Fakes

Today, I led an English conversation group in the nearby large Hôtel de Ville.  As we are one day before VE Day (Libération - in France), I set the group a little task of coming to discuss and tell us some anecdotes, tales and memories as experienced by their family during the war, and particularly on VE Day.
I know that France’s experience of WW2 was fundamentally different to the British experience.  They were occupied, we weren’t (excepting the Channel Islands).  So I wanted to hear directly from them.  One told us of her grandparents receiving refugees from the East of France (the Ardennes) who were fleeing the advancing German forces.  Then another pulled out a little booklet, which she had had printed.  It was her mother’s account of the evacuation FROM the Ardennes!  A coincidence!  But the woman’s grandfather had lost a leg in an industrial accident, so was unemployed and very poor, living in rented accommodation.  The hand-written booklet was written when the mother was in her 90’s, but talked about how they had to choose what to grab and take with them, how they had to release their farm animals, how they were limited in what they could take.  The grandfather had mulled over whether they should lock the door as they left, or leave it open!  After gathering in the town square, they set off on an 8-day walk (yes, the grandfather with one leg included).  Then a train from the Marne, arriving days later in Charente Maritime, where they stayed.  It explains how they were in our département.
Next, another lady pulled out little envelopes.  Inside were her family documents from the wartime.  Ration books for her family and her brother.  Incredibly, the red German (Nazi) passport in the picture is a FAKE!  The lady’s father’s family was in the Alsace region, so spoke German.  He had been captured fighting the Germans and put in a prisoner of war camp.  He escaped!  He had acquired forged documents, including the German passport/ID.  When he eventually arrived in the Charente Maritime, he had to get more fake French documents (his French ID), because his real name was known to the Germans from his time in capture.  He would have been executed if he had been found with one, let alone two!
She also had a pamphlet sent out by Marshal Pétain to the French people. The unoccupied part of France, run by the French on behalf of the Germans (until the Germans took over) was a stain in the French psyche.
A fascination discussion, showing just how different the experience they had as regular citizens of an occupied nation.