Forever Guilty

<p>Living since the mid-eighteenth century for several generations in the southeastern part of Austria-Hungary surrounded by neighbors whose family names were Hungarian Slavic or in increasing numbers German my French family name was a rarity if not a curio that was most often badly pronounced especially by my teasing friends in high school. Before the war I asked my father to explain but he always refused declaring “Since we had been kicked out from France we shall never return.” However having found each other after the war in 1948 refugees from the communist takeover our properties. And upon learning that my brother André had perished he relented. Bit by bit he revealed to me the following story which his father had passed on to him.</p>