Pilgrimage to the past | VailDaily.com

Back to: News

Pilgrimage to the past

Raymond A. Bleesz | Special to the DailyKonzentrationionslager Struthof was a penal and labor camp existing from 1941 to November 1944, when it was liberated by the Americans.

At the time of Napoleon Bonaparte’s reign as emperor of France, one of his greatest achievements was creation of the Napoleonic Code, which administratively amongst others decrees set up the Departments of France, one of which is Alsace. This geographic area in Eastern France is blessed with natural resources, minerals, the timbered forests of the Vosges Mountains, vineyards, with natural boarders such as the Rhine River and well as the Alsacian Plain, which is the bread basket of France. With Strasbourg as its capital city, Alsace has historically been a center of contention as well as being a center of cultural, intellectual activity. Strasbourg’s name illustrates the historic “crossroads” of Europe. It was the center of vital Humanistic thought coming out of the Dark Ages, a center of early cartography where the word “America” originated. Albert Schweitzer, a Humanist of the highest order, was born in Alsace.


Coming to America




As a youngster, France, Alsace, Reichfeld was all new and strange for this American youth. “La Guerre” was evident in the fields, villages, cities. Destroyed buildings, pill boxes, fox holes, spent cartridges, army ordinance stockpiled in the fields, all a common sight throught Alsace. Around the kitchen table during our summer visits, the grandpere and his four sons would be having animated conversations, fists pounding the table, a bottle of Reisling and glasses was constant, smoke from cigarettes would cloud the room, words spoken in French, German, Alsacian punctuated the room – “Wehrmacht,” “Les Allemandes,” “Les Americans,” “De Gaulle” and occasional the word “Struthof” and a name, Xavier. I remember distinctly going into the village eglise and seeing a German helmet hanging from a cross.


As the German war machine was being pounded into submission by the Allies by 1944, the German army conscripted former French soldiers into their army. These soldiers became known as the “Malgre-nous” (in spite of our will) and 130,000 Alsacians were forceable issued Wehrmacht, Waffen SS uniforms and arms. The majority were sent to the Eastern front – 32,000 were killed, 10,500 missing in action. Some were interned in the Gulag systems and not released until the mid 1950s. The story of the “Malgre-nous” was more complex than stated here, and this “Malgre-nous” issue became a national judicial contentious issue well into the 1950s. My uncles Ernest, Albert and Martin were “Malgre-nous” soldiers, and my father, Tony, who had American citizenship at this time, was physically handicapped and exempt from the American war effort, however, the French government had called him to arms as well.



The Struthof camp today is now a national monument, a museum which opened in 2005. In 1958, while visiting grandparents on their deathbeds at the age of 14, I was taken by my Uncle Martin to the Konzentrationslager Struthof. He led me on a tour of the camp, the barracks, the crematorium, the cells, the medical experimentation building and eventually pointed out Xavier’s headstone. Our language barrier was insignificant – it was plain to see and comprehend for this youthful American kid.


Raymond Bleesz lives in Edwards.