Following our recent articles on la Retirada, a P-O Life reader very kindly contacted us with photos and memories of a hike that they undertook back in 2017.
You would think that the shameful, over crowded camps on the P-O beaches would be unlikely places for art to flourish….READ ON
1939 was a difficult year for France. Not only did it experience the indignity of an invasion on its North East border from Hitler’s hordes late in the year, the country suffered a very different incursion in its far South-West in the early months of the year.
Take a walk in Argelès in the footsteps of the Retirada on the ’circuit de la Mémoire’. to mark the 85th anniversary of the opening of the camp on the beach.
The former ‘Maison Mazard’ in Le Soler, now destroyed, was a safe house for Dutch refugees, Jews and resistance members fleeing the nazis in the 1930s.
There were many unsung heros and heroines during WW2, such as Mary Elmes, Irish aid worker believed to have saved the lives of at least 200 Jewish children at various times during the Holocaust, by hiding them in the boot of her car.
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.