- há 4 semanas
A partir de 1940, 80 000 femmes ont quitté la France pour partir travailler dans les usines de l'Allemagne nazie, encouragées par Vichy. Ces femmes jeunes et citadines partent souvent plus par précarité sociale que par idéologie. Pourtant, à leur retour en France en 1945, ces travailleuses "volontaires" seront frappées d'opprobre pour collaboration. Ainsi, beaucoup se sont tues et leur histoire, considérée comme tabou, est tombée dans l'oubli. Cette enquête historique mêle le drame intime à des documents et archives jamais questionnés jusqu'ici.
Réalisé par : Barbara Necek
Réalisé par : Barbara Necek
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00:08Spring 1945, Nazi Germany has just signed the unconditional surrender; the war is
00:15The end of this bloody global conflict displaced millions of Europeans, far from other people.
00:26and women from their country, now is the time for the great return of prisoners of war
00:35Forced laborers and survivors of death camps leave Germany for France by
00:40by all possible means among these travelers there is a group of women whom no one expects at the
00:47dressed in civilian clothes and in good physical condition, they immediately stand out.
01:00In Paris, at the Gare d'Orsay, the writer Marguerite Duras observes them that day; she is waiting for the
01:07Return of her husband Robert Entelme, I see about ten women sitting on the ground.
01:14They are mostly female factory workers; their hands are blackened by the oil from the German machines.
01:21If they have that frightened look on their faces, it's because they've just been booed by the prisoners' wives.
01:26war that awaits
01:32These women were volunteer workers; in reality, there were 80,000 of them.
01:41Between 1940 and 1944, they voluntarily went to Nazi Germany to work at the heart of the war effort.
01:47enemy territory
01:50Upon their return, the anger of the French was unleashed upon her.
01:58There were resistance fighters who called us sluts.
02:03In a way I understand that, we were on the wrong side of the handle
02:14As volunteers, they would therefore necessarily have collaborated and betrayed the homeland as a form of
02:20In retaliation, some women even had their heads shaved.
02:26So, very soon after the war, these women tried to disappear into anonymity and
02:31to forget their past in order to rebuild their lives, trapped in silence and shame.
02:37Its existence remained unknown for decades; there was this grand national narrative of a France
02:45Resistance fighters accused of collaboration; civilian workers were excluded from this.
02:52heroic tale
02:57That's why they killed themselves.
03:00I kept my mouth shut for 50 years
03:06These were things that you have to have experienced.
03:12People can't understand that if they haven't lived it
03:18Few, like Chantal, have dared to step out of the shadows.
03:23It is also rare for children or grandchildren to have decided to confront taboos and...
03:27unspoken things that weighed on them; I would like to be able to spend more time with her and talk much more.
03:34What would you ask him again, to tell me why the parties in Germany
03:43who were these women
03:48Why did they choose to go and work in Germany?
03:52in Nazi Germany
03:53Should we call them collaborators or are they victims of their time?
04:02For 80 years France chose to ignore their existence
04:08Today, for the first time, a documentary tells the little-known story of these women.
04:13They went to work voluntarily in Nazi Germany: one of the best-kept secrets of French families.
04:45The story begins in 1940
04:51Defeated by Nazi Germany, France was humiliated and traumatized.
04:58Unemployment is at a historic peak; the Ministry of Labour reports over one million unemployed.
05:06For French women, it's a double whammy, especially since they've started to invest in the fields
05:11Reserved for men since the Great War, the new regime pushed them back into the home.
05:19this girls' training school
05:22200 young girls receive vocational and domestic education
05:26which allows them to prepare for their future roles as mothers and homemakers
05:36Vichy will bring about many legislative changes with an idea that the place of women
05:42It's within the family, and so we're going to have laws against it that make divorce more difficult.
05:48They punished abortion more severely and also introduced laws that discouraged women from working in 1940.
05:54measures intended to free up jobs for men; results at the end of 1940: France has more
06:02With 300,000 unemployed, this mass unemployment is a boon for Nazi Germany and its men
06:09She needs men at the front, but that doesn't mean German women should be put to work.
06:15In accordance with Nazi ideology, they must be spared to ensure the Aryan lineage.
06:23The Reich then decided to mobilize the populations of the occupied countries, a vast reservoir of labor.
06:31there was a German administration dedicated to the recruitment of foreign workers
06:36It was under the responsibility of the Minister of Labour, Fritz Aockel; he was in charge of recruitment.
06:43as many people as possible in the occupied countries in France; it is also in the interest of
06:50Marshal Pétain's plan to combat the scourge of unemployment involved putting French women to work in Germany.
06:56This, however, contradicts Vichy's family policy, but economic collaboration
07:04with the Reich is more important as in all other occupied countries the Nazis open
07:10So, in May 1942, there were 300 recruitment agencies in the occupied and free zones.
