THE TELEGRAPH: Children believed to have been fathered by German soldiers in occupied France are receiving dual Franco-German nationality in a belated move to recognise their identity.
Pierre, born in a town in Normandy, realised his family were keeping a terrible secret from him when he discovered shortly before his wedding that he had been baptised without a surname.
He called his mother's husband "papa" but always had the "painful intuition" that he was not his real father.
Then seven years ago, when he was 60, his mother finally admitted that he was an "enfant de Boche" – roughly translated as "child of Jerry" - born during the war to French women and German soldiers. At the age of 20, she had an affair with a German sailor whom she met while cleaning a chateau requisitioned by the Nazis.
On Wednesday, Pierre, whose surname has been withheld, reportedly became the first of at least 200,000 children believed to have been fathered by German soldiers in France during the war to receive dual Franco-German nationality. He was to receive his passport and papers at a ceremony in the German embassy in Paris. >>> Henry Samuel in Paris | Wednesday, October 07, 2009
