“Join the German army or be shot!”

The officer’s threatening words heralded bad news for me, just 17 years old and months from graduating from my Strasbourg, France, high school. I had no choice, since Hitler’s German forces now occupied my home town. I became a soldier in Hitler’s army, forced to fight for my city’s conqueror — forced to fight for my life.

Many young Frenchmen fought as conscripted soldiers in Hitler’s army. People called us malgré-nous, meaning “in spite of us” — an apt description. Most of us were sent to the eastern front to fight against Russia, for Hitler feared if given a chance, we would desert to the Allied Forces in the west. He also realized we would not give our best in a fight against our own countrymen.

On July 17, 1944, my German infantry company was ordered to retreat west on foot from northern Russia into German-occupied Latvia. The first night of retreat my company’s few surviving soldiers scattered 50 meters apart along the front line. As no natural trenches existed, we were required to dig our own. I carried a machine gun — not the multi-purpose, foldable shovel/pickax needed for scooping out holes to lie in. Thankfully, another soldier loaned me his shovel.

During our second day of retreat we realized that the Russians were in hot pursuit. We spent the next night hiding in an open field under huge haystacks. Before I fell asleep, an Alsatian soldier pulled a paper from his pocket and asked, “Would you please read this to me?” It was a Christian prayer, and hearing its message seemed to calm his fear. However, my own heart remained insensitive to its meaning.

At 4 a.m., we were awakened by a deafening racket. A Russian artillery unit was spitting shells over our heads; the sound mimicked planes breaking the sound barrier. One glance through the straw revealed waves of Russian soldiers charging toward us. Death seemed imminent.

Paul Wolff (2004)

I flung myself belly-down by the roadside, holding my gun’s butt in my left hand. I had only fired a few shots when a severe blast shook my body. A Russian bullet had struck my left hand and exploded, shattering all its bones and leaving my thumb hanging by a thread. Shrapnel pierced my forehead and eyes. Internal bleeding detached my retina.

Blinded and bleeding, I hollered, “Help me! Help me!” A soldier grabbed my arm and dragged me to the German artillery section behind the front lines; shells exploded around the car as an officer sped me to the nearest action station. Upon arrival I collapsed in the dirt, dizzy and weak from blood loss, and lost consciousness. Hours later I awoke on a German hospital train with my thumb amputated. The next day’s wireless news told of a failed bomb attempt on Hitler’s life by Count Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. I remember thinking, “How I wish that attempt had been successful, and this war would end!”

In the next few weeks I moved from place to place with Hitler’s army dodging the Russians. Finally, I was admitted to the Institution for the Blind in Chemnitz, Germany.

Deep depression settled on me. I felt my blindness an unbearable handicap, limiting my future. In the spring of 1945, a nurse asked if anyone would like to attend a Protestant Easter service. I hadn’t come from a religious family. In my home there were no Bible reading, hymn singing, praying or spiritual discussion. My Huguenot grandmother dabbled in the occult, which I believe negatively influenced my extended family and me, blocking our receptivity to Christ and the gospel. Spiritual light struggles to shine in such an environment; I had never sensed the slightest ray.

I agreed to attend the Easter service anyway, and God used it to show me that physical and material needs shouldn’t be my first priority. At the time, I didn’t realize that God was about to give light to my inner being, after having first put my outward being into prison. I now realize that my spirit lay in darkness long before my body entered the world of the sightless.

After the war’s end, I returned to France and began to study law. One day my friend Jean visited me. “I have found salvation, true peace and joy in the Lord Jesus Christ!” he announced. I intuitively felt that his experience was authentic; my heart yearned for the same. Later, the reading of the Gospels (in Braille) convinced me that Jesus is the Son of God.

An extraordinary impression of the real presence of Jesus as a living person gripped me during a December 1946 gospel meeting. I felt an overwhelming sense of a mysterious love — a love I had never experienced before. A month later I decided to follow Him. Six months later I attended a youth camp in Guebwiller, France. During a worship service, God’s holiness confronted me, granting me a deeper awareness of my sins and a greater appreciation for Jesus’ death. I finally understood that through Jesus’ blood my sins were forgiven. I felt afresh the quickening of God’s Spirit, and realized I was no longer spiritually blind — for I had experienced the light of God.