07:18They recruited both men and women; Vichy, of course, cooperated with the German authorities.
07:27Appeals were published in newspapers and posters were put up to encourage people to go to work.
07:33In Germany, initially, they tried to recruit volunteers; the propaganda machine
07:47A campaign began, featuring colorful posters that described working in Germany as a true paradise.
08:04the promises made to the workers, both men and women, of a good salary and comfortable housing
08:10food, medical care, and free time
08:16arguments that resonate with a large proportion of French women who are suffering from the situation
08:20In their country, divorced with her two daughters, Chantal's mother is one of them; she had
08:29a riding school I was eight days old when the war came the army requisitioned six
08:37For days it was his livelihood and then there was no more money, there was at the
08:46commandery of Nantes one
08:49a gentleman who gave cards to children who needed them, milk, coal, and he was
08:58He helped a lot of people, and my mother told him, "I don't know, I don't have any more..."
09:04work that this
09:05What I'm doing, she told me, he told her, but we're going to give you some advertisements then
09:13they were asking for
09:14women to work in Germany, and that's why my mother said, well yes, why not?
09:21The most important thing in the German offer is an employment contract that guarantees a return to France. How?
09:28resisting such tempting conditions when you no longer know how to earn a living
09:34especially since at the time the occupying forces presented themselves in the best possible light and played the role of peacemakers.
09:45French men and women are not uncommon in succumbing to this seduction tactic.
09:53My mother, she admired the mother, no, she didn't like the French at all, she criticized them.
10:01The French aren't disciplined, but the Germans are very disciplined; it went right over my head.
10:07that time, but she was still on their side.
10:19Full of hope, Chantal's mother decides to take her two daughters with her. Chantal has
10:25So, 16 years old and her sister Mathilde 14, my mother took care of them.
10:32She took care of everything, she was very happy, we just followed along, I thought to myself, maybe I'll be
10:38Not so bad in Germany, leaving for the unknown hoping to find something better is also the hope that
10:47to caress the seamstress Suzanne Bécaille, originally from Meudon in the Parisian suburbs, she is part
10:54of these volunteer workers whose fate was completely obscured after the war by its own
10:58Throughout her life, her daughter Marie Annick lived in a pervasive shame and unspoken truths.
11:08You know, we hear conversations between my grandfather and my grandmother, and I have
11:14I understand, ah, but she's not going to do anything stupid like her mother, you can tell there are some
11:18little tricks
11:18Something's wrong, we don't know what, we sense that people are speaking with innuendo, we don't know
11:25Why? But I sensed something wasn't normal. I was afraid to ask questions.
11:33The one who will break the taboo is Emmanuel, the son of Marie Annick and grandson of Suzanne.
11:39his grandmother whom he never knew, his quest begins in adolescence when his mother reveals to him that
11:46'she has
11:46She grew up with an adoptive father and doesn't know the identity of her real father when asking questions.
11:53Emmanuel discovers that one secret hides another about Suzanne, his grandmother. One day I talk with my
12:01My mother told me, "I have a very old memory of a game where I used to go to see my mother in the visiting room."
12:07the prison
12:08She braked, she allegedly stole jewelry with someone, got imprisoned, and then my rational mind...
12:14He said, "We're just after the war, a single mother imprisoned for stealing jewelry."
12:19Missed it, that seemed very harsh to me: an unknown grandfather and a grandmother in prison for doing the
12:28Shedding light on these fragments of information, Emmanuel discovers his grandmother's court file.
12:33At the national archives, she was not charged with jewelry theft, but with...
12:44Through his dealings with the enemy, as the pages turn, he uncovers the true story of Suzanne.
13:03These revelations will shake the entire family.
13:09How should we take this news? Was it really bad?
13:13Going to work in Germany was certainly not very patriotic.
13:20And when Emmanuel started stirring all that up, I was like, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what is this?"
13:25that he will
13:25I'm going to find out what he's going to tell so many people, and then I'll be ashamed.
13:32And
13:33And I don't want to hear about the story that the archives reveal.
13:39begins to curve the track at the beginning of the occupation. Suzanne works there as
13:44A 20-year-old warehouse worker at the lamp company falls in love with a
13:49A Wehrmacht officer named Carl Didrich, there was a box in my wardrobe
13:55grandparents with photos, and one day I pulled out a photo of a handsome officer
14:03German, and they told me to put it back in the box right away, and I said, "But who?"
14:06Is that it? And I was told, "Ah, that's a German one, that your mother could have..."
14:14to become infatuated
14:14Deep down, I was terrified of being the daughter of a German officer.
14:26to be the daughter of a Nazi, plain and simple
14:31A year after this meeting, Suzanne volunteered to go to Nazi Germany.
