Forward, part 2 - The Alsace connection

In addition to being inspired to make this journey by Madonna's father's WW2 experience, I (Jeanne) also have a connection to Alsace. In 1964, I studied in Strasbourg, in northeastern France with the Washington University junior-year-abroad program. At that time, living in Europe for a year meant no phone calls home at all.  (OK - maybe once. An important  call about  money I'm thinking). The French phone system was very creaky, and international calling was difficult and expensive. Communication consisted of letters - lots of them. All written on thin air mail paper (postage was expensive) with my new fountain pen. I wrote everything with that pen. Volumes of classnotes, travel notes, and letters home once or twice a week.


Our group of students sailed from New York to Rotterdam and then traveled by train to Paris, before winding up in Strasbourg, Alsace. Here is a photo of me relaxing glamorously on the deck of the S.S.Maasdam before departing from a west side pier (#42 I believe).

 During that year, I and a roommate rented a room in the home of an Alsatian couple, Monsieur and Madame Pauli. Their home was actually in a suburb of the city - so I bought a motorbike called a Vélosolex to travel to classes, around town, and to make the occasional excursion out into the countryside. Always wearing a skirt and city shoes, of course! Sometimes with heels. This was 1964.

Here I am on my "Solex" at in the driveway where I lived at 14, rue des Fruits.

Embarassing moment: I was sitting (on my bike) at a big intersection in the middle lane, waiting for the traffic light. The light changed and I took off - leaving one of my shoes behind! I had to negotiate the traffic, turn around and return for my shoe. That caused some hilarity in the vicinity as I recall.


There were eight of us in the Washington U. group studying in Strasbourg. 7 of us are pictured below, along with a guest, having a halloween party. Someone went to a bakery with a drawing of a jack-o'-lantern and custom-ordered a cake. The face on the cake was a bit odd-looking because the person making the cake really had no idea what it was supposed to be. Nowadays people in France do sometimes celebrate Halloween.

That's me in the center front and my roommate Carol is holding the cake. Carol and I roomed in a second floor bedroom chez Monsieur & Madame Pauli. They were an older couple, who lived a simple, traditional lifestyle. Monsieur was a retired shipbuilder (Strasbourg is an important Rhine River port). They had a garden and chickens. What they did not produce themselves, they bought from neighborhood shops owned by people they seemed to have known since childhood. They also produced their own eau-de-vie, made from plums.  When I was lucky enough to be invited to lunch, we always finished the meal with a small glass of that home-made hooch. Powerful stuff indeed!  Drying the dishes after required my full concentration.


 Madame rode a bicycle to do errands. The car was almost never used, except for longer excursions. Once I was included on a wine-buying errand to a vinyard out in the countryside, and another time to a picnic with a neighboring family. 

Our room had two beds, two tables to work on , and armoire for clothes, and a coal stove for heat (maintained by Madame). We also had our own bathroom - with tub, sink, toilet and wood-fired hot water heater! The fire was lit once a week on Saturday - I learned to wash myself and my hair in cold water. In our room above,  notice the eiderdowns on the beds, all with hand-worked linens made by Madame for her dowry, no doubt. Below, is the view toward the garden and the river Ill off in the distance.

During that year, I remember vaguely knowing that they had had a son, that he'd been a med student at the university,and that he had died during the war. Late in my stay there, Madame was showing me photos of herself, traveling as a young woman in Italy. She was very nostalgic about the good times she'd had, and I asked her if she didn't want travel again. "Oh, yes," she answered, "but my husband won't leave home. He always says 'What if Fritz comes home?'"


Fritz, of course, had been drafted into the German army in 1940 as soon as France fell. Alsace and the neighboring province of Moselle were considered by them to be part of Germany, provinces that Germany had lost after WW1. So those regions were "germanized". The schools had to stop teaching in French, and the men were drafted into the German army. Most were sent to the brutal battles of the eastern front with Russia. Their families at home were the guarantee that they would fight those battles and not desert.


All over France, there are memorials to those lost in the many European wars. All of them have the words "Morts pour la France" (Died for France) at the top - except in Alsace. There, the memorial monuments say "À nos morts" (To our Dead) because Alsatians died on both sides of the conflict.


There is a very moving monument in Strasbourg - a Pietà of a mother holding her two dying sons, one looking east, and one looking west.