Survival in WWII, 1933–1944 · Alfred Moritz (alias Mauricet)

Issoudun (indre), France. Summer 1942.

ather's youngest brother Jakob, now known as Jacques, had moved to France after the German annexation of the Sarreland in 1935. At the start of the war, he had relocated part of his garment factory, REAL SARL, from Paris to the town of Issoudun, in Central France, some fifty miles South of the border—the Demarcation Line—between the occupied North and the unoccupied Vichy-South Zones.

On arriving in Issoudun—having fled their home in nearby Ste. Lizaigne to avoid the mid 1942 roundups of foreign Jews—our parents hid in a hayloft on our uncle's property.

Ernest and I were entrusted to a poor seamstress in the nearby village of "Les Bordes," until a more secure and permanent hiding place could be found.