My name is Alice Gillig. I was born in Daul. And I was born in a family coming from a farming background, but the first of the line set up a firm in Strasbourg.

My grandmother, was a girl from Rosheim, and she was very proud of her village. She'd been brought up in a very French-speaking family - besides, as my grandfather's. So that my father, his brother and his sister were brought up in Nancy: the two brothers attended the Malgrange secondary school, and my aunt attended "les demoiselles Menestrel" (?). So, at the time, you somewhat sent your children abroad to study.

My grandmother taught me lots of things, she was a religious person, but she really loved France: when she went to see her children in Nancy, on the Fourteenth of July, she gave them little wooden soldiers which still exist today. Just to tell you in what atmosphere I was brought up.

Later, when I was 13, I was dragged join to the French Guides. And it left strong marks on me, so to speak: eventually, the "promise" I made in 1930 has been the leading thread through all my life - up until now. This promise was: "I swear before God on my honour and with God's grace, I undertake to do my best to serve God, Church, an my country; to help my neighbour in any event and to observe the scout law". This part "to help my neighbour in any event" was, in fact, so to speak, what I had wanted to do for France during the war.

In '39, I'd studied to become a nurse, and I'd enlisted in the French army were I worked as a nurse until '40. Which led me, after the great rout, to remain in Pau and to be demobilised.

So I had to go back to my family in Strasbourg. There I met former scout friends who had already begun, from June on, to resist, that is to say they helped French prisoners who went through Strasbourg. So we created a team: six girls who all belonged to the Resistance and who were former scout leaders.

And then, little by little, what we did for the prisoners changed, we helped those who wanted to go back to France to escape. So we started to get them across the border with the help of people we knew around Schirmeck. But it didn't last very long, because the Germans noticed there was a lot of traffic across the border.

So we thought of Switzerland. I went to Saint-Louis with a friend and drew a topographical map of the area of Hegenheim where there was, apparently, an easy way of going to Switzerland near the graveyard. We duplicated this map and compared it with maps that had already been drawn and gave them to prisoners who, at the time, crossed the border on their own. After a while, it became known. The Germans noticed it, and we had to find something else.

My mother, my sister and I went on holiday in Soultzeren, at the foot of the Schlucht, thanks to scouts we'd met during off-piste skiing. And these boys showed us a way, beyond Soultzeren, which went along a place called Eichwäldel and lead to the foot of the Tanet rocks. There, every Sunday from 1940 to 1942, - two at a time - we took between 8 and 12 prisoners we'd met at the train station in Strasbourg and went with them to the train station in Colmar then to Munster - with a little train - and there we walked to the Tanet pass. We showed them the way they had to take to go to Gérardmer, where the nuns of Sion - who had a house there and with whom we had an agreement - escorted them via Epinal and then, in goods wagons, to Lyon.

These prisoners arrived at our place thanks to a watchword, that is to say every evening we waited for them at Saint-Jean church, near the Virgin's altar. They could come and find us there. Then, we had to take them to the families, to dress them, to feed them, to take pictures and make false identity cards we tried to locate in French-speaking areas of Alsace - so that they had the right papers in case they were asked to show them.

Indeed, it lasted until 1942. At the time, the 6 girls financed the purchase of the food, the pictures, everything they needed to dress them and put them up, and it began to be heavy…

So, our leader, whose name was Lucienne Welchinger (?) and who was responsible for our group decided to go to Vichy with a friend to ask the French government a grant. At the time we thought the government had a secret agreement with De Gaulle; we were a bit gullible at the time, that's true. When they arrived in Vichy, they were well and truly sent back home, without any grant, without anything.

Unfortunately, one of them was arrested at the border while she was coming back from Nancy: she'd taken the wrong train by mistake. And unfortunately, when they carried out a search at her house, they found papers with our names.

So, all 6 of us were arrested. We were sent to prison in Germany, in Kehl, for a few weeks. And the Gestapo sent us to the Schirmeck camp in custody until they were ready for the trial. One year after, in 1943, the trial was held. It was the first trial in Alsace monitored by the same body, the Volksgerichthof [in German in the original], that is to say "the German people's court" managed by doctor Freisslehr (?) of evil memory and whose magistrate's assistants were the leading dignitaries of the different Nazi political parties. 5 were sentenced to death and others between 8 and 12 years' imprisonment. We were judged as German citizens and as terrorists.

I must add that men had been included in our trial, they didn't directly belong to our team -strictly speaking - but worked in the same direction as us but on their own: the Germans probably reckoned girls weren't able to do it on their own! That was their opinion at the time, luckily enough it's changed today.

Obviously, we were scattered in different prisons: 5 among us went to Ziginheim (???), that's to say in the north east of Germany, Hessen. We spent more than two years there doing hard labour.

As for me, I was in a cell … when I think about the cells as they are today and about those at the time where 8 people slept in a cell meant for one person, where there only was one bed and the others had to sleep on the floor! The others worked in factories or in shops … I was the only one who had to stay alone in my cell all day long. I'd studied commercial courses; so I was able to be a bookkeeper and I worked as a clerk - which allowed me to go round the prison, outside my cell. I went to the office in the morning and was back in the evening.

And that's how, after three years of imprisonment, I couldn't stand… I started to think I could escape.

At first I tried to take my sister along with me, but she wasn't brave enough to follow me. So I said to myself: I'm leaving alone. So, one night, I went down to the cellar and I tried to unscrew the door with scissors: but it didn't work. So I spent the night listening to people who were looking for me. And in the morning, a warden came with two prisoners to fetch a drink the German name was "Wald un Wiesen Tee" [in German in the original] in the men's prison which was opposite: it consisted in hot water with ordinary leaves in it; this and a piece of bread was all we had… and they'd come to fetch it. Since she'd opened the door, I took the opportunity to slip through her fingers, go out, climb the wall and escape.

Today, 60 years later, I must admit that it was a suicide mission which shouldn't have been successful. And I must say that I'm a deeply religious person. I prayed and I'm sure it was God's will to find … I've walked across Germany for three weeks… to find people who helped me, to find things that enabled me to travel, to take the train… more particularly a soldier taken prisoner I had met while he went for a walk in the woods and who had given me 40 marks… I experienced fantastic things that helped me and that enabled me to reach the Swiss border three weeks later.

A friend, who lived nearby, had told me Swiss groups in Germany could help me to cross the Swiss border. I crawled under barbed wire, I arrived there in poor condition.

Obviously, the Swiss custom officers were on my back. They questioned me and left me in the French authorities' care in Annemasse, from where I could go back, via Grenoble. I could go back thanks to an American officer who came from Strasbourg with a jeep to get me in Grenoble.

So, here's my story, which is twinned with that of my husband. He was a great resistance fighter too because, during the war, French officers couldn't be mobilized. 50 officers were taken hostage and put in a camp in Cernay where indeed they had to volunteer in the SS. 42 out of 50 refused to wear the uniform and were sent to Poland in an SS training camp were they refused again and they ended up in a concentration camp in Neuengam. There, 22 out of the 42 died, and there were only 20 left. Today, only 4 of them are still alive.

When I was back in Strasbourg, obviously I caused a little sensation: it may be understandable. It was the first time there had been elections for women, at the time. It was the first time I voted: I was 27 or 28 at the time; and I was elected town councillor. I think I said everything I wanted to say…

Except that the things I wrote in 1945, just after the return to work, were a very mundane experience for me. But 60 years later, I realise all the same better the hard times I had. That's why, I think, I was a privileged person: I had to escape perhaps to transmit to the next generations … what a woman can do