Reading of unpublished letters from Malgré-Nous. These letters were sent by children from Malgré-Nous and Malgré-Elles who responded to the call made by Aline Gross Batiot in the DNA at the end of 2010.

I’m not a historian. I like letters. They go from singular to universal. Or vice versa.
When a dozen letters from my father-in-law, Georges, were found in Brumath in his home in 2006, after more than 60 years of «forgetting» the emotion was great.
It was not until four years later that I formed the project to stage a public reading of Lettres de Malgré-Nous, which would include Georges' letters, the very first discoveries.
These letters that I am about to read aloud, I did not find them in a collection, they arrived in my own mailbox, sent by the children of Malgré-Nous and Malgré-Elles who answered my call in the DNA at the end of 2010. And I remember my emotion reading them, time was suspended, I went to meet Desiree, Alfred, Gretel, Marthele, etc.
The originality of this corpus is due to the fact that I had the chance to receive two correspondence from couples, treasured by their respective daughters. Some of these letters written by their mothers who remained in the village are true love poems. They express their expectation, their anguish, the life that goes on, despite everything.
To put these texts into a voice is an honour and a joy for me. To pass these words from the shadows to the light, to make this memory live.
Aline Gross-Batiot.