“the immense sadness” and the concern of those who lived through the Second World War

On the TV screen, in the living room of the Les Bords de Marne retirement home in Bonneuil-sur-Marne near Paris, images of tanks and Vladimir Poutine scroll. Images of a war closely followed by Françoise Jacques, 93 years old, Jean-Pierre, 86, and Georgette, 90. The sound of bombs in Ukraine reminds them of bad memories, 80 years old.

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“Of course, we can’t sleep anymore. We, in our small wheelchair, we are helpless“, comments Georgette. Françoise, a Red Cross volunteer in 1945, feels ” great sadness“. To better understand, she follows the information an atlas of Eastern Europe in hand. Difficult, for the one who experienced the exodus from Paris in 1940, then the bombardments in the Nièvre, to review what she has already experienced: “I’m anxious about relive a war and above all, the idea of ​​this atomic weapon. During the war of 1940, we could have shelters to hope to protect ourselves. Now we know that no one will be protected.“She applauds the sanctions taken against Russia, and hopes for an internal revolt against Vladimir Putin.

Camped in his chair, Jean-Pierre, a former gendarmerie officer, is more distant. He was in Berlin when the wall was being built. He recalls that “Ukrainians were in the Soviet Empire“.”So it’s a return to the previous situation” he judges. “Ukraine is far away. It doesn’t pose an existential problem for me. You shouldn’t set foot in this quagmire.“

His reluctance is shared by François and Georgette, also on the question of welcoming refugees. “We already have a lot of them from different countries, so we have to control the number of arrivals“, comments Françoise.

What worries those who lived through the Second World War are post-conflict rationing. “From 1945 to 1947, we were even more unhappy than during the war“recalls Georgette. Françoise, she is already imagining a future where, faced with the explosion in the price of oil, it will be necessary to do without fuel.