Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GinoLR, post: 8365688, member: 128351&quot;]You are right, family history is a real treasure. </p><p>My mom wrote her memories about WW2 she lived through as a child and a teenager: the terrible year 1940 when her father was wounded and her mother killed right before her eyes, the following years under enemy occupation. I helped her improve the style, a little like a reviewer... These memories were a revelation for me, mostly about my great-aunt, a person my mom did not like much. I knew her very well as an old maid in her sixties to nineties, very old fashioned, a bit ridiculous sometimes. BUT, reading my mom&#039;s memories, I discovered who she was in 1940-44. She was a town clerk and had access to official registers and the town hall safe. She was in touch with people acting for the resistance. They gave her a special chemical product that could dissolve the secure ink used on civil status registers, and on several occasions she would falsify them and erase all traces of the existence of young men who were joining De Gaulle in England: their absence had to remain unnoticed by the Germans, to avoid reprisals on their families. She also organized meetings of &quot;clandestins&quot; at her home, stole ration tickets from the town hall safe and delivered them to people living in hiding. On these occasions she asked my mom to &quot;secure&quot; the meeting place some time in advance: my mom on her bicycle passed a few times in the street watching for any unknown suspect people nearby. My great-aunt was never caught: nobody would suspect an old maid like her living with her elderly mother.</p><p>There are tragic stories. A young Jewish woman wanted to flee France via Spain. My great-aunt organized a meeting at her home with a man who knew the road and the fixers. My mom was there. When the woman had left, the man said : &quot;She will not make it, she is too much scared...&quot; It was the last time they saw her, no further news. In the 1980s a Jewish documentation center about the Holocaust was created in Paris not far from our home. My mom went there and asked if there was anything about this girl. They finally found her photo with the record of her arrest in Poitiers, her deportation to Auschwitz by convoy nr so and so... They gave the photo to my mom saying: &quot;You are the only person who ever asked about her&quot;.</p><p>There are also funny stories. An allied bomber had been downed and a young American airman fell with his parachute near the property on one of our family&#039;s friends. The man rushed immediately, helped him hide the parachute, gave him old filthy peasant clothes and a rake. When a few minutes after the Germans arrived looking for him, nobody had seen anything and they did not suspect the gardener raking the lawn in plain sight. The young man later had dinner with the family and shared the two little boys&#039; room for the night. He was exfiltrated by the local resistance the day after. The boys told their father : &quot;We spoke English to him, but he did not understand anything&quot;.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in