Those who lived through the Second World War are old today, there is not much time left to collect their words, and keep the memory alive. A 24-year-old young woman from Moselle, Chrystalle Zebdi-Bartz, doctoral student in Germanic studies at the University of Lorraine, is calling for witnesses, to feed the thesis she is preparing on prisoners of war in Moselle and Sarre between 1940 and 1945.
Hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war
On these dates, the Moselle became German again, and under the Nazi yoke, hundreds of prison camps were spread all over Moselle and Saarland: at Fort Queuleu in Metz, at the Guise barracks in Forbach, at Ban St Jean near Boulay… The latter being the worst of all: 300,000 prisoners, mainly Soviet, passed through there, 20,000 died there, many of them Ukrainians.
These men had been deported from the East to the Moselle to work there : “At the time, we needed manpower: there were a lot of iron and coal mines on the territory, factories, farms. And for the Nazis, these prisoners are Slavs, therefore sub-humans, to be worked at will. The whole Nazi economic and social system rests on it“, explains Chrystalle Zebdi-Bartz.
Gold many Mosellens were able to see, rub shoulders with these prisoners. These are the witnesses that Chrystalle Zebdi-Bartz is looking for today. “They were the last people to see these victims alive. They are therefore the ones who can transmit the memory of their massacre.“
A poorly documented period
The researcher is therefore appealing, in Moselle and Saarland, to people “who were children or teenagers during the war, or to their descendants who would have collected their memories. I am also looking for descendants of these prisoners of war who survived and who settled in the region, because they were going to be considered as collaborators of the Nazi regime if they returned to the Soviet Union.There is in particular a large Ukrainian diaspora in Lorraine.” Chrystalle Zebdi-Bartz is also keen onarchives of all kinds: photos, letters, objects in connection with these prisoners of war.
Testify before it’s too late, before we lose this precious gold for our history
Time is running out: the people who lived at that time are now elderly, and will soon no longer be able to share their memories. “There are a lot of Holocaust historians, for example, a lot of research on this subject. But little for prisoners of war. It is very important to transmit these testimonies before it is too late“, insists Chrystalle Zebdi-Bartz, especially that”these memories often come back as we get older. This is where we feel the need to share them“.
The smallest detail can be useful
Same the most innocuous of testimonials can say a lot from this poorly documented period. Chrystalle has already collected the memories of several members of her family: “My great aunt was a child in Creutzwald, she was marked by these columns of prisoners of war in the streets who had nothing, but who gave sunflower seeds to the children… My great-grandmother often spoke to my grandmother of this Russian who peeled potatoes well during the war. For my grandmother, born later, this Russian must have been nice, he worked there, nothing more. It is only now, with my research, that she realizes that her family may have unwittingly participated in the forced labor system.“.
Yet another testimony, which is transmitted from generation to generation, that of these Mosellens deported because they had helped prisoners of war:Boulay’s baker, for example, put loaves on the road for the prisoners to collect. One day he disappeared. But these are only ‘we say’, there has never been any scientific research on this subject“.
Chrystalle Zebdi-Bartz will work full time for the next three years on her thesis: she is one of the few researchers to have signed a doctoral contract with the University of Lorraine. Only eight theses are funded this year, out of more than 300 applications.
- To get in touch with Chrystalle Zebdi-Bartz, you can write to her by email: [email protected] or reach her on her mobile phone: 06 21 60 68 08.