14:39Regarding her departure, she stated during her trial that she was unable to find work and could not
14:46not to remain a burden on my parents, enticed by the benefits that were given to workers
14:51Leaving for Germany, I decided to get hired.
14:58My grandfather was tough, he was a man of strong character, a very powerful character.
15:03It was very hard for him; he had fought throughout the war, fought the Germans, and lost his two brothers in the...
15:12World War I, knowing that his daughter had gone to Germany must not have been very easy for him, she just came from
15:19'be
15:20She turned 18 in May 1941 at the age of 21 and decided to leave for Germany in September.
15:26has
15:26No one's permission is needed for this departure, so is she leaving for
15:32to find that German non-commissioned officer she had fallen in love with some time before because she
15:37Whether it's for purely material reasons or simply to gain his freedom, I don't know.
15:42but in any case, she decided to leave between 1940 and 1942, with up to a third of the volunteers leaving
15:52For Germany, these are women; the French government facilitates their departures by issuing...
15:57Passports in the unoccupied zone; recruitment is encouraged by the presence of collaborationist movements
16:06When you look at the profile, you can see that these are really working-class women who
16:10decide to go and work in Nazi Germany for economic and family reasons, it can
16:18to be women who want to distance themselves from their families, and so here we are talking about minors, for example
16:22who tries to escape family situation or parental authority, women who want to
16:27Separating couples who want a divorce is an opportunity for the husband to leave; normally, he decides on the residence.
16:35And then the husband has his say in the work, in the job his wife holds, and
16:39that's not
16:40everything asked
17:02At that time everyone knew that there were people who went to work in Germany, it was
17:07of the
17:07decisions that are controversial, but we can also assume that they appear to be a possible option.
17:15The regime leaves no time for reflection; the workers are sent only to Germany.
17:20A few days after registering at the recruitment office, the women will be 80,000 strong.
17:25For the Reich, the men received approximately three times more, plus a bonus of 1000 francs paid upon departure.
17:32It allows families to receive money or to pay off debts, enough to silence any hesitation.
17:41This situation was not intended to last; it was projected to last a maximum of two to four years.
17:50These women tell themselves, "I'll go to work first, and when the war is over, I'll have to..."
17:56I earned a little less money and life will continue as before.
18:03Those who leave for ideological reasons are a very small minority
18:09Aged on average 26, most of the workers have never left France.
18:15Going to Germany is also, quite simply, an adventure.
18:22The French fascist Lucien Rebattait expressed his contempt after the war; they would have been very surprised.
18:28if they had learned that their communist friends were calling them collaborators
18:32For the Nazis, that was a thought already too sophisticated for their poor brains.
18:41There weren't many choices everywhere in occupied Europe; people were working at
18:45the German war economy service and in France as well the only difference was
18:50The geographical distance was different, but the end goal was the same: everyone was at the service of others.
18:54of the Nazi war industry
19:26In Nazi Germany, foreign workers, both men and women, were eagerly awaited.
19:33In the Reich, there is a shortage of manpower in all sectors: the arms industry, agriculture.
19:38mines, but also restaurants and homes – a total of 13 million foreigners of foreign origin
19:46occupied countries will be exploited for the benefit of the German economy as conquests progress.
19:52The Polish, Belgian, Dutch, Italian, Bulgarian, and Croatian Wehrmacht joined the immense
19:58A reservoir of Reich workers for the Nazi regime, they were first and foremost good labor.
20:04walk
20:08These workers were initially received in transit camps which
20:14had been put in place all over Germany
20:19There were separate camps for workers in the west and in the east for men and women.
20:24women, as well as adolescents and children
20:31and German employers could select workers for their factories there
20:49In major German cities, this reserve of labor is housed primarily in
20:54barracks
20:56In Berlin alone, the capital, the regime has installed more than 3000
21:04surrounded by fences, some are monitored by guards who check identity documents.
21:09The entrances to schools, gymnasiums, and other public places are also being transformed into dormitories.
21:18We are far from the conditions promised in the propaganda brochures.
21:26Chantal finds herself in Stuttgart with her mother and sister
21:32we didn't know what was going to happen
21:35We arrived at the Stuttgart train station platform.
21:38There were lots of gentlemen there; they were directors of
21:43from the factory who came to choose, I wouldn't say cattle
21:48But finally, there were those who were with their families, and they were separated.
21:56They took us both in, so we went to the Rossler factory.
22:04I, I, I arrived on another planet, I was on another planet
22:10Everything surprised me, everything surprised me
22:15Suzanne, for her part, also arrives in the suburbs of Stuttgart.
22:19She is chosen to work at Salamander.
