This is an interesting article about something that happened in Val d'Isere during WW2. The town seems reluctant to acknowledge it and were unwilling to engage in discussion.
By chance I'd just read that. I've recently visited Auschwitz with my french girlfriend and we've discussed the subject quite a lot. There was a french concentration camp near where she lives used for holding Jews before transportation, now a museum. Lots of maquis heroics around here and many German atrocities against them. In a country under occupation some collaboration is inevitable.
Poland is also being accused atm of hiding the atrocities of their collaborators whilst highlighting the German atrocities against them.
I think unless you come from a country that was occupied it is very difficult to have enough understanding to criticise.
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
A very interesting story and I loved all the old photos. How it's changed!!
I wonder why the resort won't talk about it.
I'm sure I heard the Moris hotel used to be the Gestapo's headquarters.
I think unless you come from a country that was occupied it is very difficult to have enough understanding to criticise.
I understand your point but that was a generation ago and concerns about offending people or their memories shouldn't prevent acknowledgement of events.
The reaction of the Mayor and his office would suggest that they see it as a 'dark secret' that they want to keep hidden. I don't quite understand it as it seems, on the face of it, to be a positive story. Unless there is something else about the characters that they want to keep hidden.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
I agree that on the face of it that is the case. Elected Mayors wield a lot of power in France, who knows .....
Really interesting article. We often wondered why there was no museum or information on Val d’Isere during the war, especially given it’s proximity to Italy.
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@HoneyBunny,
Quote:
I'm sure I heard the Moris hotel used to be the Gestapo's headquarters.
I think that's a bit harsh on Mark Warner staff
After all it is free
After all it is free
Yes a fascinating article. As for the apparent reluctance of the current local administration to engage with the request to recognise the actions of Dr Frederic Petri.
Well on the one hand, he already appears to have the main junction roundabout in the town named after him. Must be honest, I never knew that, though I've been around it hundreds of times.
I'm much more aware of the local infrastructure and pistes that are named after famous skiers!
On the other hand, lack of much local response about the request to specifically highlight Dr Petri's bravery and compassion in offering refuge to Jews in peril for their lives seems odd.
Especially if a member of town hall staff really said 'this is a delicate matter' when asked to comment.
I'd hope the local Mayor, Marc Bauer, once he's recovered from his new year celebrations, might be a bit more open and transparent than that.
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I suspect the reluctance is to do with the politics surrounding the war. Unlike the UK many may not have supported the resistance. Just think how Brexit has divided us and will continue to do so probably for decades.
Ive heard the story about the escaping British prisoners of war before. I think they may have died above Fornet. Is that large stone pyramid next to the piste above the cable car station a memorial to them ?
I would image the answer lies in this extract from the article:
"The war divided communities, explains Jane Metter, who researches the period at Queen Mary University of London. For those who collaborated and those who resisted "the only way to carry on living with your neighbours after the war was to forget what had happened.""
In our 30 years in Morzine we've become aware of a number of local family feuds due to "things that happened during the occupation" - the details of which are never discussed (at least not in company). The policy of the Vd'I mairie, and more generally, seems to be don't go there, don't engage, let sleeping dogs lie. And it's probably for the best.
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@shep,
Quote:
The policy of the Vd'I mairie, and more generally, seems to be don't go there, don't engage, let sleeping dogs lie. And it's probably for the best.
Know what you mean. However, acknowledging and celebrating seemingly unselfish, compassionate, altruistic, brave acts might, in a small way, encourage more of that behaviour and make the world that little bit better in future.
Only so much muck can be swept under the carpet before you have a hill to climb.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
When I am next skiing Germain Mattis I will have a little think about the ski instructor and resistance member who died in a concentration camp
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
PeakyB wrote:
Acknowledging and celebrating seemingly unselfish, compassionate, altruistic, brave acts might, in a small way, encourage more of that behaviour and make the world that little bit better in future.
Absolutely, and a very thoughtful summary of the upside of raking over the "muck hill" . Fears of the downside however are well founded, and seem to hold sway.
You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
@shep, I bought a book on Morzine history when I lived there and found it glossed over a huge chapter. I learnt more watching Jane Seymour’s Who Do You Think You Are episode about the French/Swiss border and the people who lived there. I have been out to the plateau near Annecy - that was very moving.
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Interesting article.
One of my co-prop fellow owners, a Brit who was educated in Switzerland, has spent a bit of time reading about and researching the history of the Val d’Abondance. He has found virtually nothing about the period of WWII and no-one inclined to point him in the right direction.
I think those divisions run deep, even 75 years on. My wife (Dutch, father was a young teenager during the war, from a country area that was occupied) says her father forbid using certain shops during her youth (70’s) because “they were collaborators”.
I suspect the locals have lots to share but lips are buttoned.
Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
I think it may well be that 'old wounds' going back to tensions between resistance vs collaboration, nearly 80 years ago, still influence this. That may explain the reluctance of Val D'Isere local officials to become involved in the application for Dr Petri to be recognised as 'Righteous Amongst Nations' for giving sanctuary to Jewish people.
