9/25/2006:
The trip to France was supposed to be routine for the seven sisters of the Maryvale Convent located near Valley City. As Sisters of Mary of the Presentation, a French order, they were required to study at the motherhouse in Broons, a small town in northwestern France. The trip for sisters Edward, Annetta, Theresa, Corinne, Eloise, Loretta, and Alexandra, however, would be anything but ordinary.
The nuns were in France, immersed in their studies, when the war broke out in Europe on September 1, 1939. News of the war rarely reached them in the remote convent, but when France surrendered in June of 1940, the war would come closer to immersing them. Communication with the United States ceased that July, and the sisters knew it would only be a matter of time before the Germans came for them. They waited for two more years before a German soldier finally showed up at the convent for the American sisters. They were to leave in the morning, and the sisters packed their possessions. Today in 1942, they left the convent for an unknown destination.
The first day they traveled to Rennes where they were joined by 22 Sisters of the Holy Spirit. They slept in small shacks that night and learned that they were going to be taken to Vittel, a resort town in the northeast of France. The resort was turned into an internment camp for foreign nationals trapped in France following the outbreak of the war, and the many hotels were used as their barracks. The nuns rode on a leaky train car for three days before reaching Vittel, but not without some apprehension. Their car was attached to an ammunition train. Sister Alexandra said, “If something attacked us, we’d have been a grease spot on the tracks.”
After the sisters finally reached their destination, life in “Camp Convent,” as they called it, settled into a normal routine. Priests at the camp held daily Mass and the sisters were even allowed to have retreats and classes. Soldiers rarely interfered with the sisters’ daily lives, except during occasional inspections. These, too, rarely affected the sisters since inspections usually began on the ground floor. By the time the soldiers reached their fifth floor, word had gotten up to the sisters, giving them plenty of time to hide any objects soldiers might confiscate. These objects, among them a toaster, were usually hidden on the ledge outside the window.
The war never came to Camp Convent, apart from planes flying overhead. Yet, this added to a sense of abandonment for the nuns. They had been receiving packages from the Red Cross since the beginning of their internment, but Sister Loretta still remembers feeling deserted. She said, “We felt neglected, out of the picture.” But there they stayed, living each day as normal as possible until the day they would be freed. That day came in February 1944. The seven sisters from North Dakota and other sisters of the Holy Spirit were exchanged for German prisoners that were detained in the US. Other internees cheered for the sisters as they left Vittel.
The sisters arrived in the United States on March 15, 1944. All remember the sense of joy they felt when stepping on American soil for the first time in over five years. Sister Alexandra said, “I thought, ‘This is home. Oh, the joy.” The sisters returned to their quiet lives, some remaining in Valley City while others moved on. The memories of Camp Convent, however, always kept them connected.
By Tessa Sandstrom
Source:
“Sisters recall their time as German prisoners,” Bismarck Tribune. July 3, 2005: 5C.