What Lessons Can We Learn From History: A Real-Life Story from Nazi-Occupied France

By Donna Wichelman

(Part I of a two-part article on the Raffle of the 10th of January 1944 in France. See Part II in March.)

This past 10th of January marked the 80th Anniversary of the Raffle of the 10th of January 1944 in occupied France. It’s with that in mind that I continue my series on the Nazi Occupation of France during World War II by turning to a topic that many of us find difficult to acknowledge because it’s so horrific. Yet, we cannot ignore the fact of the Holocaust. Though many in our present-day world try to sweep it under the carpet or deny it ever happened, the preponderance of the evidence is inescapable.

2024 Commemoration Events of the 80th Anniversary of the 10 January 1944 Raffle

Mme Josette Melinon's Archives

So, when I entered the house of Mme Josette Melinon on the 9th of October, 2023, I knew what I was about to hear would be sobering. Indeed, Mme Melinon’s passion for what happened to her relatives during the Nazi occupation took hold in 2004 when one of the teachers in the middle school nearby took a class to see an exhibition of the Jewish children deported to a town called Oświęcim near the German/Polish border, the place of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Among the children they saw was one young lady whose address was in their hometown of Libourne, and they wanted to find out more about her.

The teacher put an article in the local newspaper asking if anyone knew about the young lady. Mme Melinon read the article and recognized the girl as Myriam Errera, her mother’s cousin. The teacher organized a meeting and invited Mme Melinon and her older sister, giving Mme Melinon the opportunity to read a letter to the group. In the letter, she told of her own arrest along with her parents and sister during the Raffle of the 10th of January 1944 in the Bordeaux region of occupied France. The telling of that story began a journey that Mme Melion has continued to this day.

According to Wikipedia, the Raffle of the 10th of January 1944 was the fourth and final roundup of Jews in the Aquitaine between July 1942 and January 1944. Before the war, more than five thousand Jews had lived in Bordeaux, many of them refugees who had fled Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia between 1938 and 1940. Maurice Papon, then secretary general of the Gironde and future minister of the Fifth Republic, organized the roundup, detaining 335 men, women, and children. On the 12th of January 1944, 317 people were taken to Drancy Internment Camp in northern France and later that month sent to Auschwitz.

Newspaper Article About the Roundup of Jews in Paris 1941

Mme Josette Melinon's Archives

Nazi Flag on the Libourne Town Hall During the Occupation

Libourne City Archives

“I was at home with my sister,” Mme Melinon said. “After dinner, my father was listening to the English radio at our friends’ house. When the Germans arrived, my mother ran to the garden to tell my father what was happening. I can remember the picture in my memory—the picture of the German boots that went upstairs in our house, which affected me because we weren’t allowed to go upstairs with our shoes on. But they were going up with their boots on.

“When they [the soldiers] arrived on the first floor (second floor in the United States), they followed my mother into her bedroom and said to her, ‘Knickers baby. Knickers, baby.’ And she gave them all of her knickers.

“We had to walk along the road that goes down to the river while it was raining, and there were five or six Germans in front of us. My mother held my hand very tightly. But when we arrived at the prison, I remember straight stairs leading up and walls that were a very dirty pink. The stairs came out onto a room with people I knew—most of them family— and my grandmother sitting on a bench. They all passed me around and kissed me, and I felt stifled without understanding what was happening.”

Prison Where Mme Milinon and Her Family Were Taken

Provided by the Association Libournaise Souvenir Myriam Errera

Mme Josette Melinon was one of the eighteen people, including her father and sister, who did not ride with the others to Drancy. If it had not been for quick thinking by her father, her story would have ended that night.

You see, Mme Melinon’s mother’s side of the family was Jewish—her great-grandmother from the east of France being Ashkenazi and her great-grandfather Sephardic from Portugal. Her father’s side, however, was Catholic. Her mother and father had initially determined to raise the oldest child (her sister) in the Catholic faith and the second one Jewish. But events changed all that.

Three days and two nights passed until her father could find papers proving he was not a Jew. In addition, he found a priest who risked back-dating a baptismal certificate for Josette and located baptismal certificates going back seven generations as required by the German SS.

Josette and Her Father 10 January 1944

Mme Melinon's Archives

Josette's Baptismal Certificate

Mme Josette Melinon's Archives

The baptismal certificates were enough to prove that Josette’s father, sister, and Josette were Christians, and the Nazis let them go. But what happened to Josette’s mother and the rest of Josette’s relatives, including Myriam Errera, the girl whose picture the students at the middle school saw? Moreover, how and why did the Association Souvenir Myriam Errera come to exist? And what are the lessons we can learn from history in the 21st century? 

Read the rest of Mme Josette’s Melinon’s story in Part II about this dreadful era in our world’s history.

See also: this French newspaper article.

Donna worked as a communications professional before turning to full-time writing. Her short stories, essays, and articles have appeared in various inspirational publications. She has two contemporary suspense novels in her Waldensian Series, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor available on Amazon.com. Her historical romance, A Song of Deliverance, will come out in December, published by Scrivenings Press. She is also working on a World War Two historical slip-time project that takes place in Libourne, France.

Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of her love of history and English literature as a young adult while attending the United World College of the Atlantic--an international college in Wales, U.K. She loves to explore peoples and cultures of the world and enjoys developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, forgiveness, and redemption in a world that often withholds second chances. You can find out more about Donna Wichelman or sign up for her newsletter at https://donnawichelman.com/

How One Aspect of Adolf Hitler's War Machine Devastated Hundreds of Thousands of French Lives

By Donna Wichelman

In December, I began a multi-month series on the Nazi occupation of France during World War Two. Based on the accounts of three lovely women and one gentleman alive as young children during the war—Mme Pierrette Couillandeau, Mme Marie-José Delage, Mme Josette Melinon, and Msr René Avril—we’ll be talking about their personal experiences and how they relate to the occupation between June 1940 and July 1944.

