We don’t do a very good job in the United States of remembering, especially wartime events. It’s a different story in France which was devastated by both world wars.There are memorials everywhere. Most small towns have a monument in their center square listing the names of those lost in that war, often with the addition of those lost in subsequent wars.
Hubert Rochereau was a soldier who died in WWI on Flanders fields in Belgium on April 26, 1918. His parents kept his room exactly as it was when he left for the battlefront. Subsequent owners of the home have continued this remembrance.
Paris buildings are studded with historical plaques, especially ones noting where fighters were killed during WW2.
This is the one that affects me the most:
I think it’s because of his age, 21, and because they included his nickname. I kept wondering about Fifi Feferman and finally researched him. His family fled anti-semitism in Poland when he was 2 years old. He was said to be gifted and wanted to be a journalist and poet until the war intervened. He was active in the Resistance, committing many acts of sabotage against the Germans and French collaborators. Fifi was felled at 58 rue des Petites Écuries in the 10th arrondissement where you can find this plaque.
FiFi
We should be remembering all the young people (and older ones) who have died in wars. Maybe it would help us to stop and think more before we entered another one only to lose more like young Fifi.
Cynthia Tuttelman (aka "Tut") is a writer, family doctor and quilter who lives in Northern California and part-time each year in Paris, France. Follow along and explore the wonders of Paris.