• Nelly Mousset-Vos & Nadine Hwang
There are love stories that defy death, History, and horror. The story of Nadine Hwang and Nelly Mousset-Vos begins in the darkest setting imaginable: the Ravensbrück concentration camp. But before their paths crossed, these two women had already lived a thousand lives.
Nadine Hwang (born in 1902) was a Sino-Belgian woman with an extraordinary destiny. The daughter of a Chinese diplomat and a Belgian aristocrat, she grew up between Madrid and Beijing. A lawyer, aviator, and honorary colonel in the Chinese army, she was a profoundly free woman who defied gender norms. In the 1930s, she moved to Paris, willingly wore a suit and tie, sported short hair, and frequented lesbian intellectual circles (she was notably the lover of the famous writer Natalie Clifford Barney). An expert in cross-dressing, she reportedly even disguised herself, along with a young friend, as a German soldier (though it remains unknown how they obtained such uniforms), and she is also known to have corresponded with a Gestapo officer. Arrested in 1944 around the same time as the famous French resistant Geneviève de Gaulle, Anthonioz, most likely for acts of espionage benefiting the Resistance, she was deported in a convoy of 567 women that arrived at the Ravensbrück concentration camp on May 18, 1944.
Nelly Mousset-Vos (born in 1906) was a famous Belgian opera singer, a highly talented mezzo-soprano. A divorced mother of two daughters, she decided to use her profession and her European tours as a cover to become a spy for the Resistance. A year after the outbreak of the Second World War, she joined the Luc-Marc service, one of the most important pro-Allied intelligence networks created in occupied Belgium, at the suggestion of Colonel Henri Bernard, who notably organized the anti-fascist resistance in Belgium. Her profession as a singer led her to travel to several countries, such as Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Germany, providing an ideal cover for transferring intelligence. She was eventually arrested by the Gestapo in Paris in April 1943.
It is December 24, 1944, in Ravensbrück. The cold is freezing, and hunger and exhaustion are ravaging the camp. In a dimly lit barrack, Nelly tries to soothe her fellow prisoners by singing Christmas carols.
Suddenly, a voice rises from the darkness, asking her to sing an aria from Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly. Nelly obliges and sings Un bel dì, vedremo (One fine day we'll see). It is at this moment that Nadine approaches her. In the diary she secretly kept in the camp, Nelly would describe this precise instant:
"Clapping hands. Two arms hold me tight, two kisses on my cheek. Butterfly is in front of me, her black hair, her ivory skin, her slanted eyes."
Amidst the absolute horror of the camp, they fall madly in love. Nelly's voice becomes their currency: she sings for the female guards to spare Nadine from the worst chores. Their romance is stolen, incandescent, and gives them a reason to survive.
"Will there ever be a life for us?" Nelly worried in her Ravensbrück notebooks. The triumphant answer was yes, despite the dramatic obstacles placed in their path:
In March 1945, Nelly is part of a "black transport" to the Mauthausen death camp. Each woman believes she has lost the other forever. Nelly barely survives typhus and is liberated in April; meanwhile, Nadine is rescued by the Swedish Red Cross's "White Buses."
In February 1946, After long months of searching in a devastated Europe, a postcard sent from Paris arrives in Brussels for Nelly: "My love, where are you? [...] I would give my life to see you again if only for twenty-four hours." They are finally reunited, never to be separated again.
To escape the prejudices of the time and live freely, they move to Caracas, Venezuela. They spend twenty years there living a peaceful and radiant life. To protect themselves, they introduce themselves to the rest of the world merely as "cousins."
When Nadine falls seriously ill, the couple returns to Brussels. Nadine passes away in 1972, and Nelly in 1987. Their secret remains buried for a long time until Sylvie, Nelly's granddaughter, discovers the diaries, and the recent Swedish documentary "Nelly & Nadine" finally restores their love to its rightful place in History.