In 1938, passionate about winter sports, the young doctor decided to join his friends, among them world-class ski champions, who had founded the resort a few years earlier. Like many of the young men who ran the hotels and ski schools, he was born in Alsace, a region of eastern France that before World War One had been occupied by the Germans. Christel believes this instilled a dislike of Germany that was only reinforced by the two years he spent in a prisoner of war camp near Stuttgart, from 1940 to 1942.