French son of a WWII German soldier discovers his secret origins

The best Christmas present a French pensioner has received Thierry Sudan there was a candle made of beeswax “from the beehives [su] father, German soldier Second War Mundial, whose identity he knew in the 2000s.

For most of his life, this 80-year-old man did not know that his father was German soldier with whom his mother fell in love during the Nazi occupation France”shameful” secret, which he took to the grave.

Like him, about 100,000 children were born from French mothers and German fathers during the occupation of France between 1940 and 1944, according to French historian Fabrice Virgili.

Despite the fact that Franco-German reconciliation was secured in 1963 Élysée Treatywhich Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz will celebrate in Paris on Sunday, Sudan learned its story much later.

Already in adulthood, this man, whose passion for bees unites him with the father he never knew, began to reconstruct the story of his birth on October 19, 1942.

During the war, his mother worked in a cafe in his parents’ village in Angerville, about 70 kilometers south of Paris. There used to be German soldiers walking around, and a 17-year-old girl fell in love with one of them.

When she became pregnant, her family became very ashamed. She was sent to Paris and did not return to the village until the end warBut her return with her young son was too much even for her father.

The man left the family home and divorced his mother. “I felt like I was the ugly duckling [durante toda la infancia]like it doesn’t belong to my family,” admits Sudan.

“Everyone knew”

After much questioning in the early 2000s, a local elder finally revealed to him that his father was German soldier named Ludwig Christ.

“Everyone knew about it and no one ever said anything,” says this retired businessman who hosts AFP at his home on the Île d’Oléron (west).

“It was like being hit in the head,” he adds.

Sudan then contacted the German embassy, ​​who reported his father’s death in 1999.

“I might have known him,” if I had known before, laments a man who served as a French soldier in Germany as a young man.

But in 2019, a Franco-German association called Hearts Without Borders, which helps investigate cases like the Sudanese, managed to find his father’s grave in the German city of Munich (south).

And they left a note asking the relatives of the deceased to contact them on a “family matter”.

One day, Thierry Sudan So, he received a call that changed his life: “They spoke French to me, but I didn’t understand anything,” he recalls.

On the other end of the line from Bavaria, her half-sister Waltraut and half-brother Manfred called. “It was very emotional,” the pensioner admits with a lump in her throat.

The three first met on the Île d’Oléron. Waltraut Maurer brought with him a photograph of the child, which he found in a family album. On the back was Thierry’s name written by his father.

“Love story”

liberation of France This was accompanied by the humiliation of French women who had children from the Germans, accused of collaborating with the enemy and shaving their heads, as happened to the mother of the Sudan.

Unraveling her parents’ story was both painful and touching, she says.

“I found out that my mother was shaved by the village barber.”

But he also keeps happy memories of his parents.

“My mother’s younger sister told me that she saw them walking hand in hand through the city several times,” he recalls. “It was a love story, not a rape story.”

Waltraut Maurer assures AFP that his brother was immediately familiar to him.

“He has the hands and eyes of our father, and in his spare time, like him, he is engaged in beekeeping,” explains his half-sister, who for this reason gave him a beeswax candle for Christmas.

Maurer is studying French and often talks on the phone with his half-brother.

Sudan says he has found a “warm and wonderful family” and is now processing his application. Nationality Deutsch get a little closer to your roots. (AFP)