WWII survivors share haunting memories as France marks 80th anniversary of Nazi surrender

PARIS (AP) — As France prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of the Nazi surrender to Allied forces, survivors of World War II reflect on painful memories of fear, deprivation and persecution shaped by the German occupation of the country and the deportation of Jews and others to death camps.

In May 1940, Nazi forces swept through France. Among those caught in the chaos was 15-year-old Geneviève Perrier, who fled her village in northeastern France to escape the advancing German troops like millions of others. By June, France had surrendered.

Three years later, Esther Senot, 15, was arrested by French police and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1944, 19-year-old Ginette Kolinka was sent to the same death camp.

Now close to 100 years old, the women continue to share their stories, determined to keep the memory of the war alive and pass its lessons on to future generations.

“We were scared,” Perrier remembered as she described fleeing on bicycle with her mother, carrying only a small travel bag, while her uncle took a horse-drawn cart on the roads of eastern France.

“There were lots of people fleeing, with kids in baby carriages, everyone was running away. There was a column of civilians fleeing and a column of French soldiers fleeing," she said.

Perrier and others hid in a field when they heard bomber planes. “Mom had a white hat. Some told her: ‘remove your hat!’ And that’s when I saw a huge bomb pass over our heads. It didn’t explode. It was the chance of a lifetime.”

Later taking a train, Perrier found refuge for a few months in a small town in southwestern France, in an area governed by the collaborationist Vichy regime, before her mother decided they would go back home — only to live under harsh Nazi occupation.

“The Resistance was big in our area,” Perrier said, adding she was willing to join the so-called French Forces of the Interior (FFI). Three women from the FFI were captured and tortured by the Nazis just a few kilometers away from her home, she recalled.

“My mother kept telling me: ‘No, I don’t want you to leave. I don’t have a husband any more, so if you go…’" she said. "She was right, because all three of them were killed.”

Still, Perrier kept her spirit of resistance in her daily life.

“At church, there was a Catholic hymn,” she said, singing: “Catholic and French, always!”

“We bellowed it with all our might, hoping they (the Nazi soldiers) would hear,” she said.

When the Allied forces landed on Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, Perrier said she didn't have much access to news and could not believe it.

Later that year, she saw the troops of General Leclerc’s 2nd French Division, equipped with American tanks, coming into her village. “They liberated us and there was a tank that had stopped almost on our doorstep. So I went to see the tank, of course. And then, they held a ball not far away,” she said.

Towards the end of the war, French men brought a German soldier they accused of having killed a baby to the village's cemetery. “They made him dig his grave. They put him in it… They killed him," she said.

Born in Poland from a Jewish family who emigrated to France at the end of the 1930s, Esther Senot was 15 when she was arrested in Paris by French police. She was deported in Sept. 1943 to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp by cattle train. At the ramp, the Nazis selected those they could use as forced laborers.

“A German with his loudspeaker said: the elderly, women, children, those who are tired can get on the trucks,” she recalled. "Out of the 1,000 people we were, 650 got on the trucks.... And 106 of us, women, were selected to go back to work in the camp to forced labor.” Others were gassed to death soon after their arrival.

Senot survived 17 months in Auschwitz-Birkenau and other camps and made it back to France at age 17.

In spring 1945, the Lutetia hotel in Paris became a gathering place for those returning from the concentration camps. Senot described the crowd of people looking for missing family members, some bringing photos of their loved ones, while walls were covered with posters listing the names of survivors.

“It was bureaucratic," Senot said. “At the first counter, they gave us temporary identity cards. Then they gave us a fairly basic medical examination ... And those who were lucky enough to find their family, they went to an office where they were given some money and were told: ‘Now you’ve completed the formalities... you go home.’”

Seventeen members of Senot’s family were killed by the Nazis during WWII, including her mother, her father and six siblings.

In a recent commemoration in front of the hotel, Senot said she had hoped her survival would "bear witness to the absolute crime in which we were caught.” But once back in France, she felt the hardest thing was the indifference to the fate of those who had been deported.

“France had been liberated for one year and people didn’t expect us to return with all the misery in the world on our shoulders," she said.

In her former Parisian neighborhood, a small crowd watched her. "I weighed 32 kilos (70 pounds) when I came back, my hair was shaved. One year after the Liberation, people hadn’t meet any woman looking like that."

Senot said when she started to explain what happened to her, “you could see the disbelief in their eyes.” "And suddenly they got angry. They said: 'But you have gone mad, you are talking nonsense, it couldn’t have happened.’ And I will always remember the face of a man who looked at me and said: ‘You came back in such small numbers, what did you do to come back and not the others?‘”

Kolinka, who was 19 when she was deported in April 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, is well known in France for sharing her vivid memories of the concentration camps with the younger generation in the past two decades.