22:21a shoe manufacturer in Cornwall
22:45I'm not judging her at all
22:47It would surely have been better to be a resistance fighter than to work in a factory in Germany.
22:52but I don't think that means there isn't something binary between
22:57good and evil
22:58It's really curiosity on the one hand, and then the desire to solve a puzzle that drives me.
23:04wears me
23:05When Emmanuelle told me that she was leaving for work, it made me...
23:12a shock
23:14And I wasn't proud at all to know that she had gone to work in Germany.
23:17It was, and I was afraid to find out what would happen next because I was a little scared too.
23:24to know
23:24if there was a collaborator
23:40For these women, arriving at their new workplace is the moment of their first disappointments.
23:47When it's in a house, it's a wooden shack with a stove in the middle, and then I
23:54YOU
23:54I said it was great, two bunk beds, and then when we went to bed the first night we were
24:02eaten alive by bedbugs, yes, but where did they come from? I wasn't expecting all this when she...
24:11had that but
24:11My mother was, ah ah, it's a bit slow, she was just starting to open her eyes
24:22Every morning, foreign workers leave the barracks camps.
24:28to get to their workplace on foot, by bus or tram
24:36In German cities they are part of the urban landscape
24:42The Berlin journalist Ursula von Kardorf would later write in her memoirs that Germany would not have
24:48It has never been as cosmopolitan as it was during the era of National Socialism.
24:53The foreign workers were not hidden; they moved about the city under the watchful eyes of the
24:58The German population, even here at the Schoeneweide barracks camp, can be seen that
25:07The neighbors could see the camp from their windows; that was normal.
25:16In their workplace, the language problem is solved with the help of German-speaking female employees.
25:20Often of Alsatian origin, she was in charge of the French women's barracks; she spoke a little
25:27She spoke little German, so when there was an order, she was the one who explained it to us.
25:32it was necessary to
25:34We were in a factory that made radios; they gave me a small screwdriver and even explained it to me.
25:41the threads that had to be put together afterwards, it became a war factory, that is to say that
25:50Instead of making radios, we were making ammunition boxes, and I had to fix the
25:58I had an electric gun for the lid on the crate and I had to put the bolt in and then
26:08Chantal is paid 20 Reichsmarks for 48 hours of work per week, an amount which
26:14is above the average wage of a female worker in France in the workshops and factories of the Reich
26:24Suzanne and Chantal associate with many women from eastern Poland, Russia, or Ukraine.
26:30Unlike women in Western Europe, the majority of them were torn from
26:34strength to their towns and villages to serve Germany, we had the barrel of the French
26:41Next to it was the Polish barrel, then the Russian barrel, and then the
26:48Barrels of Ukrainian wine because it didn't mix well, we took them away by the truckload.
26:57They were not volunteers at all, not at all. They had a blue square with writing on it.
27:06ost or s t s it had to be flashy and when they didn't wear the ost she
27:15could go
27:16In prison, French women had the right to go to the cinema, to go to the theatre; they had all the
27:26rights, but the other names weren't accepted; they had to be back by 10 o'clock otherwise
27:33There were reprisals against those considered subhuman in Nazi ideology; the Slavs were
27:41subjected to treatment very different from that of French women, the hierarchical system of its workers
27:47foreigners based on their racial theories to help companies optimize their performance
27:53Some pseudo-scientists define characteristics, thus French women are
27:59They are described as skillful but considered more intelligent than others, lacking in perseverance.
28:05that women from the East escape the most grueling jobs, the European women from the East
28:16Polish and Soviet women were employed in dangerous and very
28:21arduous, whereas the French women, for example, were at Siemens in Berlin where the work was not as
28:31It is harder than elsewhere in the reports of surviving Polish workers one reads that they had been
28:45forced to handle harmful substances such as acids for battery production
28:54and this caused them very long-term health problems
29:01At first glance, the Nazi regime took care of these French workers, the service of
29:07foreign languages publishes weekly magazines in French for their benefit containing
29:11political and practical information, and Vichy sends its best artists for
29:18to encourage compatriots in the Reich
29:20For the benefit of our fellow citizens, a French musical theatre troupe is currently touring.
29:26Germany
29:34Every weekend, excursions are organized in Berlin and its surroundings.
29:43They can go out for a walk in town, go to a restaurant, the cinema, the theatre, places
29:50forbidden to female launderers
29:53On weekends, women meet up in cafes or dance halls
29:58there they mingle with fellow French workers
30:04Friendships are formed and love stories blossom, notably between Suzanne and a certain
30:11André, the young worker at the Salamander factory, the young woman later declared before the court
30:17We went out together on several occasions, especially on Sundays when we went to the dance.
30:23The young man was very much in love with me; I think she should demonstrate a certain degree of freedom.
30:29It's exhilarating, she's 21 years old and she does what she wants, she earns money, she can...
