Dr. Marie Claire Wrage, Professor Emerita of French at Ohio University, leads a discussion about a memoir written by Rita Thalmann, who escaped from Nazi occupied France with help from Wrage’s mother at the start of World War II. Photographer: Ben Siegel
Nuremberg, Germany, 1942.
“Mother gave private lessons in English, so Rita would come to our house, and once a week they would have lessons,” explained Professor Emerita Marie-Claire Wrage.
“One day my mother realized she was upset, and Rita said she was trying to get out of the country, but didn’t know how.”
Her mother then told Rita Thalmann about a class field trip to Southern France, and said it might be possible to aide her in crossing the French Demarcation line to reach safety.
Traveling from Northern France to Southern France was permitted by the Nazis if there was a class field trip, Wrage said. Her mother assumed someone would be absent from her class the day of the trip, and in that student’s absence, an extra passport would be available for Thalmann to use.
Read how her journey ends in Compass.
Years later, Thalmann would tell her story of escape from Nazi Germany in her book, It All Began in Nuremberg. French professors Dr. Wrage and Dr. Lois Vines translated her book into English, and Wrage shared her firsthand account with 15 high school teachers from across Ohio last week in a three-day seminar sponsored by the Charles J. Ping Institute for the Teaching of the Humanities.
Comments