t my identity? These questions haunted me, but I didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t even know his name. I didn’t know which city, which country he had been sent to. But in 1953, everything changed. I received a letter, a simple envelope with no address, from Munich. Inside, a single handwritten sentence in German: “If you wish to know what happened to your son, please come to this address on March 12 at 2 p.m.”
It took my breath away. My hands were shaking so badly that I had to put the letter down on the table to reread it. Who had sent it to me? How did this person know who I was? Was it a trap? But I knew I would go. Despite the danger, despite the shock. On March 12, 1953, I took the train to Munich. For the first time since my return, I left France.
Every kilometer I walked brought back memories I’d tried to bury: the uniforms, the orders shouted in German, the smell of the camp. The address given was a gray building in a working-class neighborhood of Munich. I climbed the stairs to the third floor, my heart pounding so hard I felt it would burst out of my chest. I knocked on the door.
A woman in her fifties opened the door. Her gray hair was pulled back in a bun, her expression stern, but her eyes gentle. [Music] She gazed at me for a long moment before saying, “My stone propeller.” I nodded. [Music] She showed me in. The apartment was modest but clean. Photos of children hung on the walls.
She invited me to sit down and poured me some tea. Then she spoke. “My name is Greta Hoffman. During the war, I worked as a nurse in Vermarthe. Not by choice, but out of necessity. I was assigned to the camp where you and your sisters were held. My sense of humor is icy. I had nothing to do with what happened to you,” she continued quickly, “but I witnessed it all, and every day I hated myself for having done nothing.”
He got up and took a box from the cupboard. Inside were documents, files, and lists of names. Fonsteiner kept meticulous records. He noted everything: the mothers’ names, the children’s birthdates, the German families who had taken them in. After the war, these documents were supposed to be destroyed, but I managed to save a few.
He handed me a piece of paper; my name was written on it. And just below, another line: Little child, born June 18, 1943, placed June 20, 1943. Foster family: Adler family. I reread that line again and again until the letters blurred. “He’s alive,” I whispered. “I don’t know,” he replied gently. “But now you have a lead.” With that folded piece of paper in my pocket, I returned to France and made up my mind. I would find him.
It didn’t matter how long it took, it didn’t matter how many doors I had to knock on. My son existed somewhere, and I wasn’t going to die without trying. The search lasted almost twenty years: twenty years of unanswered letters, twenty years knocking on the doors of the authorities, who looked at me as if I were crazy.
For twenty years, I saved every penny so I could take the train to Germany once or twice a year. The Adler family had left Hamburg in 1950. No one knew where, or at least no one wanted to tell me. The 1950s were the hardest years. Europe was rebuilding itself, forgetting and burying its dead and its secrets with the same efficiency. Archives were destroyed, scattered, and hidden.
Witnesses refused to testify out of fear, shame, and cowardice. I contacted organizations that help war victims. I sought advice from lawyers, who initially looked at me with pity, then explained that my case was extremely complex and probably hopeless. I even wrote to the International Red Cross. The response was polite, professional, and utterly useless.
The archives were incomplete. Witnesses were either dead or refused to testify. Even postwar Germany wanted to forget. I was just one voice among thousands, one mother among so many searching for their children lost in the chaos of war. But I couldn’t forget. Every night, I saw her face again, her closed eyes and her little hands clutching my finger.
I would wake up in a sweat, convinced I could hear a child crying. But in my empty room, only silence reigned. I worked as a seamstress, mechanically sewing hems and buttonholes. At night, I wrote letters, requests, petitions. I used dozens of pens and filled entire notebooks with names, addresses, and leads that went nowhere.
The 1960s arrived, then the 1970s. My body was aging, my hair was turning gray, but my determination remained unwavering. I refused to die without knowing. I refused to let my son fade into oblivion, as if his existence had never mattered. In 1972, a promising lead finally appeared. A former employee of the Vermarthe administration agreed to meet with me.
He lived in a nursing home in Strasbourg, marked by illness and guilt. When I entered his room, I saw an emaciated old man with dark circles under his eyes and trembling hands. He stared at me for a long time before speaking. “Are you Maéise, the one from the rock?” “Yes.” “Sit down.” I sat down. My heart was pounding so hard I was afraid he would hear it.
“I remember the Adler family,” she said slowly. “They were privileged and close to the regime. During the war, they took in several children, children from special aid programs.” I clenched my fists to calm my trembling. Where are they now? After the war, they went to Austria, probably Salzburg, but I don’t know for sure.
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