French war hero seeks his death camp child

World news

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

By John Lichfield in Paris

Sixty years after it ended, the Second World War can still throw up extraordinary stories of love, tragedy terror, and separation. This is the story of two Frenchmen called Robert Nant.

The younger Robert Nant, 61, was born in Buchenwald concentration camp in March 1945 shortly before his mother's death. He was probably conceived in a fleeting moment of passion between two French resistance agents on the run from the Nazis in June 1944.

The older Robert Nant, 81, is a retired commercial traveller and decorated Resistance hero. He remembers clearly a night spent with "Paulette" or "Georgette", a Resistance courier with long blonde hair, in Villefranche-sur-Saone in the summer of 1944.

The two Robert Nants have never met. They are awaiting the results of a DNA test, ordered by a French court. The older Robert Nant already calls the younger Robert Nant "my son".

The story is also one of missed opportunity. The two Robert Nants , who may finally be united towards the end of their lives, almost met in 1975. The younger M. Nant sent a letter to the older M. Nant at his home in Chambery from a hotel in Strasbourg. The Resistance hero went looking for the man that he suspected might be his son. He arrived too late. The younger M. Nant telephoned a few days later but the older man's first wife suppressed news of the telephone call for several years.

Finally last year, divorced and remarried, and haunted by this missed opportunity, Robert Nant Snr hired a private detective to search for his "son". The detective found the younger M. Nant, a fragile, unmarried man, working as a cleaner in Nancy in eastern France.

Both men requested permission for a DNA test, which can only be ordered by a court under French laws. The court ordered the test last week. The results are expected in early April.

In late June 1944, while the battle of Normandy was raging on the other side of France, Robert Nant Snr escaped from the pro-Nazi, French "milice" in Lyons, dressed as a German soldier. A few days later he was hidden in an attic in Villefranche with a young woman. M. Nant recalls: "There were two beds but we were young and so... She left the next day. I never saw her again. After the war, I hear that she had been arrested and deported and died in a camp, like so many others."

M. Nant Jnr was brought up in a violent and dysfunctional adoptive family near Lyons. It was only when he was 18 that, in 1963, he discovered his real identity and that he had been born in Buchenwald, a concentration camp for German and foreign opponents of Nazism.

According to the camp records, his mother - whose name is unknown - registered him at birth as "Robert Nant". The young woman is believed to have died a few weeks' later, just before the camp was liberated by the allies.

In October 1975, the younger M. Nant read an article about the wartime activities of M. Nant Snr. Apart from his escape, Robert, known as "Bob" Nant, had managed to steal the records of the Nazi-collaborating milice in 1943. The younger man wrote to him, thinking that he might be a cousin or uncle. M. Nant's first wife appears to have deliberately blocked any further contact between the two men. She and her two daughters are now opposing the possible recognition of M. Nant Jnr.

The older man has decided that he will not meet his "son" until the DNA results are known but has decided, in principle, to recognise his paternity. "It is a question of honour," he said. "I always wanted a son. This is is a wonderful thing that has happened, even if it is happening very late in my life."