The French retiree was granted German citizenship at a ceremony at the German consulate in Paris.

Rouxel said the event helped to ease a lifetime of rejection and humiliation in a country whose wartime occupation remained a taboo topic for a long time.

"I'm German. I'm not a bastard any more. I'm a child like all the others. At last I've got the second half that I was so cruelly missing," Rouxel said.