#Story of my life song artist drivers#

In Bordeaux, the population more than doubled, swelling with refugees for whom only one option remained: a visa from neutral Portugal, allowing them passage from France, through Spain, and on to Lisbon. Others flocked to cities along the Spanish border, desperate to cross. Many hugged the coast in the hope they might secure passage on a ship off the continent. How far will get depends on circumstances, but it is safe to say that all in the end will be stranded.вЂќДЄs the French government fled Paris, and German soldiers raised the swastika at the Arc de Triomphe, refugees pushed south, scouring the country for exit visas.

вЂњDog owners killed their pets so they would not have to feed them.Weeping women pushed old people who had been squashed into prams.вЂќ Warren, of the Times, wrote that the mass of refugees were вЂњplodding steadily southward day after day, going they know not where. In Paris, вЂњHouses were cleared of their contents,вЂќ recalled Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, a leader of the French Resistance. Women harnessed themselves to carts built for horses, dragging children and goats.

#Story of my life song artist drivers#

In a country already packed with evacuees from the war zones, half the population of the Paris region, a large part of Belgium, and ten to twelve departments of France, somewhere between 6 million and 10 million persons in all, are straggling along roads in private cars, in auto trucks, on bicycles and afoot.вЂќД®xhausted drivers lost control of their vehicles. A representative of the Red Cross in Paris called it the вЂњgreatest civilian refugee problem in French history.вЂќ The New York Times correspondent Lansing Warren, who was later arrested by the Nazis, cabled home: вЂњNothing like it ever had been seen. Within weeks, millions of civilians were driven from their homes, desperate to outpace the advancing German Army.

The seeds of Sousa MendesвЂ™ collapse were planted a month earlier when, on May 10, 1940, Hitler launched his invasion of France and the Low Countries. вЂњHere the situation is horrible,вЂќ the 54-year-old diplomat wrote to his brother-in-law, вЂњand I am in bed with a severe nervous breakdown.вЂќ He refused to leave his room even to eat. But now, faced with the most consequential decision of his life, he had shut down. He found something to laugh about, relatives recall, even in the worst of times. And Sousa Mendes loved his mistress, who was five months pregnant with his 15th child. He loved Portugal, and wrote a book extolling this вЂњland of dreams and poetry.вЂќ He loved belting out popular French tunes, especially Rina KettyвЂ™s вЂњJвЂ™attendrai,вЂќ a tender love song that in the shifting context of war was becoming an anthem for peace. PortugalвЂ™s portly consul general in Bordeaux, France, Sousa Mendes lived in a large flat overlooking the Garonne River with his wife and several of their 14 children-all of whom were becoming increasingly concerned.ДЄn aristocrat and bon vivant, Sousa Mendes deeply loved his family. It was the second week of June 1940, and Aristides de Sousa Mendes would not come out of his room.