Elisabeth Eidenbenz was the remarkable Swiss woman who created La Maternité Suisse in Elne as a refuge for expectant mothers exiled from Spain during La Retirada and World War II.
In 1943, when the Gestapo came to Prades , Jean-Michel’s father was fighting with the Resistance and frequently absent.
The maquis was one of various forms of Resistance in France’s fight against the German Occupation and the Vichy regime during the Second World War.
During World War II the majority of RAF Evaders made their escape or passed through France on their way from Germany and Occupied countries, heading for the coasts in an attempt to return to England.
Love and War in the Pyrenees by Rosemary Bailey is available in paperback, the cover glowing with the colourful stripes so familiar to lovers of the Catalan fabric of St Laurent de Cerdans.
Lest we forget, Ellen Turner Halls takes us on a visit of the exhibition at Rivesaltes’ Camp Joffre
French writer and poet describes the massacre as unspeakable, its wounds so deep that we dare not mention them, in this desolate poem, ‘Oradour’.
Thanks to this exhibition, the nomads’ story is finally being told.
We will be judged as a society on how well we treat them.
The war is nearing it’s end. The Germans occupying France are on edge and expecting the Allied Invasion at any time.
Robert Hébras Lanois, the last survivor of the horrendous massacre of the village of Oradour, has died at the age of 97. (February 2023).