EDITORIAL

To be happy, human beings have to believe in something which is bigger than they are.

Dear friends,

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this.  Our small team is motivated by our tireless devotion to our work. Our commitment and energy is put at the disposal of all those who have suffered because they are different.

The website has evolved and our aim is that it becomes the indispensable tool of the association.  A simple telephone call, e-mail or letter will enable us to post your search, remarks and suggestions. This website is not only for a chosen few but for all members and sympathizers.

Another new addition is the logo, which we have redesigned so that it symbolises this heart turned towards our good old planet earth, without borders

We are those « Children of the War » and are determined to take our destiny into our own hands.  After life-long sufferings, for some of us, physical and/or psychological abuse, from our families or from the society the time has come for us to raise our «heads».  We were neither guilty nor responsible for being «enfants de Boches» (literally: «children of the Huns»).  We were only collateral victims of those ignominious wars that men wage. Humankind will become civilized only when we will learn to solve our problems without the use of hatred or war.

We created an Association, which is based on mutual aid and search for identity for all children of the 39-45 war. Whether they were born from love affairs, from rapes, from prisoners, from deported workers or from occupying soldiers.

This Association is the result of a late awakening of consciousness.  We were all nearing our sixties, when one night in March 2003 a photograph in a television magazine caught our attention:  it was extremely violent because it brought back, to those concerned, an eternal and deep-seated pain.  This photo showed a woman wearing a white blouse, walking quickly, holding a baby in her arms.  Yet, only one thing caught our attention:  this woman’s head had just been shaven.  This woman could have been our mother and this child could have been one of us. No doubt that many of us were watching television that evening.  A page was being turned.  A man had dared to break the code of silence.  At last, someone was interested in our past lives.  This man was no other than Christophe Weber, the film-maker, who worked together with Fabrice Virgili, historian and researcher at the CNRS.

These testimonies of a painful period in France’s history reflect a France of another era, where an unwed mother could be banished from her family and society, shorn or/and imprisoned for having given birth to a child who was the fruit of an adulterous and often amorous relation with the ENEMY.  What a handicap for a child to be banished, rejected by his/her mother’s side of the family, and all those who were aware of the secret!  From an unknown father, with rare traces of his existence left (photos, letters and testimonies) destroyed or hidden in the sub-conscience, this child was not only the son or daughter of a « Boche» but was brought up with hatred for the « Boche».  From early childhood, fingers had been pointed at them.  Imagine the cross we had to bear.  How could a child be well-balanced with the unspeakable and untold guilt thrust upon him/her? How could a child love when people around him/her were making him/her responsible, directly or indirectly, for what he/she represented?

In 2003, we realized that we were not as alone in the world, as we had always thought…  According to Fabrice Virgili’s estimates, in France there could be 200,000 children born from unions between Frenchwomen and Germans, 800,000 in all the occupied European countries. 

This documentary movie and figures raised our awareness that we were not alone.  During our meetings and discussions, we were all making the same comments:  «I thought I was the only one!!! »   After having spent a life in the shadows, we could now walk out into the daylight with our heads held high.

Those revelations helped in bring about self-reconciliation.  But there were still too many of us who remain on the other side of the mirror.  We had to get together to help them.  We quickly noticed that in talking to and meeting with each other, we could overcome our own traumas and anxieties.

Reconciled with ourselves at last, many are those who want to undertake a search that was once deemed lonely and shameful.  A sense of urgency forced us to act fast, very fast.  Our fathers were either dead or very old, so were our mothers, and witnesses to that period were getting scarcer.

The association allows us to work as a team to share the tasks, undertake the research work and translate documents.  It is within this frame-work that « Hearts without Borders / Cœurs Sans Frontières / Herzen Ohne Grenzen » has evolved to become a European association, headed by the «Fantom e.V. » organization.

On 20 November 2006, « Hearts without Borders / Cœurs Sans Frontières / Herzen Ohne Grenzen » and « Fantom e.V. » signed a partnership agreement at the German Foundation, «Heinrich Heine House» at the City University of Paris.  The terms of this agreement had been submitted to a vote and approved by the representatives of these associations on 22 October 2006, in Berlin.  The agreement was signed by Ludwig Norz, for «Fantom e.V.», Johanna Brunne for «Herzen Ohne Grenzen» and Jean-Jacques Delorme the new President of «Coeurs sans frontières / Hearts without Borders». We were very pleased that this small ceremony was attended by members, and we were very honoured by the presence of Peter Gerhardt Vice-Director of WASt* in Berlin.

We are a French-German association, opened to all people and we encourage you to join us.  In spite of the urgency mentioned earlier, we have been successful recently in re-uniting a German member with her French family in Nantes and a French member who, thanks to a discreet and efficient network, was able to locate first his biological father, then his brother and sister who live in Mainz, Germany and, for the first time after 40 years of hope, they finally met on 19 January 2007.

If you have any information and would like to learn more, we have the means to help you thanks to a network, access to the archives and some specialized internet forums.

You must believe that it is never too late and that we are willing to listen to you to try to succeed in doing what seemed impossible not so long ago…

Let’s persevere and remain motivated.

Jean-Jacques DELORME

Cœurs sans Frontières / Herzen Ohne Grenzen /Hearts without Borders