Fifis

In our Vernoux schoolyard, we witnessed the "maquisards," known as "fifis," for FFI, acronym for "Forces Françaises de l'Interieur" (French Forces of the Interior), interrogate a group of prisoners in German Army uniforms. One of the maquisards—probably a German-speaking Alsatian—translated. The interrogation consisted in having each prisoner pick up a sack of rocks and doing push-ups with this weight on his back, until the poor fellow collapsed from exhaustion. I wondered if our father had been subjected to such torture, during his time at Dachau.

An expression I had recently learned in school came to mind, "the more things change, the more they remain the same." The guttural sounds of the language being yelled did seem to have a familiar ring; however, we did not understand one single word of our former mother-tongue. "Die Gebrüder Moritz"—the Moritz brothers—were no more; in their place, there were now "les frères Mauricet," also known as "Ricet," real would-be French kids, learning all about "their ancestors, the Gauls" and the fables of Jean de la Fontaine.

After the war, as it is only the victors who get to write History, many of these "maquisards" described themselves as heroic patriots, notwithstanding the fact that most were simply opportunists.