Les enfants-loups

"Wolf Children" is inspired by the true story of German troops orphaned children, who between 1946 and 1947 roamed the Soviet-occupied areas of the former East Prussia, trying to get to friendly families in Lithuania. The plot is set in 1946 and focuses on fourteen Hans, who, after the death of their mother, decides to go with his younger brother Charles to Lithuania. I was moved by this story, which also shows that although wars are usually started by men, their victims are also women and children. For me, the heroes of "Wolf Children" were also the wonderful landscapes of former East Prussia. In the last years of communism, I did my military service in the Polish army in these areas and fell under their charm. To this day, my wife and I spend a short holiday there every few years, either on the Polish or Lithuanian side. The first inhabitants of these lands that we know of were the Baltic tribe of Prussians, whose culture was destroyed by Christianity and whose language disappeared at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. Later, these areas were mainly associated with the German population, but also, to a lesser extent, Lithuanian, Polish, Jewish, and Russian. My wife and I do not make any preferences, and we visit with equal curiosity all the cultural relics left by the people who used to live there.