Abstract
On the morning of 13 April 1955, Jean-Jacques Remetter stepped onto the station platform in Kehl, the German town directly across the Rhine from his native Strasbourg. He had travelled from Berlin wearing Russian clothing and carrying only a small wooden suitcase. He was worn and thin, and appeared far older than his 32 years. From the train station, Remetter crossed the Rhine bridge by foot into France, and made his way through the city, back to the family he had not seen since January 1943, when he had been drafted into the Wehrmacht. Remetter was one of the approximately 130,000 Frenchmen living in Nazi-annexed Alsace and Moselle who, after 1942, had been forced to serve in the German armed forces. After the war, these men became known as the Malgrd-nous (‘in spite of ourselves’).
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Notes
In French, the men are referred to as either incorporés de force or enrôlés de force, while the German term is Zwangsrekrutierte or Zwangssoldaten. In Luxemburg, forced conscripts are known as Ons Jongen (‘our boys’). Cf. Peter M. Quadflieg, ‘Zwangssoldaten’ und ‘Ons Jongen’: Eupen-Malmedy und Luxemburg als Rekrutierungsgebiet der deutschen Wehrmacht im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 2008).
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They resemble in particular the works of Henri Gayot and Violette Rougier-Lecoq. See Henri Gayot, Le Struthof- Natzwiller (Paris: Fédération des Déportés, Internés résistants patriotes, 1945)
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Vlossak, E. (2015). Traitors, Heroes, Martyrs, Victims? Veterans of Nazi ‘Forced Conscription’ from Alsace and Moselle. In: Rüger, J., Wachsmann, N. (eds) Rewriting German History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137347794_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137347794_6
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