Joseph Metzger is surely one of the last witnesses to what life was like during the last war in Natzwiller, this village in the Bruche valley whose name will forever be linked to the Natzweiler concentration camp, at Struthof. He also knew this place before the 1940s. “The people of Strasbourg came to Rothau by railcar then they went up to Struthof to go down the slopes by sled,” recalls the nonagenarian, now based in Wolfisheim. I experienced winters where the temperature could drop to -15, -20° and the snow lasted for three months. »
Joseph’s mother, Célestine, ran the only grocery store in the village while his father, Roger, was a shoemaker. The couple had eight children, six of whom were boys, Joseph being the youngest. He knows the history of the camp well and even though the place was forbidden to the inhabitants of the village, Joseph has remembered several anecdotes that a documentary filmmaker recorded last year during filming. “These are…
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