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“HER NAME WAS Jeanne… A brunette, nothing special. But I must find her at any cost.”
At 93, Nikolai Vasenin, a former Red Army soldier and Gulag prisoner who fought for the French Resistance in World War II, is searching for the love he says he lost 60 years ago in France.
“I am 93, there is no reason to wait any longer.”
Vasenin’s extraordinary nine decades of life have seen him captured by the Nazis, escape from German captivity, join the French resistance and then be arrested on his return to the Soviet Union.
It is believed that Jeanne – the daughter of a top Resistance commander – is still alive but so far Vasenin has been unable to realise his final life’s mission of meeting her.
Born in 1919, Vasenin was conscripted into the Red Army soon after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.
On July 9, 1941, his regiment was encircled near Minsk, in present-day Belarus. Wounded, Nikolai – just like 400,000 other Soviet soldiers – was taken prisoner by the Nazis.
Following a failed attempt to escape from prison in Nuremberg, he was sent to a labour camp in the Drome region of southern France, which he managed to flee in October 1943 to join a group of Maquisards, rural fighters of the French Resistance.
“I did not speak a word of French,” he told AFP by telephone from his home in the Urals region of central Russia.
“The Maquis (resistance fighters) did not trust me in the beginning but after my first fight their attitude changed,” the old man recollects.
Fairly soon, the young Russian became a commander of a 25-strong guerilla detachment dubbed later “the group of Nicolas.”
Vasenin fought against the Nazis in the north of the Drome region, said the French journalist Laurent Brayard, who has worked on stories on the “Russian Maquis” for the Voice of Russia radio station.
“The Maquisards had a strange way of fighting: before an operation, they were having coffee at home and coming back at noon to have lunch,” Brayard said.
Through encrypted cables, the “group of Nicolas” was in contact with the British who were supplying the resistance fighters with arms.
“The captain was against us”
When Vasenin was wounded in the leg, his commander, Gerard Monot, took him to his home where his daughter Jeanne, four years his junior, nursed him.
When British-American troops arrived in September 1944, Nikolai had to go to Paris and appear before the Soviet mission’s general staff.
“Before leaving, I asked Gerard for Jeanne’s hand,” Nikolai recounted.
The three had a tough talk as the “captain was categorically against.” The Russian had to go.
“Probably, because I was poor,” Vasenin said. “And Jeanne… she was sad, but she was afraid of her father.”
In the spring of 1945, just before the end of the war, Vasenin arrived in the Soviet Black Sea port city of Odessa where he was immediately arrested, in a cruel twist of fate suffered by many Soviet ex-prisoners of war.
He was sentenced to 15 years in the Gulag “for treason” but was released early after a few years – he does not remember exactly when – and confined to internal exile in Siberia.
At the end of his prison term, Nikolai married Zinaida, a geologist who visited the mine where inmates worked.
He was rehabilitated during the perestroika reforms under the USSR’s last leader Mikhail Gorbachev, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991.
Honoured
Since Zinaida’s death five years ago, the old man and father of three lives alone in a small apartment in Novoberezovsky, near Yekaterinburg.
In 2005 he was made Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest decoration, after his story was made public for the first time.
The only survivor of the Drome Maquis group, Vasenin said he will live at least until he sees Jeanne again.
“Je t’aime” (I love you) are the only words he still remembers in French, but “it will suffice,” he said.
Will his life have a fairy tale ending? It remains to be seen. But his friends and relatives have already made contact with the French authorities in the hope of reuniting him with Jeanne once more.
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Describing her as nothing special probably won’t help his cause
Shes probably brown bread by now.
Here’s a picture of the old gent http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/78190-at-93-red-army-veteran-searches-for-lost-french-love
And here are some of the maquisards of the time http://archives.ladrome.fr/?id=136
And here’s her father, I think http://www.museedelaresistanceenligne.org/pageDoc/pageDoc.php?id_expo=&id_theme=7&id_stheme=31&id_sstheme=224&id_media=2831&ordre_media=4#media
Haha brilliant your comment made me spit my coffee out , thanx.
Ah, found, but senile. Poor guy left it too late. http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffrench.ruvr.ru%2F2013_03_12%2FNicolai-Vasenin-a-recu-des-nouvelles-de-la-Drome%2F
What an amazing life, i hope he finds her. If it hasnt already happened i can bet someone in hollywood will pen his story
These holiday/war/office romances never work out!
So his real wife was just an afterthought then? Takes the shine off it for me.
Jesus he left it late
Laughing my arse off here at the French resistance fighters taking a break from fighting and going home for lunch. It probably lasted two hours and was accompanied by a bottle of wine. No wonder the Nazis took the place so easy
Hence the poker term; ‘He folded quicker than a French soldier’
The men of the IRA were ordered to go home after the leaders had surrendered in 1916. It’s typically how resistance fighters would fight in their occupied country facing overwhelming opposition. They don’t exactly have a base to go back to now do they. Being home for lunch would be one way not to arouse suspicion of your activities.
Pregnant
Some people like to bring back happy memories or moments in their lives
There is a movie in this.
God another chick flick ;)
Nice story. From some of the comments above it seems we forget how brave some people were during the second world war. Would be nice if they could meet again.
Has he never heard of Facebook?!
Humm. A 93 year old Russian looking for his 15 minutes of Western fame. Why wouldn’t a film be made about this.
I seem to recall General Montgomery likening the French resistance at Dunkerque to the last stand of Spartacus while the Brits fled across the channel with their tails between their legs.
@Robert: you show an amazing ignorance of history. A cliched, culchie outlook that is only to be expected from a certain type. I’d like to introduce you to my great grandfather, who certainly did not flee with his tail between his legs. In fact he is still there, at a CWGC cemetery just outside Ouidekerke, Flanders, Plot 4.
Feel free to drop by anytime you are in the area. I’m sure he and his comrades would love to be educated by someone so educated, urbane and cosmopolitan such as yourself.
Imagine! after fighting the Germans for years, he goes home and gets 15 years in the gulag from the Commies for his trouble. ( he was lucky thousands more USSR pows were murdered by their own side)
it should not be too hard to find out where she is assume she is alive
My grand father also married to french woman during the WW2. Maybe they lived in Dijon. They had a son, Luis. I want to meet my uncle or even just know, how is he…
My grandfather’s name was Nikoloz (Nicolas) Sheklashvili.
Uncle Luis, come to Georgia or call me :)
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