Mathilde Beaulieu’s faith will be challenged by the horrors she witnesses as a Red Cross doctor during WWII—her Communist faith. She was supposed to oversee the repatriation of French POW and concentration camp prisoners, but she also reluctantly started treating the nuns of convent repeatedly raped by the conquering Soviet Red Army. To do so, Beaulieau will risk more than her ideology in Anne Fontaine’s “The Innocents.”
Beaulieu’s mission parameters are rigidly focused on French nationals, so she tries her best to turn away the distraught nun. Her Communist materialism also makes her instinctively antagonistic towards the Catholic Church. However, she ultimately relents, moved by the woman’s desperation and apparent piety. When she arrives at the convent she immediately understands why the sisters refused to seek help from the Russians or fellow Poles.
