They climbed mountains to escape Nazis. Now their great-grandchildren are making the same journey

20.07.2023 - 12:16 / edition.cnn.com / Paul Williams

Over the ridge of the mountain, across the border was the promised land, the neutral territory Spain – an escape, a second chance, a future.

Behind them was Nazi-occupied France and certain incarceration or death.

During World War II, a perilous route through the Pyrenees mountains provided a means for hundreds of thousands of resistance fighters, civilians, Jews, allied soldiers and escaped prisoners of war to evade Nazi pursuers.

For many, the journey up through rocky boulder fields and frozen glaciers was the final stretch in a long and fraught journey across wartime Europe, hiding from German military, Gestapo secret police and SS paramilitary forces.

This month, the route which starts in France’s Ariege Pyrenees, once again echoed to footfalls as 87 people climbed their way from France to Spain, including descendants of those who made their escape, walking to honor their relatives.

The Freedom Trail, whose final ascent is attacked in a zig-zag path through an ice sheet, is an annual “walking memorial,” as Englishman Paul Williams, a mountain guide and guardian of local history, puts it.

Formally recognized by French presidential decree in 1994 to mark the 50th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy landings that began the liberation of France, the trek remembers those who fled to Spain during the war.

Among previous hikers is Luke Janiszewski, a 25-year-old from the Baltimore area.

“I didn’t have Nazis on my tail, I wasn’t climbing for my life,” he told CNN. But, he adds: “I tried many times to think ‘Wow, my great-grandfather did this with X amount of food,’ and he was driven solely like ‘I need to get into neutral Spain and get back over to England so I can do what I got to do.’”

Lt. Richard Christenson, a B-17 pilot, was shot down over northern France and spirited out over the Pyrenees while the war was still ongoing. But he made it back home to live out the rest of his days with Ruth, his wife.

His daughter Kathryn, 81, who has written a book about his escape, and  grandchildren Marie, 52, and Tim, 54, joined great-grandchildren Luke and Jake to walk the train in 2018, its 25th anniversary. 

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“I’d never even been to Europe,” said Tim, adding that he would never ordinarily have come over just to see the mountains. “But to retrace Grandpa’s steps ‘Oh, in a heartbeat,” he told CNN.

“I felt in a little bit of communion with him, you know?” Luke, who never knew his great-grandfather, remembered.

That reunion with the past came alive over a dinner before the walk, where the Janiszewskis met descendants of the local family who saved Lt. Christenson.

Sitting down with them, Tim reflected on how this human drama played