Tue, Jun 01, 2004 page16

• France still cannot face up to it 'cursed' kids

  • REUTERS
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  As a boy Daniel Rouxel slept locked in a chicken coop because his grandmother was so ashamed of his origins -- the love affair of her French daughter with a German army officer in occupied France during World War II.

  Like Rouxel, tens of thousands of these half-German children in post-war France were bullied and humiliated by their families, neighbors and teachers. Their mothers faced public abuse as punishment for sleeping with the enemy.

  As France gears up to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the June 6 D-Day landings that freed it from the Nazis, a book Enfants maudits (Cursed Children) confronts it with an unsavory chapter of its history.

  "These children became the personification of the German enemy when the war was over. It was revenge on the innocent," said Jean-Paul Picaper, who has compiled the memories of some of France's estimated 200,000 half-German war children.

  Rouxel, a so-called "fils de Boche" -- a "Kraut's kid" -- recalls how shortly after France's liberation, he spent a night hiding under a bridge after a local official humiliated him in front of his entire Brittany village.

  boche and swallows

  The man made Rouxel stand up after Sunday mass and declared: "Do you people know the difference between the son of a Boche and a swallow? I'll tell you: The swallow takes its babies with it when it leaves France. But the Boche leaves them behind."

  Rouxel's mother fled after the war to avoid the ordeal of thousands of French women, who were shaven and then paraded through French streets for their "horizontal collaboration."

  The mother of war child Gerard Perioux also escaped punishment, but ashamed of her romance with a German navy officer, she turned violent against her "bastard son."

  "My mother had been in love with someone considered the enemy," the 62-year-old said. "After the war, that was seen as a grave mistake, a sin. And she projected it onto me."

  His mother beat him almost daily. He slept in a cramped storage room and his mother and stepfather forced him to eat the fleas that infested his body.

  As a boy, he could not understand his mother's outbursts. Until she died, she never told him who his real father was. "It is none of your business," she would only bark at him.

  Picaper said that the treatment of France's war children had been taboo in his country for decades.

  "The French have a habit of only celebrating the glorious moments of history. Napoleon is portrayed as a benefactor, the revolution only brought human rights -- not one drop of blood," he said. "Everyone knows there is more to it than just that."

  Historian Peter Schoettler says the post-war politics of General Charles de Gaulle were based on the myth that all French had fought in the anti-Nazi resistance and on blanking out the existence of the collaborationist Vichy government, established after France surrendered to the Germans in 1940.

  "It was the dirty little secret the French kept so they could come to grips with the wound that Vichy had caused," said Schoettler.

  While France and Germany went on to become joint founders of what is now the European Union and sealed their reconciliation with the 1963 Elysee Treaty, France has only recently started to acknowledge the full reality of the Vichy era.

  President Jacques Chirac in 1995 recognized Vichy's role in the Holocaust and became the first French head of state to formally apologize to the Jewish people.

  collaborators

  In 1997, French Nazi collaborator Maurice Papon went on trial for sending Jews to death camps under the Vichy government.

  Ten years ago Picaper was unable to find a publisher for his book. In the last few weeks, has sold over 20,000 copies. Many war children still longed for respect, he said.

  "Some want dual nationality. Their father didn't recognize them so at least they want to be recognized by his nation."

  The Nazis allowed German soldiers to marry women from Norway or the Netherlands deemed Aryan, but they banned liaisons with the French, considered an inferior race, Picaper said.

  Few French children ever met their father. Many were sent to the eastern front, others died fighting when the Allies landed.

  Perioux was over 50 and had joined the French navy when his children urged him to search for his father. Learning from a family friend that he was the son of a German soldier came as a shock to the taxi driver, who does not speak a word of German.

  With the help of archives, he tracked down his father Fritz -- only to suffer the next disappointment. The man had died years ago and his German children -- Perioux' siblings -- did not want to recognize their French brother.

  "It is a very delicate issue. My father's German wife is still alive," Perioux said. He smiled sadly at a black-and-white photograph showing a young soldier grinning into the camera, the only evidence he has of his father -- the German enemy.

  "The resemblance to my 38-year-old son is so overwhelming," he said." When I hug my son, I feel like I am holding my dad in my arms."
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