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Surviving the Nazi Occupation of Luxembourg: A Young Woman's WWII Memoir
Surviving the Nazi Occupation of Luxembourg A Young Woman's WWII Memoir Author:Marguerite Thill-Somin-Nicholson 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, alo... more »ng 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. Throughout their enforced travels, Gretchen and her family beheld gruesome images of corpses, blood-drenched streets, wounded war horses, a mother killed with her baby's carriage still at her side. When the family was able to return to Luxembourg, it was to a homeland which would remain occupied by the Nazis for the next four years. Swastikas draped every building. German troops goose-stepped down the streets. Speakers broadcast Hitler's speeches day and night. Nazis stood at the back of the church, once a place of great comfort, to ensure the priest said nothing against th« less