CNN –
Over the ridge, across the border lay the promised land, the neutral territory of Spain—an escape, a second chance, a future.
Behind it was Nazi occupied France and safe imprisonment or death.
During World War II, a dangerous route through the Pyrenees offered hundreds of thousands of resistance fighters, civilians, Jews, Allied soldiers and escaped prisoners of war an opportunity to flee Nazi persecutors.
For many, the journey up through rocky boulder fields and frozen glaciers was the final leg of a long and arduous journey across wartime Europe, in hiding from the German military, Gestapo secret police, and SS paramilitary forces.
This month, the route, which begins in France’s Ariege Pyrenees, once again echoed with footsteps as 87 people climbed their way from France to Spain, including descendants of those who fled and walked to honor their relatives .
The Freedom Trail, whose final climb zigzags through a sheet of ice, is an annual “walking memorial,” as Englishman Paul Williams, a mountain guide and custodian of local history, puts it.
Courtesy of Marie Janiszewski
Richard Christenson with his daughter Ruth
Oliver Briscoe
Modern hikers tackle the Freedom Trail.
The trek was officially recognized by French Presidential Decree in 1994 to mark the 50th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy that began the liberation of France. It commemorates those who fled to Spain during the war.
Past hikers include Luke Janiszewski, a 25-year-old from the Baltimore area.
“I didn’t have any Nazis on my tail, I wasn’t climbing for my life,” he told CNN. But he adds, “I’ve often tried to think, ‘Wow, my great-grandfather has this with can do what I have to do.'”
Lieutenant Richard Christenson, a B-17 pilot, was shot down over northern France and flown over the Pyrenees during the war. But he made it back home to spend the rest of his life with Ruth, his wife.
His daughter Kathryn, 81, who has written a book about his escape, and his grandsons Marie, 52, and Tim, 54, joined great-grandchildren Luke and Jake on the train in 2018, its 25th anniversary.
“I’ve never been to Europe,” said Tim, adding that he wouldn’t normally have come just to see the mountains. “But to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps, oh, in a jiffy,” he told CNN.
“I felt a little connected to him, you know?” Luke, who never knew his great-grandfather, recalled.
This reunion with the past came alive at a pre-walk dinner, where the Janiszewskis met descendants of the local family, Lt. Christenson saved.
Tim sat with them and reflected on how this human drama played out against the backdrop of America’s role in ending World War II.
“We came in and saved France, but your grandfather or great-grandfather saved my grandfather when he was trying to help you save. It’s just this beautiful web and connection that makes you feel like you’re one with everyone.”
Oliver Briscoe
The border between France and Spain in the Pyrenees is often used by people fleeing persecution.
On the second weekend in July each year, this walk brings back memories of its own. This year it was dedicated in particular to Paul Broué, a French resistance fighter and one of the founders of the Freedom Trail Association.
He was born on July 9, 1923 and escaped across the Pyrenees in July 1944. Had he not passed away in 2020, this year would have been his 100th birthday.
Broué embodied local tales of war—not just the mountain guide “passeurs,” but the families who hid, guided, and died to help men like Christenson.
About 50% of British and American refugees passed through this area of the mountains, according to Guy Seris, a retired French colonel who is now president of the FTA, which organizes the four-day, 40-mile hike.
Seris is also a local from Seix, a town in the lushly forested foothills that is the first stop on the way and where the local mayor is hosting a ‘vin d’honneur’ dinner to mark the occasion.
“The town and residents of Seix consider it an honor given the role the community played during the war,” Seris told CNN.
This year, in his speeches to the Wanderers, he emphasized that those old enough who fought in the war “or experienced it or, for the most part, heard about it at home” have a duty to tell the younger generations about it.
It is these memories that hikers take with them to Spain. The two countries are linked by shared mountain life – a life in herds of pine forests and herds of bell-shaped cows that no border can separate.
Before the outbreak of World War II, the region’s mountain escape routes were reversed when Republican refugees came to France at the end of the Spanish Civil War to flee General Franco’s rule.
Although Franco was sympathetic to Germany, Spain remained neutral during World War II, largely because of its reliance on US imports. And so a blind eye was turned to those who crossed the Pyrenees.
Escaped Allied soldiers who made it were detained in the nearest Spanish town, transferred to a prison camp, and soon released.
Courtesy of Joseph McNichol
Frank McNichol, front row, second from right, is pictured with his B-17 bomber crew in 1944.
US Air Force Lieutenant Frank McNichol was briefly held captive in the Spanish town of Isaba while making the crossing in 1944 after being shot down in a bombing raid.
His son Joseph McNichol, 64, a retired Florida police officer, said he made a pilgrimage in 2016 to see the cell where his father was held.
“It was a public holiday in this part of Spain but our hotel called the mayor who they knew and explained the situation,” McNichol said.
“He was more than happy to come this morning, open up the town hall and show me the room, which was just a dusty old storage room.”
Courtesy of Joseph McNichol
Joseph McNichol sees the room where his father was held in Isaba, Spain.
McNichol said he was only seven years old when his father later died of liver failure from hepatitis, which he likely contracted while he was in France.
“I’ve never had an adult conversation with my father about anything, not the least of which is this subject.”
Reflecting on how he saw the cell in the small town in Spain, having crossed the border exactly 72 years to the day since his father was there, he said: “It gives me goosebumps to think talk about it.”