La Maternité d'Elne

Men and women meet up again for the first time in the makeshift maternity home where they were born and survived, a world away from the camps during World War II. They will tell us the story of this haven of peace, this refuge of life, and of their shared heritage. In 1939, amid the barbarity which was being unleashed on Europe, a young Swiss female primary school teacher started a maternity home in an abandoned castle in the French Western Pyrenees which enabled over 600 children of Spanish, Jewish and gypsy refugees to be born and survive. A reversed image of its day, Elne maternity home became the heart of a heartless world, a happy page in the darkest chapter of our history.