30:34spend
30:34She can sleep with a boy if she wants to.
30:41Yvonne Piboulot had her prisoner
30:44What was his name? Henri, the prisoner, he was her lover, my sister, from the very beginning.
30:53Nicholas the Russian was very handsome and had a beautiful voice; he sang and he was the leader.
31:02of the
31:03of the Russian brand, and he had his own special corner, his own little private room
31:10and my sister was in love with Nicolas
31:41A tire and you're as nice as can be
31:48They all wanted to teach me to dance, all of them, so René said no, so he grabbed a chair and
31:57Then he pretended to dance, then he hit someone with a chair, everyone was amazed to see that, everyone
32:04The world was laughing.
32:04And that little shit in the morning, he was really in love, that's it, and it happened by the Nicar, c
32:16'It was very, very romantic.
32:24Would you say that there was a form of freedom for women?
32:29But total, total, and that's why they took advantage of it.
32:33It's as if the rules of the game have changed.
32:35So indeed, there are many things that could be burdensome in France that are no longer there.
32:40For example, the way those around him look at him, the way his family looks at him, even, you could say, the control
32:45Masculine control is quite weakened, the control of fathers, the control of husbands, even the control of lovers.
32:53But this freedom for women still has its limits.
32:59While the regime might turn a blind eye to fleeting romances the next day, the Nazis had no intention of
33:03to see families of foreign origin settling in their territory.
33:09Female workers who become pregnant are sent back to their country.
33:14For the Nazis, they remained first and foremost laborers for the war industry before being women.
33:22In factories, their productivity is closely monitored.
33:27Available to employers, they can be requisitioned for up to 60 hours per week, sometimes at night and even on certain days.
33:34Sundays.
33:37The German foremen count the number of parts produced per day, the time spent in the toilet, the contact with
33:43colleagues.
33:46Some violations of work regulations can even be considered acts of sabotage.
33:58When they stepped out of line, there was a whole series of sanctions, fines, but also sentences of
34:04prison.
34:09Gestapo report
34:12French worker Marcelle Doley left her job at the Osram factory on January 24, 1943 without authorization.
34:20The Hamburg Gestapo arrested the aforementioned Doley on a train.
34:25She was transferred to Berlin and imprisoned on March 19, 1943 for breach of employment contract.
34:35Some were also reported to the Gestapo.
34:38If they were suspected of sabotage because they were working too slowly,
34:43They risked being interned in labor re-education camps.
34:51In these camps, prisoners were treated as in concentration camps.
34:56They had to do very hard work.
34:59They were beaten and mistreated.
35:04Helene Freudenberg, a German communist, recounts having seen two French women being mistreated in a re-education camp in Berlin.
35:12I saw with my own eyes how a German guard made two French women from Les Invalides.
35:18She grabbed one of them by the hair and smashed her forehead against a door.
35:24The woman collapsed with a loud cry.
35:28The next day, she was blind.
35:31The same guard struck the other French woman's right hand with a baton with all her might.
35:38I saw her again a few days later.
35:40His hand was completely mutilated.
35:44After 50 days, they were sent back to their companies.
35:51Their example was intended to deter other workers from stepping out of line.
35:59In some cases, women may even be deported to concentration camps.
36:05Nearly 200 French civilian workers suffered this fate.
36:28In 1942, Nazi Germany needed more and more manpower to face a war that
36:33hard.
36:35Fritz Sauckel, the head of foreign labor,
36:38Hitler tasked him with recruiting an additional 250,000 men in France.
36:45With the collaborationist Pierre Laval,
36:48Sauckel is negotiating the succession.
36:50a system that exchanges French prisoners of war for workers.
36:54I come in the name of France and its leader, the Marshal.
36:59The terms of the contract are to Germany's advantage.
37:02It takes three skilled workers to free a prisoner.
37:06Despite a vast propaganda campaign, the results are meager.
37:10Only 50,000 workers answered the call.
37:12While there are 1.5 million prisoners of war in Germany.
37:17Sauckel then organized the forced recruitment of the French.
37:21later called the STO, the compulsory work service.
37:33French women are not forced into the STO (Service du Travail Obligatoire).
37:36But to encourage them to leave,
37:38The wives of prisoners of war are offered the opportunity to join their husbands.
37:41provided that a contract is signed with a German company.
37:511942 was also a turning point for foreign female workers in the Reich.
38:11Living in Nazi Germany was becoming increasingly dangerous.
38:16A female worker writes in a letter.
38:19There are alerts in Berlin, with serious bombings.
38:23A large fire broke out 500 meters from our camp.
38:27There is a lot of damage.
38:29War is a very sad thing.
38:31When will it end? Nobody knows.
38:33We could see the bombings coming.
