Strasbourg
The return of the soldier against himself. Or how to tell today this page of Alsace and Moselle history that tries to fit into the national narrative of World War II. Eighty years ago, Hitler decided to forcefully conscript the Alsatians and Lorraines. From the autumn of 1942, of the 130,000 men called up to join the German army, or one in ten from Alsace, 31,321 died. And the trace of 9000 of them was never found. Some 15,000 young women, whose role was belatedly recognized, would be enrolled in the Women’s Labor Service of the Third Reich and then used as war auxiliaries. A thousand of them will die there in the last months of the conflict. So many personal journeys, often complicated ones, that have created divisions even within families. Because there were about 50,000 fire fighters next to the opponents wearing the uniforms of the defeated, who in 1945
Source: Le Figaro
