Hello and welcome to Family Stories. There's only one more day to go until you can hug friends and family to your heart's content.

In the meantime we have a big virtual hug for you in the form of our Family Stories, the pod which lets you our listeners tell stories from your own families.

First up we have this account from Richard V's about his great uncle. Albert Franz Graudhain or Franz as he was known was born in Mechill and Belgium in 1910.

He was the son of Edward and Josephina who ran the local chemist in their town. France had three younger sisters including Madeline who was my grandmother. The family lost their father to Spanish flu in August 1918.

When France was only 16 and exactly three years later to the day their mother died leaving all three orphaned. At the age of 23 France declared his ambition to become a priest and at Christmas 1922 he was a great father.

Later he moved to Loïven where he took on the role as priest to the parish. He was well liked and more approachable than many of the priests at that time who were often regarded as a fissious and remote.

He ran the local scout group taught in the school and helped many in the parish. Then the war came to Belgium. He was not initially involved in the war effort but there was a turning point for France when the authority started to order all the young people to leave Belgium and go to work in Germany.

France knew this was unacceptable and started to hide many of the young people of the parish before they could be deported. It must have been about this time that he joined the Belgian resistance. His actions escalated from hiding people to recording troop movements passing on information and then helping English and Belgian airmen and agents escape the authorities.

One episode during his time as a resistance fighter is a bit more aloe low than secret army. France had been asked to hide a British airman for a day or so whilst the resistance organized how he could be smuggled out of the country.

Unshore what to do with him they both dressed as civilians and went to the local cinema to watch the latest show.

Once France and his guests had sat down in the cinema there was a great cuffuffle the lights went up and in-walked the senior officer of the local German garrison. Recognising France as the local priest he sat down next to him, chatted a bit and then the show started.

On one side of France was the senior officer of the local garrison and on the other was the airman.

Not much is recorded of France's response to the situation but I like to think he kept his cool throughout. At the end of the film the lights went up the German officer nodded to France and his companion and left without a second thought never realising that he was one seat away from a British airman.

At the time the head of the local resistance was a man called Fis. The Gestapo had discovered he was the head of the resistance and in the spring of 1943 they arrested him. Fis was tortured and gave up a number of key people in the local resistance.

Including France. The Gestapo set a trap. Fis arrested been kept quiet so when a telegram came for France from Fis to meet him he had no reason to doubt its ferocity.

Fis was not at the meeting but the Gestapo were and France was arrested. Before he had left for the meeting France had told the rest of the family that he was going to Antwerp to talk to some other family members about an inheritance so when he did not return immediately they were not concerned.

Some weeks later on the 12th of June 1943 the family received the letter from France at the St. Gilles prison in Brussels asking for clothes and toiletries.

As they knew that the original telegram had been signed by Fis the family realised the resistance group had been compromised and they informed the other members who fled and the group was disbanded.

France was kept in isolation for over a month at St. Gilles. During this time he had only one visitor, his sister Mia, who found him in a miserable state with no socks, missing his priest's collar, showing clear signs of torture.

His health had deteriorated and although the local doctor tried to provide medicine the prison commentant refused.

One of his parishioners, Mrs. Decodier, went to the prison every day to see France but was always refused entry. She said, many times I have been sitting on a bench in the neighbourhood of the prison.

It is not possible to describe the cries of pain which I have heard there but when I tell you that the Germans were pulling out nails, hair and teeth they did everything which was inhuman and physically possible in order to get to know something more.

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