My Mother’s Story: Another Face of France

The flag of France, flown during a White House ceremony. (archive) On Tuesday, the French parliament considered whether to recognize the Palestinian Authority as a sovereign nation.
Photo Credit: Official White House photo by Pete Souza

Last winter, my brother spoke at West Point, and he started the presentation by thanking the US Army…“I am here because the US Army liberated the small town of Corps, France, where my mother was hiding out on a farm, in August 1944. I will be forever grateful”. Later he searched the Internet for pictures of Corps –a small town in the Isère Rhône-Alpes region –and found pictures of two French girls handing flowers to American soldiers in a tank liberating the town on August 21, 1944. He emailed the pictures to my sister, my mother, and me. My mother grew very emotional as she recognized the main street of Corps, and memories flooded of being liberated by the Americans…who gave children her age Hershey chocolate bars that she remembered “weren’t real chocolate since they were sweet and smooth and not lumpy, grainy and sour like the ‘faux chocolate’ we ate”.

My mother suffered from respiratory problems growing up in Paris, France and in 1939 my grandparents took her to La Bourboule in the Auvergne region, to “take the waters”. When war broke out, my grandparents decided not to return to Paris with my mother, but to remain there for the duration of the war –a spontaneous decision that probably saved their lives. I still don’t understand under what circumstances my maternal great-grandparents, my grandmother’s brother, and my mother’s abandoned/orphaned cousin joined them, but the entire family (plus a newborn aunt) were able to survive the war away from Nazi occupied Paris by going into hiding in La Bourboule from 1939 to 1943 and later in the village of Corps, France from 1943 to the liberation in August 1944.

My mother rarely spoke about the war years. It wasn’t until 5 or 6 years ago at a Yom Kippur discussion session at our synagogue that she admitted that she and her family were survivors of the Holocaust. We had heard bits and pieces of stories about the war years, but they were vague recollections of a young girl and other family members, and we weren’t sure if they were real or imagined. It was an important part of her life, but not one that she readily shared outside of providing basic details for a 5th grade social studies project. Even though her immediate family survived, it was clearly a shrouded and painful period rarely discussed.

At my brother’s birthday dinner this past February my mother mused aloud about her interest in returning to the small villages and hamlets where she was hidden as a young French girl. We humored her by offering to accompany her but we didn’t think that she would want to return to this earlier and apparently painful period of her life. Over time, her desire to return and rediscover her wartime past increased as she realized that after 70 years, if she didn’t do it now, it might not ever happen. She was especially curious to see if people remembered her family and if she would be able to recognize the towns from many years ago. In May I volunteered to accompany my mother back to France because I knew that the mountainous towns were remote and would require travel by trains, buses and cars. My second cousin from London also joined us as he was interested in learning about my mother’s and our common great-grandparents’ history.

Writing letters to the mayors of Corps and La Bourboule was emotionally difficult, as my mother wasn’t sure about the reception we would receive, especially given concerns about the current rise of anti-Semitism in France, and we all agreed to have low expectations in case there was a lukewarm reception, or, worse yet, no willingness to recollect at all.

Days before we left, my mother received an email from Docteur Gérard Cardin, a member of the Corps Village Council, who had been the Mayor of Corps from 1972 to 1999. He asked about the dates of our visit and he told us that he would be arranging a small reception at the Mairie (village hall). My mother emailed my cousin and me to bring suits and ties for the reception.

We drove down to Corps and arrived in the late afternoon. We stopped first at the Restaurant de Tilleul as we tried to find the Hotel de Tilleul and the proprietor informed us that Docteur Cardin wanted to be informed immediately upon our arrival. Docteur Cardin rushed to the hotel to meet us and warmly welcome us to Corps. So far, so good…

The next day, 25 residents of Corps arrived at the Mairie bearing baguettes, saucissons (sausages) and with Kirs (liquor) in hand. The elders, accompanied by their children and grandchildren sat around a large table listening to my mother’s recollections of her time in town and how she and her family lived in the Nouveau Hotel on the third floor, while the first floor was occupied by German soldiers billeted in town. This story had always been greeted with skepticism by her children…“how could a Jewish family hide out on the third floor of a hotel when the Germans were on the first floor?”

A voice at the table piped up, “I was born after the war and my parents – who owned the Nouveau Hotel – told us of French families, new to the town, living there for a period of time on the third floor. I had no idea that they were Jewish” stated Monsieur Gérard Plissier. So, it came to pass that facts began to replace stories about the past. We came to understand that the fragment of the story of living above the Germans in a hotel was indeed true.

So was the story about a German soldier missing his newborn daughter, who took a liking to my infant aunt and came up the stairs every day with his extra rations of sugar and bread for my mother’s family. According to family lore, one day he swallowed a whole bottle of wood alcohol in the family’s kitchen and died the next day from some kind of toxic reaction to the wood alcohol. Fearing that the soldier’s death might be blamed upon them, or worse yet, prompt the Germans to discover that a Jewish family lived on the third floor of their headquarters at the hotel, the next morning, my mother’s family fled to a small farm in a hamlet several kilometers from Corps. “Not so…” said Mme. Simone Pellissier-Asie, “that soldier often drank wood alcohol but actually died from being stabbed in a bar fight/mutiny later that night.”