38:36It was clear that there was almost nothing in the shops.
38:41We had no clothes.
38:44It was incredibly difficult to get clothes.
38:47We were given three-quarters of the time, it was for the Germans.
38:53You had to stay on the black market and it was expensive.
39:00Conditions have deteriorated for everyone.
39:04And even the volunteers who had employment contracts guaranteeing them certain rights
39:08they were no longer allowed to return home.
39:13This was considered a breach of contract and therefore punishable.
39:20From that point on, we can consider that civilian workers
39:24They too had become forced laborers.
39:32Deprived of the possibility of returning to France,
39:35French female workers are prisoners of their factory.
39:41It's shameful what people say in France about working in Germany.
39:44French worker José Herr writes from the city of Bonn to her friend Gabi.
39:52I get up at 5am to go to work.
39:55We finish at 5pm.
39:57I am very tired.
40:00They don't want to let us go back to where it's like prison.
40:04Here, you have to obey to the letter.
40:07Tell everyone what happens when you come to work in Germany.
40:10It's a disgrace.
40:13To escape this oppressive control and improve their daily lives,
40:17Some resort to petty trafficking, theft and prostitution.
40:23One pass is equivalent to a week's wages in a factory.
40:28Prostitution allows her to earn a lot of money compared to what she earns in the factory.
40:33And so, it seems to me that this will also allow us to pay all the fines.
40:38that one can have for absences, etc.
40:39and therefore to regain some control over his life.
40:49Having gone to Germany to stand alongside the French workers,
40:52Father Henri Perrin observes.
40:56They believed they would find freedom, money, and pleasure here.
41:01They found loneliness, overcrowding, camps, and poverty wages.
41:07Who would dare cast the first stone at them?
41:11By 1943, Nazi Germany no longer held any allure.
41:16Especially since the noose is tightening around foreign workers.
41:21The labor supply is so low
41:24that the regime even forbids pregnant women from returning to France.
41:29For those who give birth, nurseries are set up.
41:33In order to reduce the unproductive time experienced by these women,
41:36They are separated from their children.
41:46The volunteers' lives turned into a nightmare.
41:53Of the 80,000 women workers who came to Germany, approximately 2,000 lost their lives there.
42:03Suzanne also became pregnant around this time.
42:07But she's lucky.
42:08She is one of the few women who manage to get back.
42:12In France, another nightmare begins for her.
42:16That of rejection and shame.
42:19It must have been hard, because even so, when she came back,
42:22My grandfather kicked her out.
42:24She came back pregnant.
42:28So he kicked her out.
42:31On May 24, 1944,
42:33Suzanne gives birth to her daughter, Marie-Anique,
42:36at the Port-Royal maternity hospital,
42:38in the 14th arrondissement of Paris.
42:42Suzanne is hiding the father's identity.
42:45She is keeping her child.
42:47She could have abandoned it, but she decided to keep it.
42:50And I don't really know what Suzanne is doing.
42:52That's one of the gray areas of history.
42:54She certainly works in Paris.
42:56She would at least live part of the time on rue Mouffetard.
43:00And she works, she survives, she manages.
43:04Three months later, Paris was liberated.
43:08The same year, in Stuttgart,
43:09Chantal's factory is destroyed by Allied bombs.
43:13With the other women,
43:15She is being transferred to continue working.
43:17But in reality, Nazi Germany was already on its last legs.
43:20Supply routes are blocked
43:22and raw materials are lacking.
43:25The regime no longer has the means
43:27to retain its foreign workers.
43:30We were in that factory
43:32which has never worked,
43:35which never worked.
43:37We were there,
43:38So they gave us tickets.
43:41the restaurant.
43:42After that, we got rid of the tickets.
43:44They weren't giving us anything anymore.
43:46We were there like pre-sentences,
43:48We didn't know what to do.
43:50And then,
43:52Me,
43:53there was a little friend
43:55who told me,
43:56If you want,
43:57I'll take you.
44:00He caught a German
44:02who was on a bicycle.
44:04He punched him
44:06And he took the bicycle.
44:07I was on the frame
44:09and then he pedaled
44:11up to the Ordigène
44:13and then,
44:13He took a train.
44:17But it took a long time
44:18because they had bombed each other
44:19all the time.
44:20It never stops.
44:23There are many of them
44:24to leave Germany
44:25by their own means,
44:26even before the repatriation
44:27so that it is organized
44:28by the authorities.
44:31Early 1945,
44:33they number over one and a half million
44:34to return to France.
44:37On trains,
44:38women mingle
44:39to men,
44:40deportees,
44:41prisoners of war,
44:42civilian workers
44:43and STO.
44:47One of them,
44:48Paul,
44:48remembers.
