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Nelly & Nadine is the unlikely love story between two women falling in love on Christmas Eve, 1944, in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. For many years Nelly and Nadine lifelong relationship was kept a secret, also to their closest family members. Now Nelly’s grandchild, Sylvie, has decided to open the many boxes with Nelly and Nadine’s unseen personal archives. Among the photos, love letters and film reels is a diary, written by Nelly during her two years in the Nazi camps. In these never published notes she tells the story about how she met Nadine in Ravensbrück and how their love made them survive the horrors in the camps. The diary is the starting point for Sylvie, when she takes on the task to uncover Nelly’s and Nadine’s dramatic love story. It is a remarkable story about love against all odds, the healing power of music and a complicated family story of a third-generation concentration camp survivor. THE STORYOn Christmas evening 1944 Nelly Mousset-Vos was asked to sing Christmas carols in one of the Ravensbrück barracks with French prisoners. After a couple of songs a voice calls out from the dark: ”Sing something from Madame Butterfly!”. Nelly sings ”Un bel di vedremo”, about the waiting for a loved one. In her diary Nelly’s states that she probably ”never has been singing better”.Afterwards the woman who requested the song emerges from the darkness. Her name is Nadine Hwang. She kisses Nelly and says: ”The Good Lord has been kind to us”. And from this moment Nelly and Nadine become a couple, spending as much time together as possible. ”Will there ever be a life for us?”, Nelly asks in the diary.Nelly and Nadine both lived colourful and dramatic lives before they were deported. Nelly Mousset-Vos was touring as a classical singer and was recorded by national radio stations and released on records. Her repertoire consisted of songs and arias by Debussy, Milhaud, Wagner, Puccini etc. During the war she was involved in the resistance against the Nazis as a courier.Nadine Hwang was the daughter of the Chinese ambassador in Spain and a Belgian mother. She spent the 20’s in China, where she was appointed honorary colonel in the Chinese air force. In the 30’s she moved to Paris, where she joined the artistic community around writer Natalie Clifford Barney and at one point Nadine became her mistress.They were both in their 40s when they got arrested by the Nazis and sent to the women’s camp Ravensbrück, north of Berlin. In March 1945 they were separated when Nelly was sent to the Mauthausen camp, where she almost died. Nadine was liberated by the Red Cross mission The White Buses and came to Malmö, Sweden, the 28th of April. There her arrival was documented by Swedish news photographers.After the war Nelly and Nadine miraculously manage to reunite. Love had created strong ties between them and they decide to start a life together. In order to live freely as a couple they move to Caracas, Venezuela, at the end of the 40’s.At the end of the 60’s Nadine became sick. After the earthquake in Caracas, 1967, they went back to Brussels. Nadine died in 1972, Nelly in 1985. They are buried in different graves in Brussels.Sylvie is the grandchild of Nelly. She’s a farmer, living at an old farm outside Paris, together with her partner Christian. For years Nelly and Nadine’s extensive archives have been kept in the farm’s attic. Sylvie never found the strength to go through it. The love story between Nelly and Nadine became a part of a complicated and painful family history. Sylvie’s mother Claude felt abandoned by her mother, Nelly, who chose a life together with Nadine. The personal discoveries by Sylvie will gradually reveal the complicated love story. |