“War would spare no one”
“I was only a child when the war broke out. I was 9 years old, Thérèse begins. But I remember this dull anxiety that reigned. As soon as the siren sounded, my heart raced. We took refuge under tables, in cellars, with eyes wide with fear of what we did not understand. Despite the surrounding worry, Thérèse remembers with tenderness the daily life that she and the other children managed to preserve, almost as a challenge in the face of the tumult of the adult world. “We played, we still laughed, even if, somewhere, we felt that everything was fragile, uncertain. There were happy moments. And then, we were young. We didn’t always understand everything that was happening. “
Lucienne, born in 1930, silently agrees with Thérèse’s words before evoking her own memories of the war. In the countryside, life seemed more peaceful, almost protected, as if the scourges of war were reaching them attenuated. “My grandmother cultivated the land, we had animals; hunger affected us, of course, but we were not as deprived as others, she confides. Life was still easier when we were outside the cities.” However, in this seemingly gentler daily life, the shadow of war loomed, insidious, sometimes piercing the silence of the fields with a dull rumble, a distant glow. “Sometimes there would be an explosion, a strange noise, and we knew then that the war would spare no one, not even the small villages. I remember the evacuation very well. We had to leave in a hurry. Ma aunt was killed by a bullet in the neck. confides the nonagenarian from Gembloux.
“Evil always ends up being buried”
Lucienne also remembers the arrival of American soldiers, young and kind, on the evening of the war. She smiles, as if to capture a piece of this moment stolen from history. “They were tall, smiling, they offered us chocolate, sweets.” And Thérèse adds: “We went on their knees, they were very nice.”
But, over time, the horrors of the concentration camps became superimposed on their childhood memories. “We could not imagine, could not understand, that such a horror had taken place, so close to us, in our world”insists Lucienne. Silence settles between the two women before Thérèse continues with her benevolent smile that never leaves her. “We experienced scarcity, but we had something precious that the years have not erased: hope, this ability to believe, even in the worst, that life would return to its normal course. Evil always ends up being buried.” As for her neighbor, she is nuanced. “Young people no longer live in the same world as us. Everything is so different. There is so much horror everywhere. I’m afraid it will start again, that history will repeat itself and there will be another war It would be truly terrible.”
For these women, witnesses of the tear, transmitting is a necessity, an almost sacred duty, a last message for the generations to come. Their words are imbued with a mixture of gravity and gentleness, like an echo from the past addressed to the hearts of today. “If I had to send a message to young people today?” says Thérèse, with a thoughtful smile. “I would tell them to have plans, to get up every morning with an idea, a goal, even a modest one, for their day. Having a goal, even a small one, is essential.” For these women, who have gone through so many significant moments, it is the love of others, the attention paid to people, which gives all its value to existence. “We have to be kind to each other. A smile costs nothing. When I see people happy, I’m happy.”
For Lucienne, the duty to remember is a burden that she prefers to keep quiet
Centenarian, Lucienne Thibonne recounts the intense memories of the war, a past that she carries within her like a burden of silence and resilience.
For Lucienne Thibonne, remembering this period is not trivial. The memory of the war is, for her, like an emotional minefield where each memory can explode into fragments of pain and nostalgia. However, today, she agrees to talk about it, testifying to the resilience of a generation marked by sacrifice and suffering.
It is through words full of emotion, sometimes interspersed with a silence heavy with memories, that the centenarian evokes the dark years of the Second World War. Born in 1922, she was 18 years old in 1940, when the first shadows of the Second World War fell on Belgium, transforming the lives of families, their hopes and their daily lives. “When the war started, I was told to leave, and we went up to Amiens with my parents”she begins, her gaze lost in memories of a time marked by uncertainty and fear. Lucienne remembers the first days of the war, the moment when the innocence and carefreeness of youth gave way to the brutality of events. “French soldiers were there, very close to my parents’ house, and they told my dad that they had to leave because there was going to be a battle at our place, in Gembloux.”
“I don’t want to remember.”
Lucienne experienced this period in solitude and anguish, her husband being a prisoner in Germany. “He was busy doing his month of service when the war broke out and he was taken by the Germans. It was hard. Because I was all alone with my parents… I didn’t know where he was in Germany”she says before pausing. “He wanted to escape. But a guard, gun in hand, stopped him”she whispers.
The 102-year-old Gembloutoise also evokes the precariousness of daily life. Food, scarce, was shared sparingly, each meal being an act of resistance to the deprivations imposed by the war. But it’s not a subject she discusses often. “It’s difficult to talk about it because I don’t want to remember,” she confides, her eyes fixed on a past that she prefers to keep quiet. “It’s too painful”she insists. She carries her duty of memory within herself, in silence. She rarely shared these stories with her children or grandchildren, perhaps considering that this burden should not be passed on.
At the twilight of her life, Lucienne Thibonne carries within herself the story of an era that many have forgotten, and she does so with a dignity imbued with a certain wisdom. The war marked her existence, but it did not destroy her humanity, that which she transmits implicitly in every word, every memory shared, as an ultimate proof of resilience.
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