However, in the very modern context of the persistence, or even recent increase, in Anti-Semitism across Europe, it offers an opportunity for Val D'Isere to distance itself from that, whilst further recognising an individual who is obviously already revered in the town.
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
I would agree that it’s very different for us Brits looking back at the war than for the rest of Europe. A question of investigation about ‘what did you grandparents do in the war’ for us will often reveal an interesting or heroic similar story. It’s unlikely to be something we would rather not know. Not the case for many other countries.
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
@Gaza that's a very interesting link, thank you very much. I have always wondered the history of some of the ski resorts in relation to ww2.
I know it's a pretty different situation but I am always shocked of divided community's who striked in 70/80's in the uk and the bitterness between both sides has carried on today. I suppose if you dont live in that situation it's hard to understand.
I would image the answer lies in this extract from the article:
"The war divided communities, explains Jane Metter, who researches the period at Queen Mary University of London. For those who collaborated and those who resisted "the only way to carry on living with your neighbours after the war was to forget what had happened.""
In our 30 years in Morzine we've become aware of a number of local family feuds due to "things that happened during the occupation" - the details of which are never discussed (at least not in company). The policy of the Vd'I mairie, and more generally, seems to be don't go there, don't engage, let sleeping dogs lie. And it's probably for the best.
A large chunk of France including the Alps was Vichy France, an difficult period of history of the occupation of France.
Don't forget that if Churchill hadn't allowed De Gaulle to set up a Government in exile, then D-Day would have launched the invasion of France, not the liberation.
Memories of what happened during the wars from those that were there are also difficult to understand from a modern viewpoint; the grandmother of a french friend near Grenoble when she was getting senile used to talk about "those dashing SS chaps dressed in black"
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
In the seventies I spent a year as an English language assistant in a school in a small town in Haute Savoie. One day whilst sitting in the local cafe I was approached by a diminutive Frenchman who was I’d guess in his sixties at the time. He asked if he could join me (he didn’t need to ask who I was because in those days everybody knew who the new foreigner was). I thought he was a parent of a child maybe wanting private English lessons so he sat down and we started to chat.
He asked if it was true that I was from Scotland and when I confirmed this he reached into his pocket and produced a pile of black and white photos which looked very much like the Scottish highlands. I asked if he’d been to Scotland on holiday and he just grinned and explained that he had taken them during the war when he had visited for a while to be trained in what amounted to guerrilla warfare by the British military. Subsequent to that he had parachuted back into the local area to lead the local resistance until the end of the war.
The reason he wanted to meet me was that I was the first Scot he had met since then and he wanted to thank me for the hospitality he had received during his stay and he had not had a chance to do so before.
At the time I was in my early twenties which would have been similar to his age during the war. I have no idea whether I would have had the courage to do what he did and it’s thanks to men like him that I have never needed to find out
A number of my family members were protected in the French Alps.
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Fascinating - when I lived there in 98 I got to know my neighbour quite well and he told me a bit about this but this fills in a few gaps. I was intrigued at the time and he was cagey but also keen to talk.
After all it is free
After all it is free
@Gaza, is there a link to the author of this article, I cannot find it, though I may be being stupid!!!
would like to see if it is taken from a book, or an expanded article, as it is a very interesting read, or if there are books on the subject. I remember when I worked out in the alps, I had to do transfers from la clusaz, and on the way back to Meribel I used to pass a memorial to resistance operatives. am pretty sure it is on the back road from la clusaz to Albertville near Annecy (memory is a bit hazy) and camera phones were not around at the time, I stopped a couple of times to take a look, it was very moving.
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@terrygasson, Rosie Whitehouse, buried in the text.
This is the Maquis Monument between Livet and Bourg d'Oisans
This is a very interesting documentary in french made from original footage about the Maquis uprising in the Vercours.
Last edited by You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net. on Sun 5-01-20 16:05; edited 1 time in total
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cheers @Claude B,
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
The Alps have many dark secrets from centuries of conflicts.
Mountain communities are often much more close knit due to their isolation and location. Closer.knit communities have strengths and weaknesses. News travels quickly and opinions and loyalties are often divided.
Ultimately, I guess we have to look to the future, whilst learning from the past.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
This very interesting thread made me recall two experiences. Firstly, I was in the tourist office in St Antonin Noble Val (Midi-Pyrenees) when an English tourist committed a bit of a faux-pas by asking if the office had anything on the area during the war. This was deep in the heart of Vichy, and the site of the concentration camp at Sept Fonds is only a few km away. (There is a tiny notice at the site.) I would have suggested Sebastian Faulks Charlotte Gray, but said nothing.
The second experience was at Deux Alpes a while ago now, when I was visiting a school group and skiing with them. Their instructor was a well-preserved, but obviously elderly ESF man called Raymond (maybe @Claude B knows him...). Sharing a T-bar, I asked him how old he was. Old enough to have been around here in the war? Yes, he said, I was 15. An odd reply, but quick arithmetic brought me to 1944. The year of the resistance uprising in the Oisans. "Where you in the resistance?" I asked. "No," he replied. "My father was, but I just carried guns and ammunition round the mountains." Well, I thought that was good enough to qualify, but he didn't want to elaborate.