Mme Pierrette Couillandeau and Mme Marie-José Delage, Libourne, France
Donna's Gallery, October 2023

Mme Pierrette Couillandeau and Mme Marie-José Delage were still young children and friends in Libourne when France capitulated to Aldolf Hitler’s German Army in June 1940. Like most French families, they were uneasy about the armistice France signed in 1919, ending the First World War. But while Mme Delage’s father had been wounded during World War I and experienced what we would today call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and therefore wasn't required to serve, Mme Couillandeau’s father had a different experience.

Believing another war was inevitable, France built the Maginot Line, a series of concrete fortifications and weapons installations along their border with Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Italy during the 1930s to counteract an attack by the Germans. But the German Army made a surprise attack north of Saarbrücken in rugged forested terrain where no one expected, allowing them to break through French defenses, storming the country west and southward.

German Army Shows Japanese Officials Maginot Line
Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo

Mme Couillandeau’s father was one of the French troops stationed in a village along the Maginot Line. He shouldn’t have been there. For one thing, he was too old at age thirty-six and had two children with mouths to feed. Moreover, he was a baker, and bakers were protected from military service by a law dating back to 1798 during the French Revolution, which said that the authorities could “commandeer bakeries and …. keep the masses in bread.” But Mme Couillandeau’s father had not declared his status and suffered the consequences of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Boulangerie Spécialité Pan Gascon, Since the Reign of Louis XV in 1765
Donna’s Gallery, October 2023

Boulangerie Spécialité Pan Gascon, Baking Bread Since Louis XV in 1765
Donna’s Gallery, October 2023

As the story goes, the men in Mme Couillandeau’s father’s unit took turns watching for German soldiers from the top of a church. One day, her father and one of his buddies were on the lookout but unaware that their unit had pulled out. They were left behind to be caught by the Germans and made prisoners of war. Her father was returned to his family in 1943 at a time when they were liberating the older prisoners and sending the younger ones to work in the Compulsory Work Service (Service du travail obligatoire or STO) for the German government.

STO required the forced enlistment and deportation of French men to Germany to work for the German war effort. Created under the regulations of Vichy France—the puppet government under Marshal Philippe Pétain, Hitler’s Vichy President—between 600,000 and 650,000 men from June 1942 to July 1944 were sent to work camps to compensate for the loss of German manpower as more and more soldiers were needed at the Eastern Front. The German government promised that one French prisoner of war would be released for every three men sent to Germany under the compulsory system. 

In Paris, French men and women being chosen for work in GermanyDeparture of STO workers from the Paris-Nord station in 1943
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-J14405%2C_Paris%2C_Abreise_franz%C3%B6sischer_Kriegsarbeiter_nach_Deutschland.jpg

In the beginning, before STO became compulsory, Pierre Lave, Prime Minister of the Vichy government, sold the enactment of relève as a volunteer work program to help secure the release of French prisoners of war. One French prisoner of war would be released for every three volunteer workers from France. It’s probable the “suggestion” came from Fritz Sauckel in, also known as the “slavemaster of Europe,” who was appointed by the General Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment and charged  in March 1942 with finding labor in Europe. Eighty thousand prisoners of war were exchanged for 24,000 French workers during the Relève program.

But Sauckel’s demands became increasingly demanding, probably because Germany needed labor for their war machine. By April 23, 1943, Sauckel instituted the Compulsory Work Service, requisitioning 120,000 workers in May, 100,000 in June, and another 500,000 in August. However, the numbers were never achieved because the French began evading German compulsory demands by joining the French Resistance. At least 200,000 of them went into hiding.

Members of French Resistance March in Liberation Celebration in Libourne, France
Libourne City Archives

Mme Couillandeau’s father was one of the prisoners of war who was fortunate to come home because of the STO exchange program, though perhaps he could have evaded it altogether if he had declared his status as a baker from the start. Unfortunately, he did not, leaving two bakers at home, an eighteen-year-old young man who had just finished his training and a fifteen-year-old apprentice. Mme Couillandeau’s mother also delivered the bread using a cart she pushed around the community.

Upon Mme Couillandeau’s father’s return, he wanted to take back his old occupation and play cards with friends in a bar on the square in Libourne. But they told him they had made substantial money in the market, and he realized he had been a prisoner of war all the while they had made a lot of money. It was a bitter pill to swallow. He sold his shop and went to Bordeaux.

As I contemplated this real-life story, I was once more struck with the irony of how the war affected Mme Couillandeau's family every bit as much as Mme Delage's. In different ways, both men had become casualties of war, Mme Delage's father to experiencing PTSD during the First World War, and Mme Couillandeau's father to Adolf Hitler's war machine. In both cases, neither theirs nor their families' lives would ever be the same. It's something for all of us to ponder as we consider our contemporary world and those who would use war as a means to conquer and destroy other nations.

Donna worked as a communications professional before turning to full-time writing. Her short stories, essays, and articles have appeared in various inspirational publications. She also has two indie-published Christian contemporary suspense novels in her Waldensian Series, Light Out of Darkness and Undaunted Valor. She is working on a World War Two historical slip-time project.

Weaving history and faith into stories of intrigue and redemption grew out of her love of history and English literature as a young adult while attending the United World College of the Atlantic--an international college in Wales, U.K. She loves to

explore peoples and cultures of the world and enjoys developing plots that show how God's love abounds even in the profoundly difficult circumstances of our lives. Her stories reflect the hunger in all of us for love, forgiveness, and redemption in a world that often withholds second chances. You can find out more about Donna Wichelman or sign up for her newsletter at https://donnawichelman.com/