In June 1945, when she returned to Paris, she weighed only 26 kilos (57 pounds) and was very weak. Still, compared to some others, she felt “lucky” to find her mother and four sisters alive in France when coming back home. Her father, a brother and a sister died in death camps.

She did not speak about the war for over half a century. “Those who told their story, it’s true that it seemed unbelievable (at the time),” she said.

Six million European Jews and people from other minorities were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.

In the 2000s, Kolinka joined an association of surviving deportees and began to speak out.

“What we have to keep in mind is that everything that happened was because one man (Adolf Hitler) hated the Jews," she said.

“Hatred, for me, is dangerous,” she added. “As soon as we say: that one is like this, that one is like that, it already proves that we make a difference when in reality, no matter whether we are Jews, Muslims, Christians, Blacks, we are human beings.”

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AP journalists Nicolas Garriga and Patrick Hermansen contributed to the story.

People walk with a banner reading "Inter-generation march for memory and transmission" before the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

Holocaust survivor Arlette Testyler attends the ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

From the left, holocaust survivors Marie-Josee Chombart de Lauwe, Ginette Kolinka, Arlette Testyler, Josette Grabarz, Jacques Altmann, Ester Senot attend a commemoration to mark the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

From the left, holocaust survivors Ginette Kolinka, Arlette Testyler, Jacques Altmann, and Ester Senot walk during the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

Holocaust survivor Ester Senot, 97, attends a commemorative ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

People attend the ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

Holocaust survivor Jacques Altmann attends a commemorative ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

Patricia Miralles, left, French Minister in charge of War Veterans and Memory, welcomes Holocaust survivor Ester Senot at the ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

Front from the left, holocaust survivors Arlette Testyler, Ginette Kolinka, Ester Senot, standing with white hair, and Jacques Altmann, attend a ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

People attend a commemorative ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees in front of the Hotel Lutetia, in background, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

Genevieve Perrier, 99, a civilian under Nazi occupation, answers the Associated Press, with a portrait of her when she was 20 in 1945, on Tuesday April 29 2025 in Precy sous Thil, Burgundy, France. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)

Genevieve Perrier, 99, a civilian under Nazi occupation, poses as she answers the Associated Press on Tuesday April 29 2025 in Precy sous Thil, Burgundy, France. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)

Holocaust survivor Ginette Kolinka ,100, attends a commemorative ceremony to mark the 80th anniversary of the return of the deportees, in Paris, France, Sunday, April 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

A group of Buddhist monks and their rescue dog are striding single file down country roads and highways across the South, captivating Americans nationwide and inspiring droves of locals to greet them along their route.

In their flowing saffron and ocher robes, the men are walking for peace. It's a meditative tradition more common in South Asian countries, and it's resonating now in the U.S., seemingly as a welcome respite from the conflict, trauma and politics dividing the nation.

Their journey began Oct. 26, 2025, at a Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Texas, and is scheduled to end in mid-February in Washington, D.C., where they will ask Congress to recognize Buddha’s day of birth and enlightenment as a federal holiday. Beyond promoting peace, their highest priority is connecting with people along the way.

“My hope is, when this walk ends, the people we met will continue practicing mindfulness and find peace,” said the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, the group’s soft-spoken leader who is making the trek barefoot. He teaches about mindfulness, forgiveness and healing at every stop.

Preferring to sleep each night in tents pitched outdoors, the monks have been surprised to see their message transcend ideologies, drawing huge crowds into churchyards, city halls and town squares across six states. Documenting their journey on social media, they — and their dog, Aloka — have racked up millions of followers online. On Saturday, thousands thronged in Columbia, South Carolina, where the monks chanted on the steps of the State House and received a proclamation from the city's mayor, Daniel Rickenmann.

At their stop Thursday in Saluda, South Carolina, Audrie Pearce joined the crowd lining Main Street. She had driven four hours from her village of Little River, and teared up as Pannakara handed her a flower.

“There’s something traumatic and heart-wrenching happening in our country every day,” said Pearce, who describes herself as spiritual, but not religious. “I looked into their eyes and I saw peace. They’re putting their bodies through such physical torture and yet they radiate peace.”

Hailing from Theravada Buddhist monasteries across the globe, the 19 monks began their 2,300 mile (3,700 kilometer) trek at the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth.

Their journey has not been without peril. On Nov. 19, as the monks were walking along U.S. Highway 90 near Dayton, Texas, their escort vehicle was hit by a distracted truck driver, injuring two monks. One of them lost his leg, reducing the group to 18.

This is Pannakara's first trek in the U.S., but he's walked across several South Asian countries, including a 112-day journey across India in 2022 where he first encountered Aloka, an Indian Pariah dog whose name means divine light in Sanskrit.

