Gisèle and her mother hardly ever talked about it again. At the age of 10, she gathered her courage and confronted her mother, who told her the truth: We adopted you when you were 4 years old you spoke German, but now you are French. The idea that Gisèle might have been abandoned by someone of ill repute made her terribly ashamed. In the schoolyard, children jeered at those who were said to be born of “unknown fathers.” Women who were said to have slept with occupying soldiers-“ horizontal collaborators”-had their heads shaved and were publicly shamed by angry crowds. It was the late 1940s, just after the war, a time when whispered stories like this one passed from parents to children. T the small elementary school in Jouy-sous-les-Côtes, in northeastern France, Gisèle Marc knew the rumor about her: that her parents were not her real parents, and her real mother must have been a whore. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. To hear more audio stories, download the hark app.
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