As the thread demonstrates, there is a lot of hidden pain buried deep in the communities we like to ski in.
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
La Plagne, last summer, has re furbished its WW2 memorial to the RAF and its raid to supply the resistance hidden away in the old mine workings across modern day La Plagne. Every August 15th they hold a service at the memorial attended by the Mayor etc just as we do in the UK in November.
If you are in Plagne Centre it is in the car park just up from the new Bus station and museum opposite the Fire Station. Worth a small detour, there are plaques in English and French.
There is a small history of La Plagne and the resistance here
https://www.perso-laplagne.fr/Histoire.htm#4
Its in French but Google Translate does an OK job, a fascinating story that has been added to quite recently.
Last edited by So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much on Sun 5-01-20 17:25; edited 3 times in total
You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
@Chris Bish, I remember meeting you here then, at least 10 years ago I dont know him. L2A didn't really exist then, it was still the grazing pastures for Venosc and Mont de Lans, with a few buildings and a church mainly at the Venosc end. I think the Maquis were pretty active all around the area though.
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
I recently bought this, no mention of the war at all.
Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
The Germans, the prime movers of the worst horrors of WWII, make a detailed account of the Holocaust an important part of their school curriculum as a basis for teaching their pupils about the mistakes that their country made in the past. It is small-minded for the French who acquiesced in the German occupation not to be willing to be more open about it.
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
This is a fascinating subject. I have a friend who has a similar Russian Jewish background to mine (save that she grew up in Australia whereas I was born and grew up in England) and refuses to visit France because of its collaborationist record. I can't be like that, but I acknowledge that my judgment may be clouded by the experience of my close family. To me, half my family is French and that's all there is to it. Of course there's much more to it.
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Interesting. Here in the Belleville Valley, many people’s favourite run in the 3V is Jerusalem. This in fact runs through an area up in the high pastures above St M where Jews were able to hide during the war and, as I understand it, the area was named Jerusalem because of it.
By chance I'd just read that. I've recently visited Auschwitz with my french girlfriend and we've discussed the subject quite a lot. There was a french concentration camp near where she lives used for holding Jews before transportation, now a museum. Lots of maquis heroics around here and many German atrocities against them. In a country under occupation some collaboration is inevitable.
Poland is also being accused atm of hiding the atrocities of their collaborators whilst highlighting the German atrocities against them.
I think unless you come from a country that was occupied it is very difficult to have enough understanding to criticise.
It's not difficult.
The French retreated without a fight and collaborated and shipped 50-100k Jews to the gaschambers.
No wonder they try to cover it up.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
boredsurfin wrote:
La Plagne, last summer, has re furbished its WW2 memorial to the RAF and its raid to supply the resistance hidden away in the old mine workings across modern day La Plagne. Every August 15th they hold a service at the memorial attended by the Mayor etc just as we do in the UK in November.
If you are in Plagne Centre it is in the car park just up from the new Bus station and museum opposite the Fire Station. Worth a small detour, there are plaques in English and French.
There is a small history of La Plagne and the resistance here
https://www.perso-laplagne.fr/Histoire.htm#4
Its in French but Google Translate does an OK job, a fascinating story that has been added to quite recently.
I remember seeing that when I was last there, very interesting:
as I understand it, the area was named Jerusalem because of it.
Just goes to show, you can't believe all you hear in ski resorts.
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
HoneyBunny wrote:
I'm sure I heard the Moris hotel used to be the Gestapo's headquarters.
You're right. The Moris was formerly known as the Hotel des Glaciers and is mentioned in the article as being their HQ
The rock in the middle of the dual carriageway heading towards Moutiers from Albertville is a monument to a resistance outfit that got wiped out by the Germans
After all it is free
After all it is free
terrygasson wrote:
@Gaza, is there a link to the author of this article, I cannot find it, though I may be being stupid!!!
would like to see if it is taken from a book, or an expanded article, as it is a very interesting read, or if there are books on the subject. I remember when I worked out in the alps, I had to do transfers from la clusaz, and on the way back to Meribel I used to pass a memorial to resistance operatives. am pretty sure it is on the back road from la clusaz to Albertville near Annecy (memory is a bit hazy) and camera phones were not around at the time, I stopped a couple of times to take a look, it was very moving.
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PeakyB wrote:
On the other hand, lack of much local response about the request to specifically highlight Dr Petri's bravery and compassion in offering refuge to Jews in peril for their lives seems odd.
He was such a dish too!
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We picked up a sort of history of St Gervais which included a section on the role of that village's role in providing safe houses for Jews during WW2. (Curious book, produced in comic book style mimicking Asterix or Tintin, and recounting events in a somewhat random way - certainly not chronological).
So it may have happened across the French Alps, maybe because of the multiple if hazardous routes available to Italy or Switzerland.
It is an interesting facet of human nature that those involved, having had to keep their roles secret at the time still felt they couldn't be discussed many decades later.
FAQ
Poster: A snowHead
. Fears of the downside however are well founded, and seem to hold sway.