Then a stray, the dog followed him and other monks from Kolkata in eastern India all the way to the Nepal border. At one point, he fell critically ill and Pannakara scooped him up in his arms and cared for him until he recovered. Now, Aloka inspires him to keep going when he feels like giving up.

“I named him light because I want him to find the light of wisdom,” Pannakara said.

The monk's feet are now heavily bandaged because he's stepped on rocks, nails and glass along the way. His practice of mindfulness keeps him joyful despite the pain from these injuries, he said.

Still, traversing the southeast United States has presented unique challenges, and pounding pavement day after day has been brutal.

“In India, we can do shortcuts through paddy fields and farms, but we can’t do that here because there are a lot of private properties,” Pannakara said. “But what’s made it beautiful is how people have welcomed and hosted us in spite of not knowing who we are and what we believe.”

In Opelika, Alabama, the Rev. Patrick Hitchman-Craig hosted the monks on Christmas night at his United Methodist congregation.

He expected to see a small crowd, but about 1,000 people showed up, creating the feel of a block party. The monks seemed like the Magi, he said, appearing on Christ’s birthday.

“Anyone who is working for peace in the world in a way that is public and sacrificial is standing close to the heart of Jesus, whether or not they share our tradition,” said Hitchman-Craig. “I was blown away by the number of people and the diversity of who showed up.”

After their night on the church lawn, the monks arrived the next afternoon at the Collins Farm in Cusseta, Alabama. Judy Collins Allen, whose father and brother run the farm, said about 200 people came to meet the monks — the biggest gathering she’s ever witnessed there.

“There was a calm, warmth and sense of community among people who had not met each other before and that was so special,” she said.

Long Si Dong, a spokesperson for the Fort Worth temple, said the monks, when they arrive in Washington, plan to seek recognition of Vesak, the day which marks the birth and enlightenment of the Buddha, as a national holiday.

“Doing so would acknowledge Vesak as a day of reflection, compassion and unity for all people regardless of faith,” he said.

But Pannakara emphasized that their main goal is to help people achieve peace in their lives. The trek is also a separate endeavor from a $200 million campaign to build towering monuments on the temple’s 14-acre property to house the Buddha’s teachings engraved in stone, according to Dong.

The monks practice and teach Vipassana meditation, an ancient Indian technique taught by the Buddha himself as core for attaining enlightenment. It focuses on the mind-body connection — observing breath and physical sensations to understand reality, impermanence and suffering. Some of the monks, including Pannakara, walk barefoot to feel the ground directly and be present in the moment.

Pannakara has told the gathered crowds that they don't aim to convert people to Buddhism.

Brooke Schedneck, professor of religion at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, said the tradition of a peace walk in Theravada Buddhism began in the 1990s when the Venerable Maha Ghosananda, a Cambodian monk, led marches across war-torn areas riddled with landmines to foster national healing after civil war and genocide in his country.

“These walks really inspire people and inspire faith,” Schedneck said. “The core intention is to have others watch and be inspired, not so much through words, but through how they are willing to make this sacrifice by walking and being visible.”

On Thursday, Becki Gable drove nearly 400 miles (about 640 kilometers) from Cullman, Alabama, to catch up with them in Saluda. Raised Methodist, Gable said she wanted some release from the pain of losing her daughter and parents.

“I just felt in my heart that this would help me have peace,” she said. “Maybe I could move a little bit forward in my life.”

Gable says she has already taken one of Pannakara’s teachings to heart. She’s promised herself that each morning, as soon as she awakes, she’d take a piece of paper and write five words on it, just as the monk prescribed.

“Today is my peaceful day.”

Freelance photojournalist Allison Joyce contributed to this report.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Buddhist monks who are participating in the, "Walk For Peace," get lunch Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Aloka rests with Buddhist monks who are participating in the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A sign is seen greeting the Buddhist monks who are participating in the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Supporters pray with Buddhist monks who are participating in the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Supporters watch Buddhist monks who are participating in the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

A Buddhist monk ties a prayer bracelet around the wrist of Josey Lee, 2-months-old, during the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Bhikkhu Pannakara, a spiritual leader, speaks to supporters during the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Buddhist monks participate in the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Buddhist monks participate in the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Bhikkhu Pannakara leads other buddhist monks in the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Audrie Pearce greets Buddhist monks who are participating in the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Bhikkhu Pannakara, a spiritual leader, speaks to supporters during the, "Walk For Peace," Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Buddhist monks who are participating in the, "Walk For Peace," arrive in Saluda, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

Buddhist monks who are participating in the, "Walk For Peace," are seen with their dog, Aloka, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)