On the occasion of the commemorations of the decree of August 25, 1942 establishing the incorporation of the Alsatians and the Mosellans in the German army, a wall of photos pays tribute to the “despite us” disappeared during the Second World War.
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They are nearly 12,000, mostly young, photographed in civilian clothes or German and even French uniform. Their faces, printed on eight tarpaulins 4.50 m wide, materialize the deaf horror of the statistics of the Second World War. From 1943 to 1945, 135,000 Alsatians and Mosellans were forcibly enlisted in the Wehrmacht, the German army. A quarter of them will not come back. Some of them have no death date or burial. To pay tribute to them and allow families to fill the void left by these disappeared, Claude Herold, passionate about the question of “despite us”, gathered their photos within a “wall of faces”. This 36-meter canvas will be exposed to the National Memorial of Obernai Force Incorporated (Bas-Rhin) then to the Alsace-Moselle Memorial in Schirmeck (Bas-Rhin), on the occasion of the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the decree August 25, 1942 establishing this part of the history of Alsace-Moselle. It will then cross France to be presented to the Caen Memorial during a conference on the incorporation of force.
The work is the fruit of two years of research carried out by Claude Herold. This former operating officer, now retired, peeled the registers established by the German Red Cross after the war which identified the 1.3 million missing from the Wehrmacht, classified by battalion, to extract the incorporated from Alsace-Moselle force. He himself suffered from this unknown chapter of history; His three paternal uncles died on the battlefields of the Second World War. It is by carrying out research to find their trace that he has gradually forged a reputation as a specialist in the question, developing a fine knowledge of the fights waged by the German battalions and constituting an important network of contacts on the territories concerned. Claude Herold ultimately did not find the graves of his uncles, but he was able to elucidate hundreds of other cases. Like that of Xavier Pfost, injured in Ukraine and died on the ship evacuating him from Sevastopol, whose tomb was recently found in Romania.
a blurred image
Four memory associations financed the realization of the “wall of faces” designed by the retiree: orphans of fathers despite us from Alsace-Moselle (OPMnam), association of the pupils of the nation and orphans of war of Alsace (Apoga), Association of Escaus and Force Incorporated (Adéif) of Bas-Rhin and the friends of the Alsace-Moselle Memorial (AMAM). It is for the latter to obtain a form of recognition of the suffering endured by the families of these soldiers, in the same way as the other victims of the Nazi regime. The participation of several “despite us” in the abuses committed by the Waffen-SS Das Reich division in Oradour-sur-Glane (Haute-Vienne) in particular has irreparably blurred the image of all the Force Incorporated within the French, but also Alsatian story.
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