During the course of the reception, others shared that they too, had hidden refugees, including Jewish families, during the war. Initially a discussion about how one Jewish family was hidden in Corps, the story expanded to a discussion of multiple Jewish families hidden by the townspeople. No one had ever spoken about hiding the Jewish families –mostly in their attempts to protect the families and to protect themselves –even the Jewish families were unaware that there were other Jewish families hiding in the same village.

What was the most interesting was that in the 70 years since Liberation, none of the inhabitants of Corps ever shared with one another that they too had hidden Jewish families during the war. My mother’s letter to the Mayor, the reception and my mother’s recollections unleashed a torrent of memories and a dialogue amongst the townspeople in attendance about the war years, Corps’ hidden Jewish population, and the bravery of the town’s inhabitants. Mme. Laurence Baracetta Coz, a former classmate of my mother’s (neither had a recollection of the other) burst into tears and couldn’t stop talking about how happy she was to reconnect with my mother after so many years and how proud she was of the villagers who hid the Jewish families during the war. She was grateful for my mother’s letter and quest since she now understood more about the town and was proud of its history in the face of the horror brought on by the Holocaust. Corps’ efforts to help Jews survive the Holocaust, it seemed, stirred a sense that enormously dangerous acts of unquestionable humanity in the direct and often open defiance of the unspeakable inhumanity had become a source of immense pride.

There were other anecdotes about the visit and stories that were confirmed or enhanced. Mme. Antoinette Francou Schultz distinctly remembered our family’s fake name “Thibault” which my family had taken in 1943 when they went into deeper hiding on the farm because “it wasn’t a name from our region.” Others remembered the time my grandfather was stopped by three different German patrols on the same day and was not arrested, about the hostages taken (and later released) in reprisal for a Resistance killing of a German soldier. All of these apparently long withheld memories were shared during the reception and at later at homes of the various members of “La Vielle Garde”. There were disagreements about how many hostages were taken by the Germans and general chuckling and celebrating the occasional banality of the occupiers. In one somewhat amusing story, the village leaders actually convinced their German occupiers that the killings were done by German deserters, not French townspeople, as the French townspeople “would never have abandoned their bicycles and clothing near the killings”.

Sometimes the meetings were less humorous and much more resoundingly personal. As I shared the photo of the tanks on the streets of Corps in 1944, I was completely stunned when Mme. Etiennette Combe Mei pointed out that she was the young girl handing gladioli flowers to the American GIs in the tanks.

The warmth of the villagers towards my mother was heartwarming and she was made to feel that she remained, after all this time, a part of the village and its history.

What was most impressive was the new dialogue and understanding of what the town’s inhabitants had done to protect Jewish families during the war. I was moved by the stories of selfless and potentially life-endangering efforts that the town’s inhabitants had undertaken in order protect Jewish families during the war. Our experience seemed to echo the stories shared by Caroline Moorehead in Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France in which she described how the inhabitants of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, another small village, saved several hundred people (Jewish and others) in the Haute Loire region and were honored by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among Nations.” While the citizens of Corps never received the same attention and honors, their story resonated intensely because, had been any less brave, it is likely that my two siblings, son, daughter, two nephews, and I would not be alive today. For everything tragic that we hear, there are probably hundreds if not thousands of stories about courageous acts of defiance and humanity across France and Europe, like those that of the people of Corps, that have never been told.

Given recent ethnically driven violence in the world today –in the Ukraine, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Syria, in Israel, in Gaza – and in light of the recurring anti-Semitism prevalent in France and other parts of Europe –stories of human self-sacrifice, courage, tolerance, and –indeed –survival seem more important than ever. Despite all of the tremendous hate, fear, distrust and anger in the world, we need to elevate the stories of real decency and civility, of humanity, and of “liberté, fraternité, et egalité”. We need to share these personal and verifiably true stories of heroism wherever they occur. We need to inspire ourselves to accept and protect our fellow human beings –regardless of race, religion or other differences –because this is how you stop hate –this is what sets us apart and makes us truly human.

Scrolling through the album that we put together of the trip, the many pictures and scenes, there are so many memories, some happy, others melancholy, and some terrifying, of my mother’s wartime experience in Corps. Yet each vignette and every picture tells the story of the inhabitants of a small village in France who willingly took inconceivable risks to save my mother, a Jewish family, and many others. We need to focus on her story …of inhabitants of a small town in France who willingly took risks to save my mother’s Jewish family and of her recollections of growing up in Corps. But my mother’s story cannot be only her story. That story, my mother’s story, and stories like it, should be repeated endlessly under similar circumstances. Her memories and the memories of other survivors must be made part of our collective heritage and shared with others in the hopes that it will inspire others to protect marginalized people at risk. It is our story –my mother’s story, my story, my children’s story, and our collective story. And my mother will gladly share her story.