Word: burckel
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Germans ordered French-speaking Lorrainers to choose between evacuating to unoccupied France or being sent to Poland, Germany's Siberia. Almost all of the 800,000 Frenchmen naturally chose France. The Germans, under Gauleiter Josef Burckel, gave them a few hours to pack a suitcase and acquire not more than 2,000 francs in cash, then shoved them across the border. Each day five to seven trains, flying the medieval cross of Lorraine, carried some 6,000 Lorrainers to Lyon, thence south to the Midi. Mostly the evacuees were farmers, welcome to the fallow land of southern France...
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