44:51At each stage,
44:52supplies were being provided
44:53at the door
44:54when we have been to France.
44:57But then,
44:58women,
44:58they were treated
44:59in a horrifying way.
45:02Since they didn't have
45:03the striped outfit,
45:04we knew that it was
45:05volunteers
45:05for work in Germany.
45:07At each stop,
45:09They were overwhelmed.
45:09insults by volunteers
45:10who were taking care
45:11repatriated people.
45:12It was sad.
45:17I was afraid
45:18of the passage.
45:23What's going to happen to me?
45:26What's going to happen to me?
45:27It haunted me.
45:29What are you afraid of?
45:31From what we were going to be told,
45:33from what the resistance fighters
45:36they were going to tell us.
45:37What are you
45:38They came to fuck in Germany?
45:44At the border,
45:45Chantal's worst fears
45:47are confirmed.
45:48She is met at the train station
45:50by repatriation officers
45:52responsible for verifying identities.
45:55They were judging us.
45:57I don't know who those people were.
46:00They were anti-German.
46:03They were patriots.
46:04According to them,
46:05they were all white
46:06like colonists.
46:10There is a whole administration
46:11who is handling the repatriation
46:12of all people
46:13who were in Germany,
46:14the deportees,
46:14the prisoners,
46:15the workers.
46:16They are taken
46:17in that organization
46:20and they will often be
46:21questioned at the border.
46:23The state is trying to sort things out,
46:25to know what the trajectory is,
46:27what is the route
46:27of each and every one.
46:29At that moment,
46:30if they are suspected,
46:31They can be questioned
46:32a little bit more.
46:40They were asking me questions.
46:41Where were you?
46:43What was wrong with you?
46:44Aggressive, aggressive.
46:46Eventually.
46:49I was completely uncivilized.
46:51Yes, but they wanted it.
46:53They held a grudge against those women.
46:54They wanted it.
46:55Terribly.
46:57In a way,
46:58I understand that.
47:02I put myself in the shoes of a resistance fighter.
47:05I can see a girl succeeding.
47:08But I felt guilty,
47:10obviously.
47:12But not only in the lab.
47:14No not at all.
47:15No way.
47:16No way.
47:16Oh dear, not at all.
47:18Not just love at all.
47:27We see scenes,
47:28when they return,
47:29which are scenes of hostility.
47:32They can be targeted.
47:34Sometimes, some are even shaved.
47:36humiliated.
47:39The social worker told us
47:42"You are now going to take a shower"
47:45and you're going to get
47:49Disinfect your clothes.
47:51How do we all go together?
47:54And ten minutes later,
47:56We see a girl arriving with a weight.
47:59She had her...
47:59her...
48:00her terry towel around her waist.
48:04She said, "Quickly, quickly,
48:05There are soldiers in...
48:08There are soldiers in the showers.
48:11And they had unleashed soldiers.
48:14And they wanted to change.
48:21A look at collaboration
48:23when she is feminine,
48:24he is not the same
48:25than when it comes to men.
48:29And what they were accused of,
48:31it was both
48:31national disloyalty,
48:34but also disloyalty
48:35in relation to their role as wives,
48:38of a woman,
48:40as it is considered
48:41as respectable at the time.
48:46For my sister,
48:47It was terrible.
48:50She had a boyfriend
48:51who was STO,
48:54André.
48:56And he said
48:57that he could not present
48:59to his family
49:00a person
49:02who had come
49:03to work voluntarily
49:04in Germany.
49:05His family wouldn't have understood.
49:08So he left her.
49:11And in the evening,
49:12my sister
49:13she cried, she cried,
49:14cried
49:14that it was abandoned.
49:19In the eyes of society
49:20post-war
49:21who strives
49:21to write the national narrative
49:23of a resistant France,
49:25volunteer workers
49:26stand out
49:27and must make themselves forgotten.
49:29I didn't talk about it
49:30to no one
49:31person,
49:32in general,
49:35We said nothing.
49:36I stayed for 50 years
49:37with mouth closed.
49:41Chantal moves in
49:42in Brittany
49:43where she starts again
49:44a new life.
49:45In 1995,
49:47she breaks her silence
49:48and recounts his experience
49:50German
49:50in a book.
49:54Suzanne is caught
49:56by his past
49:56in November 1945
49:58when the police
49:59comes to arrest him.
50:00She is accused
50:01by an old
50:02French colleague
50:03for having denounced
50:04André Lejeune,
50:05her former lover
50:06from Stuttgart
50:07to the Gestapo.
50:09The young man
50:09had helped
50:10prisoners of war
50:11Avoid at all costs.
50:12This denunciation
50:13would have earned him
50:13to be shot
50:14in 1943.
