Surviving the Nazi Occupation of Luxembourg: A Young Woman's WWII Memoir
SynopsisPlot
Early on the morning of May 10, 1940, twelve-year-old Marguerite Thill was awakened by the cries of her father warning the family that the Nazis were about to invade their country of Luxembourg. By that evening, Marguerite-Gretchen, as she was called-her three sisters, and their parents had donned several layers of clothing and left on foot, along with hundreds of others, to escape into France. This marked the beginning of an amazing odyssey. For the next three months, the family lived as refugees, trying, sometimes without success, to stay one step ahead of the Nazis. They slept in filthy barns, acquired lice, went without food and water, and huddled in ditches while bombs fell around them. Once the French government was able to establish some organization, Gretchen and her family were transported to Montbard, where they were placed into the home of two elderly ladies who had a spare room. Just as they had begun to feel safe and relaxed, they were moved to the tiny village of Cruchy, where they were placed into a house that had not been inhabited since WWI. When a troop of German soldiers took partial possession of the house, Gretchen's father quickly developed the habit of sleeping with an axe at his side, the only method at his disposal to protect his wife and four daughters from the German commander sleeping in the next room and the soldiers in their tents pitched in the orchard just outside.
Story
About this book
On May 10, 1940, twelve-year-old Marguerite Thill, known as Gretchen, was woken by her father's warning that Nazi forces were about to cross into Luxembourg. By that evening, Gretchen, her three sisters, and their parents had pulled on multiple layers of clothing and joined hundreds of others fleeing on foot toward France. What followed was three months as refugees: hunger, lice, nights in barns, and stretches crouching in ditches as bombs fell nearby.
The family was eventually moved to Montbard, in the Burgundy region of France, and lodged with two elderly women. A brief sense of stability ended when they were relocated to Cruchy, a small village where they moved into a house that had stood empty since the First World War. German soldiers soon took over part of the building, pitching tents in the orchard. Gretchen's father began sleeping with an axe beside him, his only means of protecting his wife and four daughters from the commander quartered next door.
Written from the vantage point of a child, the account records displacement in plain practical terms: what the family carried, where they slept, and how parents tried to hold a household together while borders, authority, and daily routines shifted around them from one week to the next.
