfranceinfo
By his status as an engineer, he could have joined an “Oflag“where officers who were prisoners of war were not allowed to work. “But being a prisoner and going around in circles all day without doing anything”for Jean Turco, “It’s worse than anything.”
In his “Stalag”, a camp for ordinary soldiers, daily life is difficult, but bearable, remembers the centenarian. “You were entitled to one letter, one card, per month with the family, but that went through censorship. And from time to time, we received a Pétain packet with a few hard biscuits.”
It also tells of a cohabitation very different from that experienced in France at the same time facing the occupier. He rubs shoulders with German civilians every day at the factory, who unlike “what he believed” are “nice as anything.” But five years is a long time. So he escapes, twice. His first escape takes him twenty kilometers from Strasbourg, but unfortunately for him, a German patrol which was there spotted him. Two failures which resulted in two periods of solitary confinement. But the factory that needs his expertise takes him back every time.
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In 1945, it was finally the return home for a million soldiers taken prisoner in Germany. After five years of absence, Jean Turco remembers a mixed reception. “We talked a lot about Charles de Gaulle and the resistance fighters, that’s very good. But historians forgot to talk about the French army. We were the plague victims, we were the ones who lost the war.” The image of these soldiers will remain associated with the debacle of 1940, and for some, the reunion is not always easy.
“Everyone was still happy to see me. But it must be said that in France there were still terrible restrictions”
Jean Turco, dean of the Frenchfranceinfo
After the war, Jean Turco was in turn a dealer, a union leader in the automobile industry, then a deputy for Paris in the 1970s. Father of three children, and also married three times, at 108 years old today, he says he is worried about the future. “When I think of the current generation, my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I admit that I am worried. We have the impression that we are looking for a third war. War, there is nothing worse: we know when it begins, we do not know when it ends. Nor how.”
The centenarian continues to get information every day on his laptop, where he reads his emails every morning. At 108 years old, with his smartphone, Jean Turco even sends text messages, slowly but surely.