50:17Accused of intelligence
50:18with the enemy,
50:18of complicity
50:20of sequestration
50:20and voluntary homicide,
50:22Suzanne is incarcerated
50:23at Freyne prison.
50:24Her 18-month-old daughter,
50:26Marie-Anique,
50:27is guarded
50:28by his grandparents.
50:32During his trial,
50:34various witnesses
50:35are being interviewed.
50:37Among them,
50:38a certain Jean Leroy,
50:39former prisoner of war,
50:40makes a revelation
50:41surprising.
50:43During the judicial investigation,
50:45he declared
50:46that in January 1942,
50:48the young woman
50:49helped her escape.
50:51She provided him
50:52civilian clothing
50:53and accompanied her
50:54at the train station.
51:01Before the train departs,
51:04Miss Bécaille
51:04gave me his small wallet
51:06which contained
51:07a fairly large sum
51:08of money.
51:10Thanks to her,
51:1127 days after my escape,
51:13I was in France
51:14near my wife.
51:16You have to have lived
51:18similar story
51:18to understand
51:19recognition
51:20that I wear
51:21to Miss Bécaille.
51:24I'm clarifying
51:25that she risked
51:25significant risks.
51:30There, I had
51:32what a relief!
51:34extraordinary
51:34saying to me
51:35that it was not
51:37a bad woman
51:38He was someone who...
51:39We don't want to
51:40of being the child
51:41of a bad woman,
51:42That's for sure.
51:44The court case
51:45by Suzanne
51:45It also reveals something else.
51:48the father's identity
51:49by Marie-Annick.
51:51He was not a German
51:53like the whole family
51:53he dreaded it,
51:54but a Frenchman
51:55of Corsican origin,
51:57the grandfather
51:58that Emmanuel was looking for.
52:01Paradoxically,
52:01that's a chance
52:02that there was a trial
52:03and a whole story
52:04because thanks to that,
52:05It has been preserved.
52:06There are archives,
52:07there are documents
52:08and we were able to trace
52:09practically his entire history
52:11with areas of uncertainty
52:12and we were able to find
52:14the grandfather's identity
52:15which was not at all
52:17this German,
52:18but who was
52:19a French prisoner,
52:20even a Corsican prisoner.
52:22During the trial,
52:24Suzanne's accusers
52:25retract
52:26or disappear.
52:27In the absence of evidence,
52:29no charge
52:29no evidence will be used against her.
52:31The seamstress is acquitted.
52:33She will have passed
52:34more than two years
52:35of his life in prison,
52:36in terrible conditions.
52:38As for André Lejeune,
52:39it turns out years later
52:41that he was deported
52:42at Auschwitz,
52:43where he died in 1944.
52:46The circumstances
52:47of his arrest
52:48remain unknown.
52:52Suzanne is 27 years old
52:54when she leaves prison.
52:55She gets her daughter back
52:56and gets married.
52:58His life can finally begin.
53:08But Marie-Annick
53:09will only benefit a little
53:10from his mother's time.
53:12Suzanne dies
53:13when his daughter is 14 years old.
53:19In the light
53:20of everything we have discovered,
53:21of everything you have learned,
53:23You relive those memories,
53:24these photos
53:25differently.
53:27Do you have
53:27another perspective
53:28on your mother
53:29and about its history
53:30Or not?
53:31Yes, definitely.
53:32Certainly,
53:33I can't
53:34really analyze it
53:35right now.
53:36Yes, indeed.
53:38I'm watching,
53:39it certainly
53:40from a different perspective.
53:42I don't know
53:43what I would have done
53:44in its place.
53:45It was war.
53:47Perhaps all of a sudden,
53:49if I were to go through a war,
53:50maybe I would become
53:51collaborator.
53:52Maybe I would save
53:54Jews
53:54who will be taken
53:56to kill them.
53:57Perhaps I would risk it
53:58my life
53:58to put up resistance.
54:00Perhaps I would be passive
54:01as have been
54:02a lot,
54:02a lot,
54:02many people.
54:04We don't know anything about it.
54:05I am no longer ashamed
54:07whereas I had some.
54:11I don't have any left.
54:12On the contrary,
54:13I would like to be able to
54:13spend more time
54:14with her
54:15and discuss much more.
54:18Talking about all of this
54:19with her.
54:22Nor heroic resistance fighters,
54:24nor convinced collaborators,
54:27volunteer workers
54:28tried
54:29to find their way
54:29in a turbulent period.
54:32Beyond choice
54:33to go and work in Germany,
54:35there is the singularity
54:37of destiny
54:37of each of them.
54:40Women's stories
54:41of a particular era
54:43on which one must guard
54:45to make a final judgment.
54:49of each of them.
55:17Women's stories
55:17of each of them.
55:17Women's stories
55:17of each of them.
55:22Women's stories
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