[ad_1]
Paris – As France is preparing to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Nazi surrender of the Allied forces, the survivors of World War II reflect on the painful memories of fear, deprivation and persecution formed by the German occupation of the country and the deportation of Jews and others in the death camps.
In May 1940, the Nazi forces passed through France. Among the people caught in the chaos was 15-year-old Genevier Perie, who fled his village in northeastern France to escape from advanced German troops like millions of others. Until June, France gave up.
Three years later, Esther Senot, 15, was arrested by French police and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenaau. In 1944, 19-year-old Jeinet Colinka was sent to the same death camp.
Now, nearly 100 years, women continue to share their stories, determined to preserve the memory of war alive and convey their lessons to future generations.
“We were scared,” she remembered, as she described a bicycle running with her mother, carrying only a small travel bag while her uncle took a horse’s stroller on the roads of Eastern France.
“There were many people who were running, with children in baby wagons, everyone was running. There was a column of civilians, running and a column of French soldiers running,” she said.
Perie and others hid in a field when they heard bombers. “Mom had a white hat. Some said to her,” Take out your hat! “And then I saw a huge bomb pass by our heads.
Later on a train, Perie found refuge for a few months in a small town in southwestern France, in an area managed by the Vichy cooperation regime before her mother decides that they would return home – just to live under a harsh Nazi occupation.
“The resistance was big in our area,” Perie said, adding that she was ready to join the so -called French forces of the interior (FFI). Three FFI women were captured and tortured by the Nazis just a few kilometers from her home, she recalled.
“My mother continued to tell me,” No, I don’t want you to leave. I no longer have a husband, so if you go … “she said. “She was right because all three were killed.”
Still, Perie has maintained his spirit of resistance in her daily routine.
“There was a Catholic anthem in the church,” she said, singing, “Catholic and French, always!”
“We blew it with all our might, hoping you (Nazi soldiers) to hear,” she said.
When on June 6, 1944, the Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, Perie said there was not much access to the news and could not believe it.
Later that year, she saw the troops of the Second French Division of General Leclerk, equipped with American tanks entering her village. “They released us and there was a reservoir that had stopped almost on our threshold. So, I went to see the tank, of course. And then they kept a ball not far,” she said.
Towards the end of the war, the French men brought a German soldier who accused of killing a baby at the village cemetery. “They made him dig his grave. They put him in him … they killed him,” she said.
Born in Poland by a Jewish family who emigrated to France in the late 1930s, Esther Senot was 15 when she was arrested in Paris by French police. It was deported in September 1943 at the Auschwitz-Birkenaean camp with a livestock train. On the ramp, the Nazis chose those who could use as forced workers.
“A German with his speaker said: Adults, women, children, those who are tired can get on trucks,” she recalled. “Of the 1,000 people we were, 650 got on the trucks …. and 106 of us, women, were chosen to return to work at the camp for forced labor.” Others were burned to death shortly after arrival.
Senot survived 17 months in Auschwitz-Birkenaau and other camps and returned to France at the age of 17.
In the spring of 1945, the Lutetia Hotel in Paris became a place to collect those returning from concentration camps. The hay described the crowd of people looking for missing family members, some brought pictures of their loved ones, while the walls were covered with posters listing the names of the survivors.
“It was bureaucratic,” Senot said. “At the first counter, they gave us temporary ID cards. Then they gave us a very basic medical examination … And those who were lucky enough to find their family, went to an office where they were given a little money, and were told,” You are now completing the formalities … you go home. “
Seventeen Senot family members were killed by the Nazis during World War II, including her mother, her father and six siblings.
In a recent commemoration to the hotel, Senot said she hoped that her survival would “testify to the absolute crime we were caught in.” But after returning to France, she felt that the hardest thing was the indifference to the fate of those who were deported.
“France has been released for one year and people did not expect to return with all the misery in the world of our shoulders,” she said.
In her former Paris neighborhood, a small crowd was watching her. “I weighed 32 pounds (70 pounds) when I returned, my hair was shaved. One year after the Liberation, people did not meet any woman who looked like this.”
Senot said when she began to explain what happened to her: “You can see the unbelief in their eyes.” “And suddenly they were angry. They said,” But you were angry, you were talking nonsense, it couldn’t happen. “And I will always remember the face of a person who looked at me and said,” You returned to such small numbers, what did you do to get back, not others? “
Colinka, who was 19 years old when she was deported in April 1944 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, is well known in France for sharing her bright memories of the younger generation concentration camps in the last two decades.
In June 1945, when he returned to Paris, she weight only 26 pounds (57 pounds) and was very weak. Still, compared to some others, she felt “lucky” to find her mother and four sisters alive in France when she returned home. Her father, brother and sister died at the death camps.
She has not been talking about war for more than half a century. “Those who told their story is true that it looked amazing (at the time),” she said.
Six million European Jews and people from other minorities were killed by the Nazis and their associates during the Holocaust.
In the 2000s, Colinka joined the Association of Survivated Deported and began to speak.
“What we have to keep in mind is that all that happened was because one man (Adolf Hitler) hated the Jews,” she said.
“Hate to me is dangerous,” she added. “As we say, that one is such that one is one, it already proves that we make a difference when in reality, whether we are Jews, Muslims, Christians, Blacks, we are human.”
–
AP journalists Nikola Gariga and Patrick Hermanson have contributed to the story.
[ad_2]
Source link
